Must-Read: John Maynard Keynes (1936): The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 12

Must-Read: Is there anybody who can teach all of Hyman Minsky while standing on one foot? Yes: one person can:

John Maynard Keynes (1936): The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 12:

So far we have had chiefly in mind the state of confidence of the speculator or speculative investor himself…

…and may have seemed to be tacitly assuming that, if he himself is satisfied with the prospects, he has unlimited command over money at the market rate of interest.

This is, of course, not the case. Thus we must also take account of the other facet of the state of confidence, namely, the confidence of the lending institutions towards those who seek to borrow from them, sometimes described as the state of credit.

A collapse in the price of equities, which has had disastrous reactions on the marginal efficiency of capital, may have been due to the weakening either of speculative confidence or of the state of credit. But whereas the weakening of either is enough to cause a collapse, recovery requires the revival of both. For whilst the weakening of credit is sufficient to bring about a collapse, its strengthening, though a necessary condition of recovery, is not a sufficient condition…