Airdate: Masters of Money

BBC World screens a new 3 part series, Masters of Money, presented by BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders, exploring how the theories of three extraordinary thinkers – John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek – have helped shape the modern world.

In Masters of Money, produced in partnership with the Open University, Stephanie explains these men were not mere theorists and shows how their ideas were adopted and adapted by prime ministers, presidents and dictators – shaping world events and the societies we live in. She argues that these explosive ideas helped create our troubled modern world. Can they now help us fix it?

Keynes – episode 1
Stephanie begins by looking at John Maynard Keynes. Many argue only Winston Churchill had a greater impact on British life than Keynes over the last century. Even today his ideas remain crucial to one of the most important debates of our time: how can we escape from the economic crisis? Should governments borrow and spend their way out of trouble or slash spending and reduce the national debt?

With contributions from some of the world’s leading economic thinkers including two Nobel laureates and the Governor of the Bank of England, Stephanie Flanders argues Keynes has never been more relevant or controversial than now.

During his life, Keynes was credited with, amongst other things, helping to save capitalism from the Great Depression, funding the war against the Nazis and building post-war decades of growth and rising prosperity. And when the global crisis struck in 2008, it was his ideas that the world’s leaders turned to help avoid another depression.

2:10pm Saturday November 24th BBC World.