Notice that I said "debate," not debates. The issues are complex but they all boil down to the same question: How much should the government intervene in the markets? The conventional wisdom is that in a crisis, the government needs to "prime the pump" by, among other things, providing plenty of funding for the banking system and using public money to create jobs. In this "Keynesian" perspective—after John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who defended this strategy during the Great Depression—government must keep a heavy hand on the reins. ...