Hayek: A Collaborative Biography

In 1984, F.A. Hayek, the co-leader of the Austrian free market neo-classical school, embraced the transparently fraudulent assertion made by Donald McCormick, aka Richard Deacon, in The British Connection (1979) which accused A.C. Pigou, the co-leader of the Cambridge market failure neo-classical school, of being a Soviet spy. Over lunch at the Reform Club with 'Deacon' McCormick, the former Sunday Times Foreign Manager, Hayek authenticated the fraudulent signature contained in a 1905 diary - the essence of the case against Pigou. In this third volume of Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, a distinguished collection of academics and specialists examine 'Deacon' McCormick's fraudulent career: summarizing the large volume of incriminating evidence that was available to Hayek in 1984. Hayek's 1931 unsubstantiated assertion about having predicted the Great Depression was obviously matched by other equally unreliable assertions. That Hayek's assertions have been uncritically repeated by his disciples illuminates dynamics of that school. Austrian School economists who promote financial sector deregulation and climate change denial appear to resemble a free market religion rather than the scientific communities examined in other volumes in this series.