The winner: John Maynard Keynes, the advocate of government spending to boost growth. The loser: Angela Merkel, the austere fighter for balanced budgets. Host at the loose fiscal celebration at Harvard University: Larry Summers. Chief mourner at the austerity funeral: Jens Weidman, at the German Federal Bank of which he is the president.

Summers, who was one of President Obama’s treasury secretaries, has long argued that the secular stagnation theory, developed by Keynes acolyte and Harvard professor Alvin Hansen in the 1930s, “offers the most comprehensive account of the situation and the best basis for policy prescriptions.” It goes something like this: inadequate demand for goods and services discourages businessmen from investing enough to produce robust economic growth. Only “an expansionary fiscal policy by the U.S. government can help overcome the secular stagnation problem and get growth back on track,” says Summers. In short, despite the some $20 trillion in debt and a rising deficit, the government should loosen its purse strings to increase the economy’s current feeble growth rate.