Commenting on his predecessors’ failure to appreciate the value of economic aggregates, Keynes once wrote: “It was harder to de-bamboozle them than to bamboozle them in the first place… one does not undiscover America.”

This logic seems to be equally relevant today in the case of a few (very few) blinkered opinion-columnists who simply cannot digest Malta’s current economic performance with a splendid growth rate totally shorn of any fiscal sacrifice as is often the case elsewhere in Europe.

In fact, the opposite is happening here: reducing our Budget deficit beyond everyone’s expectations while indulging in the luxury of a politically-induced income tax rate cut.

But even blinkers can have their funny side sometimes.

To my emphatic view that the Minister of Finance’s success could be attributed to his adopting a Keynesian anti-cyclical approach to fiscal management, a journalist couldn’t help exclaiming: “he would, wouldn’t he? With a chauffeur-driven car, the minister surely doesn’t need to cycle to work!”