Hayek: A Collaborative Biography Part III, Fraud, Fascism and Free Market Religion

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.

Robert Leeson is a prolific contributor to the literature on Schools of Economic Thought. He is ranked joint 17th with Paul Samuelson based on the number of published journal articles included in the ECONLIT database of the American Economic Association. His articles have appeared in the Economic Journal, Economica, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, History of Political Economy and elsewhere. He is also a prolific commentator on economic affairs for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Australian Financial Review. This is his sixteenth edited, written or co-written book.

PART I: FRAUD
1. Introduction; Robert Leeson
2. History's Greatest Fraud?;Robert Leeson
3. The 'Deacon' McCormick Papers; Ian Sayer
4. Insights from 'Deacon' McCormick's Research Assistant; Nigel West
PART II: VICTIMS
5.The Triumph of Rhetoric: Pigou as Keynesian Whipping Boy and its Unintended Consequences; Robert Leeson and Daniel Schiffman
6. Wilfrid Noyce; Stewart Hawkins
PART III: EVIDENCE
7. Hayek and 'Deacon' McCormick: Testing Austrian Knowledge; Robert Leeson
8. Professional Assessments; Robert Leeson
9. 'Deacon' McCormick and the Madoc Myth; Howard Kimberley
10. An 'Intelligence' Perspective; Daniel Baldino
11. 2 + 2 = 5; Richard Spence
12. Authoritative Sources: The Information Research Department, Journalism and Publishing; John Jenks
13. The Hitler Diary Fraud; Gerhard Weinberg
14. Sources, and the Use of Knowledge in Society; Robert Leeson