The word "boondoggle", Michael Grun-wald points out, was coined back in the days of the original New Deal, to describe "make-work" bits of arts and craft paid for by the government at a price that was out of all proportion to their actual value. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In times of economic woe, when normal patterns of consumption and investment are frozen, prodigal government spending can sometimes be the only way to break the vicious circle of declining demand and shrinking employment. Value for money, paradoxically, can sometimes be an unaf-fordable luxury. To sum up John Maynard Keynes, it can even make sense to bury money in bottles, so that miners, and the suppliers of their pickaxes and overalls, and those who sell food and materials to those suppliers can, in turn, benefit from the circulation of money that they dig up. Mr Grunwald's new book is the story of what was arguably the greatest boondoggle in history and the politics that surrounded it, both before and since.
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