At WPP, Martin Sorrell Indulges His Inner Economics Professor

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief of agency holding company WPP, inserted a curious rant about economics into his third quarter earnings press release. WPP â€" which includes ad agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, JWT and Grey Global Group â€" normally makes a fairly staid statement of its finances and restricts its commentary to corporate strategy and lists of regions and businesses that are growing. Not this time.

In a section devoted to the affect of the turmoil in the stock markets, Sorrell's statement took a detour through a history of modern political economy, hailing the rebirth of the theories of John Maynard Keynes, bidding adieu to the conservative extremism of Milton Friedman, and proclaiming an era of Soviet-style corporate capitalism. Sorrell's statement then ended on a semi-religious note about "Armageddon."

Here's the relevant section:

-- the revival of Keynesian economic policy and eclipse of Friedmanite monetarism, along with state-directed capitalism, have pumped and will pump massive amounts of liquidity into the system, possibly resulting in a surge in inflation, not unhelpful, at least, in the early stages of an upturn in stimulating economic activity. [He predicts that the effect on WPP wil be mixed, and then adds:] Whatever the pattern, it is not likely that our budget will reflect the Armageddon currently predicted by the fall in stock prices.