Who was John Maynard Keynes?
Posted @ 9:57 AM on January 16, 2009 by Josh Planet Money shines the spotlight on John Maynard Keynes, the man behind a school of economics charging back to the forefront of U.S. fiscal policy. On ATC, Adam Davidson talked with Renee Montagne about the economist’s larger than life personality and his proflic writings. And on the Planet Money blog, Davidson catalogues some of the more troubling aspects of Keynes’ worldview.
Among the few of my father’s books I’ve managed to preserve is the first edition of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes, published in 1936. Keynes’ ideas are coming back into fashion, so I thought I’d take another look at the book. It makes a remarkably good read, only rarely resorting to (for me) quite impenetrable mathematical equations. In 1936, the Great Depression was still at its deepest. Unemployment ravaged millions of lives. Fascism was rampant in Italy, Germany and Spain. Stalin was subjugating Russia. Much of the world remained under the colonial yoke, now made heavier by the collapse of the imperial economies. The outlook was bleak indeed – ‘world’ war loomed for the second time in not much more than a generation. ‘Classical’ economic orthodoxy at the time still dictated that the only way for a nation to prosper was through the violent, competitive conquest of ‘new markets’. In a depression, a ‘rich, old country’ – as Keynes put it –
