John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton (pronounced kānz / kAnze), ) (June 5, 1883 – April 21, 1946) was an English economist, whose ideas had a major impact on modern economic and political theory as well as on Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. He is particularly remembered for advocating interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to aim to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms. He is considered by many to be the founder of modern macroeconomics.

Biography

Education

John Maynard Keynes was the son of John Neville Keynes, an economics lecturer at Cambridge University and Florence Ada Brown, a successful author and a social reformist. Keynes enjoyed an elite early education at Eton, where he displayed talent in nearly every field of his unusually wide-ranging interests. His abilities were remarkable for their sheer diversity. He entered King’s College, Cambridge to study mathematics, but his interest in politics led him towards the field of economics, which he studied at Cambridge under A.C. Pigou and Alfred Marshall.

Career

In the interest of finding some source of income, Keynes postponed writing his dissertation for Cambridge, and instead took the civil service examinations, in which he placed second. Hilariously, he got his worst grade in the economics portion, to which he remarked, “The examiners presumably knew less than I did.” The most desirable opening in the British Treasury being taken by the person who came first, Keynes accepted a job in the India Office, the demands of which he claims were so low that he divided his time between reading the newspaper and catching up on personal correspondence. Also during this time, he worked on his dissertation, which was—to his annoyance—not accepted when he submitted it, meaning also that the accompanying lifelong fellowship to Cambridge was not granted either. Instead, he accepted a lectureship in economics funded personally by Alfred Marshall, from which position he began to build his reputation as an economist. Soon he was appointed to the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, a position from which he could show his considerable talent at applying economic theory to practical problems. Having demonstrated such an aptitude, particularly with regards to currency and credit, his services were called on after the outbreak of the first World War. He worked for the Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Treasury on Financial and Economic Questions. Among his responsibilities were the design of terms of credit between Britain and its continental allies during the war, and the acquisition of scarce currencies. At this latter endeavor Keynes’ “nerve and mastery became legendary,” in the words of Robert Lekachman, as in the case where he managed to put together—with difficulty—a small supply of Spanish pesetas and sold them all to break the market: it worked, and pesetas became much less scarce and expensive. These accomplishments led eventually to the appointment that would have a huge effect on Keynes’ life and career: financial representative for the Treasury to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Keynes' career lifted off as an adviser to the British finance department from 1915–1919 during World War I, and their representative at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. The visit resulting in the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace the same year followed by A Revision of the Treaty in 1922 earned him public prominence. The works argued that the reparations which Germany was forced to pay to the victors in the war were too large and would lead to the ruin of the German economy. These predictions were arguably borne out when the German economy collapsed in the hyperinflation of 1923, with only a small amount of reparations ever being paid.

Keynes published his Treatise on Probability in 1920, a notable contribution to the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of probability theory. He attacked the deflation policies of the 1920s with A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923, a trenchant argument that countries should target stability of domestic prices and proposing flexible exchange rates. The Treatise on Money 1930 (2 volumes) effectively set out his Wicksellian theory of the credit cycle.

His magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money challenged the economic paradigm when published in 1936. In this book Keynes put forward a theory based upon the notion of aggregate demand to explain variations in the overall level of economic activity, such as were observed in the Great Depression. The total income in a society is defined by the sum of consumption and investment; and in a state of unemployment and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or investment.

Keynes reading from his General Theory

The total amount of saving in a society is determined by the total income and thus, the economy could achieve an increase of total saving, even if the interest rates were lowered to increase the expenditures for investment. The book advocated activist economic policy by government to stimulate demand in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works. The book is often viewed as the foundation of modern macroeconomics and had a profound impact on U.S. president Roosevelt's New Deal.

In 1942 Keynes was a very recognised economist and was raised to the peerage as Baron Keynes of Tilton. During World War II, Keynes argued in How to pay for the war that the war effort should be largely financed by higher taxation, rather than deficit spending, in order to avoid inflation. As Allied victory began to look certain, Keynes was heavily involved, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system. The Keynes-plan, concerning an international clearing-union argued for a radical system for the management of currencies, involving a world central bank, the Bancor, responsible for a common world unit of currency. The USA's greater negotiating strength, however, meant that the final outcomes accorded more closely to the less radical plans of Harry Dexter White.

Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods Conference

Keynes wrote Essays in Biography and Essays in Persuasion, the former giving portraits of economists and notables, whilst the latter presents some of Keynes' attempts to influence decision-makers during the Great Depression. Keynes was editor in chief for the Economical Journal from 1912.

Investor

Keynes' brilliant record as an investor is demonstrated by the publicly available data of a fund he managed on behalf of King's College, Cambridge.

From 1928 to 1945, despite taking a massive hit during the Crash of 1929, Keynes' fund produced a very strong average increase of 13.2% compared with the general market in the United Kingdom declining by an average 0.5% per annum.

The approach generally adopted by Keynes with his investments he summarised accordingly:

  • 1. A careful selection of a few investments having regard to their cheapness in relation to their probable actual and potential intrinsic value over a period of years ahead and in relation to alternative investments at the time;
  • 2. A steadfast holding of these fairly large units through thick and thin, perhaps for several years, until either they have fulfilled their promise or it is evident that they were purchases on a mistake, and;
  • 3. A balanced investment position, i.e. a variety of risks in spite of individual holdings being large, and if possible opposed risks (e.g. a holding of gold shares among other equities, since they are likely to move in opposite directions when there are general fluctuations).

Keynes argued that "It is a mistake to think one limits one's risks by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence ... One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself to put full confidence."

Keynes' advice on speculation, some might say, is timeless:

(Investment is) intolerably boring and over-exacting to any one who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll.

When reviewing an important early work on equities investments, Keynes argued that "Well-managed industrial companies do not, as a rule, distribute to the shareholders the whole of their earned profits. In good years, if not in all years, they retain a part of their profits and put them back in the business. Thus there is an element of compound interest operating in favor of a sound industrial investment."

Personal and Marital life

Standing at approximately 6' 9", Keynes was very tall even by today's standards. In the early part of his life he had homosexual relationships. He had a series of relationships with men during his university days, and a serious relationship with the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant from 1908 to 1915. Keynes continued to assist Grant financially for the rest of his life. Keynes met Lydia Lopokova, a well-known Russian ballerina, in October 1918. The two married, and by most accounts, Keynes enjoyed a happy marriage with Lopokova. They were unable to have children for medical reasons.

Keynes was ultimately a successful investor building up a substantial private fortune. He was nearly wiped out following the Wall Street Crash but soon recouped his fortunes. He enjoyed collecting books and for example collected and protected during his lifetime many of Isaac Newton's papers. He was interested in literature in general and drama in particular and supported the Cambridge Arts Theatre financially, which allowed the institution to become at least for a while a major British stage outside of London. Keynes died of cardiac infarction, his heart problems being aggravated by the strain of working on post-war international financial problems.

John Neville Keynes (1852 - 1949) outlived his son by three years. Keynes' brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982) was a distinguished surgeon, scholar and bibliophile. His nephews are Richard Keynes (born 1919), a physiologist, and Quentin Keynes (1921-2003) an adventurer and bibliophile.

Influences on Keynes' works

  • Arthur C. Pigou
  • Alfred Marshall
  • Adam Smith
  • David Ricardo
  • Karl Marx

Keynes' influence

Keynes' theories were so influential, even when disputed, that a subfield of Macroeconomics called Keynesian economics is further developing and discussing his theories and their applications. John Maynard Keynes had several cultural interests and was a central figure in the so-called Bloomsbury group, consisting of prominent artists and authors in Great Britain. His autobiographical essays Two Memoirs appeared in 1949.

Critique

The work 1930 Treatise on Money (2 volumes) was regarded as Keynes's best work by his frequent intellectual opponent, Milton Friedman. Friedman and other monetarists have argued that Keynesian Economists do not pay enough attention to stagflation and other inflationary issues.

  • Friedrich von Hayek reviewed the Treatise on Money so harshly that Keynes decided to set Piero Sraffa to review (and condemn no less harshly) Hayek's own competing work. The Keynes-Hayek conflict was but one battle in the Cambridge-LSE war.
  • Ludwig von Mises
  • Rational expectations


References

  • Essays on John Maynard Keynes, Milo Keynes (Editor), Cambridge University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-521-20534-4
  • John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920, Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 1992, ISBN 033357379X (US Edition: ISBN 014023554X)
  • John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937, Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 1994, ISBN 0333584996 (US Edition: ISBN 0140238069)
  • The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Daniel Yergin with Joseph Stanislaw, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0684829754
  • John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937-1946 (published in the United States as Fighting for Freedom), Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 2001, ISBN 0333779711 (US Edition: ISBN 0142001678)

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. Interment was in the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery, Greeneville, Tennessee. Friedman and other monetarists have argued that Keynesian Economists do not pay enough attention to stagflation and other inflationary issues. He was elected as a Democrat to the Senate and served from March 4, 1875, until his death near Elizabethton, Tennessee, on July 31, 1875. The work 1930 Treatise on Money (2 volumes) was regarded as Keynes's best work by his frequent intellectual opponent, Milton Friedman. Johnson was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate in 1868 and to the House of Representatives in 1872. His autobiographical essays Two Memoirs appeared in 1949. Johnson was the first President to be impeached, and the only one until the impeachment of Bill Clinton on December 19, 1998.

John Maynard Keynes had several cultural interests and was a central figure in the so-called Bloomsbury group, consisting of prominent artists and authors in Great Britain. There were two votes in the Senate: one on May 16, 1868 for the 11th article, and another on May 26 for the other 10. Keynes' theories were so influential, even when disputed, that a subfield of Macroeconomics called Keynesian economics is further developing and discussing his theories and their applications. He had avoided removal from office by a single vote. His nephews are Richard Keynes (born 1919), a physiologist, and Quentin Keynes (1921-2003) an adventurer and bibliophile. Johnson was acquitted by a vote of thirty-five for conviction to nineteen for acquittal. Keynes' brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982) was a distinguished surgeon, scholar and bibliophile. Since Lincoln had appointed Stanton, it was claimed, the applicability of the Act had already run its course.

John Neville Keynes (1852 - 1949) outlived his son by three years. Johnson's defense was based on a clause in the Tenure-of-Office Act stating that the then-current Secretaries would hold their posts throughout the term of the President who appointed them. Keynes died of cardiac infarction, his heart problems being aggravated by the strain of working on post-war international financial problems. Eleven articles were set out in the resolution and the trial before the Senate lasted three months. He was interested in literature in general and drama in particular and supported the Cambridge Arts Theatre financially, which allowed the institution to become at least for a while a major British stage outside of London. Evarts served as his counsel. He enjoyed collecting books and for example collected and protected during his lifetime many of Isaac Newton's papers. William M.

He was nearly wiped out following the Wall Street Crash but soon recouped his fortunes. On March 5, 1868 a court of impeachment was organized in the Senate to hear charges against the President. Keynes was ultimately a successful investor building up a substantial private fortune. Three days after Stanton's removal, the House passed a resolution to impeach Johnson for "high crimes and misdemeanors", specifically, for intentionally violating the Tenure-of-Office Act and thus violating the law of the land, which he had sworn an oath to enforce. They were unable to have children for medical reasons. Thomas attempted to move into the War office, for which Stanton had Thomas arrested. The two married, and by most accounts, Keynes enjoyed a happy marriage with Lopokova. The Senate and House entered into hot debate.

Keynes met Lydia Lopokova, a well-known Russian ballerina, in October 1918. United States (1926), the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were indeed unconstitutional.). Keynes continued to assist Grant financially for the rest of his life. (Years later in Myers v. He had a series of relationships with men during his university days, and a serious relationship with the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant from 1908 to 1915. Johnson had previously vetoed the Act, claiming it was unconstitutional, and subsequently Congress had passed the Act again by the required two-thirds majority to make it law, over the objection of the President. In the early part of his life he had homosexual relationships. shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified," thus removing the President's previous unlimited power to fire any of his Cabinet members at will.

Standing at approximately 6' 9", Keynes was very tall even by today's standards. The Act said, "...every person holding any civil office, to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate .. Thus there is an element of compound interest operating in favor of a sound industrial investment.". This was an apparent violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act, made law in March of 1867, which was a law that Congress had specifically designed to protect Stanton. In good years, if not in all years, they retain a part of their profits and put them back in the business. On February 21, 1868, Johnson notified Congress that he had removed Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War, and was replacing him in the interim with Adjutant-General Lorenzo Thomas. When reviewing an important early work on equities investments, Keynes argued that "Well-managed industrial companies do not, as a rule, distribute to the shareholders the whole of their earned profits. Johnson's public criticisms of Congress provoked much talk of impeachment over the months.

Keynes' advice on speculation, some might say, is timeless:. However, "Congressional Reconstruction", enforced by repeated acts passed over Johnson's veto, provided for provisional state governments run by the military and ensuring the local passage of civil rights laws and otherwise imposing the will of the United States Congress — which, of course, was run by the North. One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself to put full confidence.". Johnson favored a very quick restoration of all rights and privileges of other states. Keynes argued that "It is a mistake to think one limits one's risks by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence .. Congress and Johnson argued in an increasingly public way about Reconstruction: the manner in which the Southern secessionist states would be readmitted to the Union. The approach generally adopted by Keynes with his investments he summarised accordingly:.
.

From 1928 to 1945, despite taking a massive hit during the Crash of 1929, Keynes' fund produced a very strong average increase of 13.2% compared with the general market in the United Kingdom declining by an average 0.5% per annum. Presidency upon the assassination of a President and the third to succeed upon the death of a President. Keynes' brilliant record as an investor is demonstrated by the publicly available data of a fund he managed on behalf of King's College, Cambridge. He was the first Vice President to succeed to the U.S. Keynes was editor in chief for the Economical Journal from 1912. He became President of the United States on April 15, 1865, upon the death of Lincoln. Keynes wrote Essays in Biography and Essays in Persuasion, the former giving portraits of economists and notables, whilst the latter presents some of Keynes' attempts to influence decision-makers during the Great Depression. He was elected Vice President of the United States on the National Union ticket headed by Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and was inaugurated March 4, 1865.

The USA's greater negotiating strength, however, meant that the final outcomes accorded more closely to the less radical plans of Harry Dexter White. Johnson was then appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862. The Keynes-plan, concerning an international clearing-union argued for a radical system for the management of currencies, involving a world central bank, the Bancor, responsible for a common world unit of currency. At the time of secession of the Confederacy, Johnson was the only Senator from the seceded states to continue participation in Congress. As Allied victory began to look certain, Keynes was heavily involved, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system. He was chairman of the Committee to Audit and Control the Contingent Expense (Thirty-sixth Congress). During World War II, Keynes argued in How to pay for the war that the war effort should be largely financed by higher taxation, rather than deficit spending, in order to avoid inflation. He was Governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857, and was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from October 8, 1857 to March 4, 1862, when he resigned.

In 1942 Keynes was a very recognised economist and was raised to the peerage as Baron Keynes of Tilton. Johnson did not seek renomination, having become a candidate for the governorship of Tennessee. president Roosevelt's New Deal. He was chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditures (Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses). The book is often viewed as the foundation of modern macroeconomics and had a profound impact on U.S. He was elected to the State Senate in 1841, and elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1853). The book advocated activist economic policy by government to stimulate demand in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works. He was a member of the State House of Representatives from 1835 to 1837 and 1839 to 1841.

The total amount of saving in a society is determined by the total income and thus, the economy could achieve an increase of total saving, even if the interest rates were lowered to increase the expenditures for investment. Johnson served as an alderman in Greeneville from 1828 to 1830 and mayor of Greeneville from 1834 to 1838. The total income in a society is defined by the sum of consumption and investment; and in a state of unemployment and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or investment. He never attended any type of school; his wife has historically been credited with teaching him to read and write. In this book Keynes put forward a theory based upon the notion of aggregate demand to explain variations in the overall level of economic activity, such as were observed in the Great Depression. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed to a tailor, but ran away to Greeneville, Tennessee in 1826, where he continued his employment as a tailor. His magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money challenged the economic paradigm when published in 1936. At the age of 4 his father died.

The Treatise on Money 1930 (2 volumes) effectively set out his Wicksellian theory of the credit cycle. Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacob Johnson and Mary McDonough on December 29, 1808. He attacked the deflation policies of the 1920s with A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923, a trenchant argument that countries should target stability of domestic prices and proposing flexible exchange rates. . Keynes published his Treatise on Probability in 1920, a notable contribution to the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of probability theory. He was subsequently acquitted by a single vote in the Senate. These predictions were arguably borne out when the German economy collapsed in the hyperinflation of 1923, with only a small amount of reparations ever being paid. Johnson presided over the Reconstruction of the United States following the American Civil War, and his conciliatory policies towards the defeated rebels and his vetoes of civil rights bills embroiled him in a bitter dispute with the Congressional Republicans, leading the House of Representatives to impeach him in 1868; he was the first President to be impeached.

The works argued that the reparations which Germany was forced to pay to the victors in the war were too large and would lead to the ruin of the German economy. Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the sixteenth Vice President (1865) and the seventeenth President of the United States (1865–1869), succeeding to the presidency upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The visit resulting in the publication of The Economic Consequences of the Peace the same year followed by A Revision of the Treaty in 1922 earned him public prominence. Nebraska – March 1, 1867. Keynes' career lifted off as an adviser to the British finance department from 1915–1919 during World War I, and their representative at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. These accomplishments led eventually to the appointment that would have a huge effect on Keynes’ life and career: financial representative for the Treasury to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

At this latter endeavor Keynes’ “nerve and mastery became legendary,” in the words of Robert Lekachman, as in the case where he managed to put together—with difficulty—a small supply of Spanish pesetas and sold them all to break the market: it worked, and pesetas became much less scarce and expensive. Among his responsibilities were the design of terms of credit between Britain and its continental allies during the war, and the acquisition of scarce currencies. He worked for the Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Treasury on Financial and Economic Questions. Having demonstrated such an aptitude, particularly with regards to currency and credit, his services were called on after the outbreak of the first World War.

Soon he was appointed to the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, a position from which he could show his considerable talent at applying economic theory to practical problems. Instead, he accepted a lectureship in economics funded personally by Alfred Marshall, from which position he began to build his reputation as an economist. Also during this time, he worked on his dissertation, which was—to his annoyance—not accepted when he submitted it, meaning also that the accompanying lifelong fellowship to Cambridge was not granted either. Hilariously, he got his worst grade in the economics portion, to which he remarked, “The examiners presumably knew less than I did.” The most desirable opening in the British Treasury being taken by the person who came first, Keynes accepted a job in the India Office, the demands of which he claims were so low that he divided his time between reading the newspaper and catching up on personal correspondence.

In the interest of finding some source of income, Keynes postponed writing his dissertation for Cambridge, and instead took the civil service examinations, in which he placed second. Pigou and Alfred Marshall. He entered King’s College, Cambridge to study mathematics, but his interest in politics led him towards the field of economics, which he studied at Cambridge under A.C. His abilities were remarkable for their sheer diversity.

Keynes enjoyed an elite early education at Eton, where he displayed talent in nearly every field of his unusually wide-ranging interests. John Maynard Keynes was the son of John Neville Keynes, an economics lecturer at Cambridge University and Florence Ada Brown, a successful author and a social reformist. . He is considered by many to be the founder of modern macroeconomics.

He is particularly remembered for advocating interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to aim to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms. Roosevelt's New Deal. John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton (pronounced kānz / kAnze), ) (June 5, 1883 – April 21, 1946) was an English economist, whose ideas had a major impact on modern economic and political theory as well as on Franklin D. John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937-1946 (published in the United States as Fighting for Freedom), Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 2001, ISBN 0333779711 (US Edition: ISBN 0142001678).

The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Daniel Yergin with Joseph Stanislaw, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998, ISBN 0684829754. John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937, Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 1994, ISBN 0333584996 (US Edition: ISBN 0140238069). John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883-1920, Robert Skidelsky, Papermac, 1992, ISBN 033357379X (US Edition: ISBN 014023554X). Essays on John Maynard Keynes, Milo Keynes (Editor), Cambridge University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-521-20534-4.

Rational expectations. Ludwig von Mises. The Keynes-Hayek conflict was but one battle in the Cambridge-LSE war. Friedrich von Hayek reviewed the Treatise on Money so harshly that Keynes decided to set Piero Sraffa to review (and condemn no less harshly) Hayek's own competing work.

Karl Marx. David Ricardo. Adam Smith. Alfred Marshall.

Pigou. Arthur C. a variety of risks in spite of individual holdings being large, and if possible opposed risks (e.g. a holding of gold shares among other equities, since they are likely to move in opposite directions when there are general fluctuations). A balanced investment position, i.e.

3. A steadfast holding of these fairly large units through thick and thin, perhaps for several years, until either they have fulfilled their promise or it is evident that they were purchases on a mistake, and;. 2. A careful selection of a few investments having regard to their cheapness in relation to their probable actual and potential intrinsic value over a period of years ahead and in relation to alternative investments at the time;.

1.