English economist, prolific author and architect of the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank. The author of “Economic Consequences of Peace” in 1919, his most noted works were his two books, “Treatise on Money,” 1930 and “The General Theory of Employment,” 1936.
The son of a Cambridge administrator, Keynes excelled in his early schooling due to a lot of hand-holding by his parents. He loved his mother very much. His father not only coached him through every exam he ever took from Eton up to the Civil Service, but he also made the decision that math would be his course of study. His formal study ended when he placed a disappointing twelfth in his final exam at the end of his second year, at which point he turned to economics. Never studying the subject in a formal way beyond eight weeks tutorials with Alfred Marshall, he went on to become this century’s most influential economist. The young Keynes had a habit of lying in bed and reading the poetry of Longfellow and his real education came from the Apostle, a secret society started at Cambridge in 1820 and originally devoted to a philosophy of life for the cloistered. Earlier members of the group were Bertrand Russell and Guy Burgess with few scientists among them. During Keynes’ generation and after, many of the members were gay. From this group emerged the Bloomsbury group including Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, E. M. Forster, Demond McCarthy, Clive Bell, along with the added members Vanessa Stephen and her sister Virginia Woolf plus a few others. The artists and writers of the Bloomsbury provided him with a circle of friends, lovers, moral censors and financial dependents.
In 1906 Keynes left for London to take the Civil Service exam and sailed through it with his lowest scores being in economics. He worked in the India office from 1906 to 1908 and made his mark by writing a minor classic on Indian banking and finance. During these years he had ample time for the study of probability and writing, as his workday was very short. Keynes submitted “Treatise on Probability” for a fellowship competition at King’s College. Although he didn’t get the fellowship, he did return to Cambridge to take a position as adjunct lecturer in economics paid out of pocket by Alfred Marshall. The following year he did receive a fellowship.
At this point most people considered his style of economics as conventional as his private life was unconventional. He steadfastly adhered to laisses-faire economic theory and politics. The day after war was declared in 1914, Keynes rushed to London and spent the next four years in the Treasury trying to keep the war afloat. His task was to finance Britain and the Allies while maintaining financial supremacy over the United States. When this was finally thought impossible, he turned to Britain’s survival instead. By the end of the war he was one of Lloyd George’s most influential advisers, however the Prime Minister personally struck him off an honors list when Keynes lectured him as if he were a schoolboy. In 1919 he advanced to the position of principal British treasury representative. He resigned in depression and rage when the Great Powers wouldn’t listen to him.
On his return to England he wrote “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” which was financially lucrative as he bore the costs of publication and took all the profits himself. In his personal life he attracted the attention of a blackmailing London landlady when he became enamored of ballet due to his admiration of Nijinsky’s legs. Being personally androgynous he displayed the male traits of intellect, logic and cunning along with his female side of sensitivity, intuition and passion. He had the heightened sensitivity of a nonconformist. A lifelong speculator in the financial and commodities markets, he felt that markets were driven by the ‘animal spirits’ of investors.
In the mid-1920’s his attitude toward government policies changed. Promoting a program of employment through government works, he influenced Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal programs. He was dissatisfied with unfettered capitalism and believed in government intervention to smooth violent economic fluctuations. Forcing people to save was one of his solutions to inflationary problems. He was Chairman of the Board of National Mutual Life Insurance Company from 1921-38.
Living in the country, he considered himself a gentlemanly farmer and was made a peer, Baron of Tilton, in 1942. In 1951 Sir Roy Harrod, a former student of Keynes, published a semiofficial biography and went to great lengths to protect his reputation and family saying nothing of his homosexuality. These revelations came out later in a biography by Charles H. Hession. His ideas, theories and writings helped make him known world -wide. His position as a director of the Bank of England and a British Treasury official gave credence to his philosophies.
He met Lydia Lopokova, a prima ballerina in Diaghilev’s company and they married in 1925, when he was 42, despite his homosexuality. The marriage lasted twenty years as she was an affectionate and flamboyant partner, as overtly unconventional as Keynes was privately.
Keynes died of a heart infarction on 4/21/1946 in Firle, Sussex, England.
Link to Wikipedia biography