2008 Woodie Awards
Ecnomics for everyone: Happy Birthday Keynes
Stephen Zill
Issue date: 6/2/08 Section: Features
One of the most fascinating things about economics is that, once you get beyond all the curves, equations and jargon, you find an academic and professional field that is full of intriguing, larger-than-life personalities.
In fact, one of the most intriguing (and most influential) was born 125 years ago this week. John Maynard Keynes (pronounced "Cainze"), perhaps the fountainhead of modern economic theory, entered Cartesian space in Cambridge, England, on June 5, 1883.
Tall for his time, rather self-conscious about his appearance and occasionally slowed by a faulty ticker (which would eventually be his demise), Keynes packed a whole lot of living into his relatively brief life of 62 years.
An outstanding student at Eton and, later, King's College at Cambridge, he wrote a seminal treatise on probability theory and got his first taste of fame as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference after WWI. After resigning in disgust over the Allies insistence on moving Germany back to the stone age, he penned "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," which in many ways presaged the events leading up to WWII.
In his spare time, Keynes was the editor of a prestigious economic journal, ran an insurance company, opened a theater, collected art and rare books, made (then lost, then made again) a fortune in speculation and eventually married a famous Russian ballerina. In addition, Keynes held a famous meeting with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt early during the Great Depression (in which he found himself so profoundly disappointed with Roosevelt's grasp of economics that he became preoccupied with the president's hands - one of Keynes' fetishes), played an integral role in the Bretton Woods Agreements, and came to America a couple times to try to work out loan arrangements between the U.S. and England.
However, it was his 1936 publication "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," that catapulted him to the status of economic wise man. In his magnum opus, Keynes strove to overthrow classical economic theory, which downplayed the role of government in the economy based on the claim that, in the long run, market economies will inherently right themselves. Despite what some believe, "The General Theory" was not a doctrine promoting the idea of government-run economies. It had little to say about actual policy.
However, it did put forth the claim that market economies might not always operate at optimal levels, and in those cases, the government could play a positive role in rectifying the situation - hence Keynes most famous quote, "In the long run we're all dead."
All debates aside, Keynes changed the world, and today his ideas still hold massive sway over the development of economic theory. While there is little that can be added to the voluminous amount of work already devoted to Keynes' life and ideas, I have often wondered why there has never been a movie made about the father of macroeconomics and one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Given all his activities and proclivities outlined just in this column alone, what more could one want? Perhaps if it turned out that he was a serial killer too, Hollywood might be more interested. Hmm … there is research to be done!
In fact, one of the most intriguing (and most influential) was born 125 years ago this week. John Maynard Keynes (pronounced "Cainze"), perhaps the fountainhead of modern economic theory, entered Cartesian space in Cambridge, England, on June 5, 1883.
Tall for his time, rather self-conscious about his appearance and occasionally slowed by a faulty ticker (which would eventually be his demise), Keynes packed a whole lot of living into his relatively brief life of 62 years.
An outstanding student at Eton and, later, King's College at Cambridge, he wrote a seminal treatise on probability theory and got his first taste of fame as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference after WWI. After resigning in disgust over the Allies insistence on moving Germany back to the stone age, he penned "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," which in many ways presaged the events leading up to WWII.
In his spare time, Keynes was the editor of a prestigious economic journal, ran an insurance company, opened a theater, collected art and rare books, made (then lost, then made again) a fortune in speculation and eventually married a famous Russian ballerina. In addition, Keynes held a famous meeting with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt early during the Great Depression (in which he found himself so profoundly disappointed with Roosevelt's grasp of economics that he became preoccupied with the president's hands - one of Keynes' fetishes), played an integral role in the Bretton Woods Agreements, and came to America a couple times to try to work out loan arrangements between the U.S. and England.
However, it was his 1936 publication "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," that catapulted him to the status of economic wise man. In his magnum opus, Keynes strove to overthrow classical economic theory, which downplayed the role of government in the economy based on the claim that, in the long run, market economies will inherently right themselves. Despite what some believe, "The General Theory" was not a doctrine promoting the idea of government-run economies. It had little to say about actual policy.
However, it did put forth the claim that market economies might not always operate at optimal levels, and in those cases, the government could play a positive role in rectifying the situation - hence Keynes most famous quote, "In the long run we're all dead."
All debates aside, Keynes changed the world, and today his ideas still hold massive sway over the development of economic theory. While there is little that can be added to the voluminous amount of work already devoted to Keynes' life and ideas, I have often wondered why there has never been a movie made about the father of macroeconomics and one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Given all his activities and proclivities outlined just in this column alone, what more could one want? Perhaps if it turned out that he was a serial killer too, Hollywood might be more interested. Hmm … there is research to be done!
Be the first to comment on this story