Founder of Keynesian Economics:

John Maynard Keynes

Main Life Accomplishments:

 

Keynes was asked to work for the British treasury shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He rose rapidly to a position of great importance and before the end of the war was in overall charge of foreign-exchange arrangements.

After the war Keynes served as the British treasury delegate at the Paris Peace Conference and through this experience underwent the main crisis of his life. He was passionately opposed to British (and Allied) policy at the conference. Keynes held that, on the moral plane, the peace treaty (see Treaty of Versailles) should show magnanimity to the fallen foe and that, on the economic plane, the demands for reparation were fantastically impractical and that unsuccessful attempts to enforce them would lead to the ruin of Europe. He resigned his position in June 1919 in a biting letter to British prime minister David Lloyd George. This resignation made it unlikely that Keynes would be employed again officially for a considerable time.

Within three months Keynes published a devastating attack on the Versailles treaty settlements: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). In it he correctly predicted that the staggering reparations levied against Germany would goad that country into economic nationalism and a resurgence of militarism. In addition to its remorseless economic argument against the reparations, this book contained vivid and brilliant character sketches. It was quickly recognized as a masterpiece of polemical writing and became one of the best-selling books ever composed on a topic in economics. Keynes achieved worldwide fame through it.

 

Basics:

 

Born: June 5, 1883(1883-06-05) Cambridge, England

Died: April 21, 1946 (aged 62) Tilton, East Sussex, England

Nationality:  England

Fields:   Philosophy

Main Accomplishments:  Economist advocated deficit necessity

 

Chronology of Life Events:

Jun 5, 1883

John Maynard Keynes is born at his parents' home - 6 Harvey Road, Cambridge. He is born into comfortable circumstances, into a household staffed with domestic servants.
 

Oct 1902

John Maynard Keynes begins at King's College, Cambridge as an undergraduate.

He spends most evenings engaged in social activities, ending each night in endless intellectual arguments with his friends, going to bed at about 3 a.m.

 

Late 1906

Keynes is offered and accepts a position in London with the civil service, working in the India Office. He will work there for the next two years while probing probability theory in his spare time. Much of this "spare time" seems to occur at work where he says, "I have not averaged an hour's office work a day this week so that I am well up to date with the (probability) dissertation."

 

Jun 1908

Keynes resigns from the India office to work on probability theory in Cambridge. He will receive £100 each year from his father and the same amount, paid privately, from Pigou, the chair of Economics at Cambridge.

 

Autumn 1911

Keynes becomes the editor of the Economics Journal - a considerable honor.

 

Aug 1914

World War 1 Begins

Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George reads a memorandum written by Keynes urging resistance to demands being made by bankers for the creation of new assets and suspension of liabilities.
 

Jan 1915

Keynes joins the Treasury to assist Sir George Paish, whose role is to provide advice to David Lloyd George independent of that given by civil service officials.

Soon after his appointment, Keynes is asked by Lloyd George to comment on Lloyd George's views on the state of affairs in France. Keynes replies, "With the utmost respect, I must, if asked for my opinion, tell you that I regard your account as rubbish."

 

Mar 26, 1916

Despite the war, Keynes - who is now based in London while working for the Treasury - continues to lead an active social life. He writes to his mother:

"I have been leading such a giddy life lately that there has been no time to write letters - only two evenings in the last fortnight when I haven't dined out."

 

Oct 1918

Keynes and his future wife Lydia Lopokova are guests (independently of one another) at a party to celebrate the Russian Ballet in London.

 

Nov 11, 1918

The war ends with an armistice.

 

Jun 1919

Keynes seeks to have a wider influence on public opinion than a return to his pre-war life lecturing in Cambridge will allow him. He informs the University he will lecture once weekly on 'The Economic Aspects of the Peace Treaty'. He also requests an involvement in King's College's finances.

 

Aug 14, 1919

Keynes opens a trading account to begin speculating in the currency markets on his own behalf. He trades on high margin, initially making large profits.

 

May 1921

Keynes loves the Ballet and he begins to fall under the romantic spell of the well-known Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova. Lydia is separated from her husband, who lives in America. Keynes persuades Lydia to move to a flat closer to his Bloomsbury friends and begins to advise her financially.

 

1923

Keynes begins contributing monthly articles - mainly on reparations - to the Nation, the Liberal weekly. He also writes regular 'Notes on Finance and Investment' for the Nation.

 

1924

Keynes become First Bursar at King's College, taking control of the College's finances.

 

Apr 1925

Keynes, almost on his own, continues to argue against the Gold Standard. He writes in the Nation of his concerns about the over-valuation of Sterling.

 

Feb 1926

Keynes calls for a working agreement between the Liberal and Labour Parties in order to rid the country of the Conservative Government.

 

Jan 30, 1930

Keynes joins the Economic Advisory Council, set up to report to the government on economic policy.

 

1932 - 1933

Keynes continues to advocate that the government should borrow money and undertake large-scale public works to stimulate the economy.

 

1936

As Hitler's Germany grows ever more menacing Keynes who, in the 1920s, had favoured disarmament, speaks and writes in favour of a militarily strong Britain.

He travels to Russia and to Europe and continues with his normal duties.

 

Summer 1937

Keynes suffers life-threatening illness, with thrombosis of the coronary artery. He moves to Ruthin Castle in Wales for rest and reduces his workload dramatically.

 

Feb 1938

Keynes makes his first public appearance since he fell ill, at the Annual General Meeting of the National Mutual Life Assurance Society.

 

Sep 1939

Germany invades Poland and Britain declares war on Germany. World War Two has begun. Keynes, although continuing to suffer ill health, resumes his work in Cambridge and London.

 

Jun 7, 1940

Keynes's doctor says he is now, "fit for any moderate activity."

 

Sep 1940

A German bomb falling on London smashes windows in Keynes's house and there's an unexploded bomb in the neighbourhood. Keynes commutes into London for three weeks from his Tilton vacation home.

 

Mar 1944

Illness prevents Keynes attending an important series of economic meetings with the Dominions - Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

 

Mar 16, 1946

On the train to Washington Keynes suffers a severe heart attack.

 

Apr 21, 1946

On the train to Washington Keynes suffers a severe heart attack.

 

Early Life:

Keynes was born on June 5, 1883, in Cambridge, England. His father, John Neville Keynes, was a logician and economist and for 15 years chief administrator (registrar) at the University of Cambridge. His mother, Florence Ada, was one of an early generation of women students at Cambridge, a pioneer in social welfare, mayor of Cambridge, and a writer. The younger Keynes, who was called Maynard, won a scholarship to Eton College, where he distinguished himself academically and made many friends among the more intellectual members of the British upper classes.

Keynes entered King’s College, Cambridge, also on a scholarship, and took his degree in mathematics in 1905. At the university he became a close friend of members of an intellectual group led by writer Lytton Strachey. Brilliant, witty, somewhat skeptical, but earnest in purpose and thought, these friends drew him into wider realms of speculation than prevailed either in academic Cambridge society or among the sophisticated Eton aristocracy. This group of intellectuals, who became known as the Bloomsbury Group, was also deeply interested in the fine arts, and this opened a new interest for Keynes that stayed with him throughout his life.

After obtaining his degree, Keynes studied economics for a year, with the help of Cambridge economists Alfred Marshall and A. C. Pigou, in preparation for the civil service examination. In 1906, after taking the exam, he began his career in the India Office of the British government.
 

Wife Background:

Lydia Vasilyevna Lopokova, Baroness Keynes (October 21, 1892-June 8, 1981; Russian: Лидия Васильевна Лопухова) was a famous Russian ballerina dancer during the early 20th-century. She is known also as Lady Keynes, the wife of the economist, John Maynard Keynes.

Lopokova was born in St. Petersburg, where her father was a theatre usher. All his four children became ballet dancers, and one of them, Fyodor Lopukhov, was a chief choreographer of Mariinsky Theatre in 1922-1935 and 1951-1956.

Lydia trained at the Imperial Ballet School. She left Russia in 1910, joining the Diaghilev ballet (the Ballets Russes) for the first time. She stayed with the ballet only briefly, however, leaving for the United States after the summer tour, where she remained for six years. She rejoined Diaghilev in 1916, dancing with the Ballets Russes, and her former partner Vaslav Nijinsky, in New York and later in London. She first came to the attention of Londoners in 'The Good-humoured Ladies' in 1918, and followed this with a raucous performance with Léonide Massine in the Can-Can of La Boutique fantasque.

When her marriage to the company's business manager, Randolfo Barrochi, broke down in 1919, the dancer abruptly disappeared, but she decided to rejoin the Diaghilev for the second time in 1921, when she danced the Lilac Fairy and Princess Aurora in 'The Sleeping Princess'. During these years she became a friend of Stravinsky, and of Picasso, who drew her many times.

In London she came to know her future husband John Maynard Keynes. They married in 1925, once her divorce to Barrochi had been obtained. Although Keynes was quite involved in the Bloomsbury set, most other bloomsberries, like Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, never really accepted Lydia as one of their group, although she was friends with T. S. Eliot.[1] Lopokova is represented as Terpsichore, the muse of dancing, in The Awakening of the Muses, a mosaic at the National Gallery, London, laid by Boris Anrep in 1933.

Besides being involved in the early days of English ballet, Lydia Lopokova appeared on the stage in London and Cambridge from 1928, and broadcast on the BBC. She lived with Keynes in London, Cambridge and Sussex. Before Keynes' death in 1946,

Lopokova was his partner in founding the Cambridge Arts Theatre, and in advising him on the constitution for the Arts Council; with his financial input she became a moving spirit in the Camargo Society, which led to the creation of a national ballet company.

[2] She continued to live in the same places thereafter, although she largely disappeared from public view. Lydia Lopokova Keynes died in 1981, aged eighty-eight.

Her self-titled biography was written by her husband's nephew Milo Keynes.

 

Father Background:

John Neville Keynes, is an Economics lecturer at Cambridge University. His mother, one of the first female graduates of Cambridge University, is active in charitable works for less-privileged people. She will later serve as mayor of the city. His parents, who ultimately survived him, lived at 6 Harvey Road throughout Keynes's life.

 

Mother Background:

Florence Ada Keynes, (1861 -- February 1958) was a British author and social reformer. She was the daughter of the Rev. John Brown of Bunyan's Chapel, Bedford. Her brother was the Regius Professor of Physic (medicine) Sir Walter Langdon-Brown.

She married the economist John Neville Keynes. They had two sons and a daughter.

 

She was an early graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge. She ran juvenile labour exchange She was involved with the Papworth Village Settlement, a settlement for sufferers of chronic Tuberculosis, the Charity Organisation Society which provided pensions for the elderly living in poverty, among other support to the 'deserving poor' on a case work basis. She worked with inmates of workhouses to resettle them into society.

She was the first female Councillor of Cambridge Borough Council, and its Mayor in 1932.

 
 
SuperAttainer

ANALYSIS SECTION:

 
 
1. Early Success
 

When did the SuperAttainer first display ability that was greatly above average and what were his accomplishments? 
 

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2. Contrarian

 
What actions did the SuperAttainer take that demonstrated a mindset that was very different from those around him?
 

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3. Conceited
 
What are the actions and documented statements that exhibit an elevated sense of self importance of the SuperAttainer? 
 
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4. Hard-Knocked 
 
During what events did the SuperAttainer experience personal misery and severe anxiety?
  

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5. Loner
 
Is there evidence of the SuperAttainer being comfortable spending time apart from others? 
 

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6. Mentored & Motivated
 
Who was vital to developing the SuperAttainer and guiding his career and what significant actions were taken?
 

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7. Discontent
 
What evidence is there that the SuperAttainer was unsatisfied with even great personal accomplishment?
 

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8. Promoted
 
What actions or events were responsible for publicizing the tremendous achievements and abilities of the SuperAttainer?
 

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Overall Score:

x out of 8 = xx% 

PASS

SuperAttainer Type:

Describe the factors in the SuperAttainer’s background to indicate whether he is a Come-From-Nothing or Aristocratic type..

Conclusion:

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