John Maynard Keynes: The economist as saviour, 1920-1937In the first volume of his towering biography of Britain's greatest economist, Robert Skidelsky gave a frank and detailed exposition of how John Maynard Keynes came to concern himself with the practical problems of his age and exert a profound influence upon them. In this eagerly awaited second volume, the highly praised biographer takes up the story after the controversial publication of Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The First World War had destroyed the essential props of the international economic and political system. There was to be no sustained recovery, but a slide into economic depression, the rise of totalitarianism, and another huge-scale war. Setting Keynes and his ideas firmly in context, Skidelsky shows the importance of world events in shaping his life, and provides stringent analysis of the economist's concentrated assault on conventional fiscal wisdom: his attacks on reparations policy and the return to the pre-war gold standard, but above all, his formation of a new economic philosophy. The rarefied Bloomsbury world in which Keynes had been involved was irrelevant in the postwar world. Keynes could not remain there if he was to launch a revolution in economic statesmanship. His marriage in 1925 to Diaghilev's Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova shocked Bloomsbury, who saw it as a rejection of all they stood for. Skidelsky shows with sympathy and insight how essential this marriage was to his public work. |
Contents
THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE | 1 |
THE TRANSITION TO PEACE | 31 |
KEYNESS PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICE | 56 |
Copyright | |
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April argument ballet Bank of England bank rate believe Bloomsbury Britain British Cambridge capital cent chapter classical Committee currency Dadie Rylands December deflation Dennis Robertson depression Duncan Grant Economic Journal economists equilibrium exchange Falk February fluctuations friends full employment German gold standard Harrod Hawtrey Hayek Henderson Ibid ideas income increase industry inflation influence intellectual interest rate J. M. Keynes JMK's John Maynard Keynes Kahn Keynes wrote Keynes's Keynes's theory Keynesian Revolution King's Labour lectures letter Liberal Lloyd George logic London Lydia Lydia Lopokova Lytton Strachey Macmillan ment Milo Keynes mind money wages Montagu Norman Nation never November October output Pigou political pre-war price level probability problem production profits rate of interest real wage reparations Richard Kahn Robertson saving and investment slump social stabilisation Strachey thought Tilton trade Treasury Treatise on Money Vanessa Virginia Woolf writing