The Economic Consequences of the Peace

John Maynard Keynes, an English economist, is regarded as the most important and influential economist of the twentieth century, if not of all time. A brilliant child, he wrestled with the economic meaning of interest before he was 5 years old. He excelled both as a student and as a member of the debating team at Eton. His reputation at King's College at Cambridge University was such that he was invited to weekly breakfasts with economist A. C. Pigou, and even Alfred Marshall begged him to become a professional economist. He was elected president of the Union, the most important nongovernmental debating society in the world, and his close friends included the intellectual members of the Bloomsbury group. Keynes was described as a phenomenon---and all of this took place before he graduated from Cambridge.

After graduating in 1905, Keynes took a civil service post in India. Bored with his job, he resigned and returned to Cambridge to teach. In 1912 he assumed the editorship of the Economic Journal, the leading journal in Britain at the time, continuing in the post for 33 years. His first major book, Indian Currency and Finance (1913), was an immediate success. He took part in the Paris Peace Conference as a representative of the Treasury. Later he held several other government advisory posts, served as a director of the Bank of England, and was president of an insurance company. In addition, Keynes was a noted patron of the arts and married the most beautiful and popular ballerina of his era. As if this weren't enough, he managed to amass a small fortune by investing in stocks and foreign currencies in his spare time.

At the Paris Peace Conference, Keynes became so dismayed by the harsh terms imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles that he resigned in anger several days before the treaty was signed. He then wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), which outlined the folly of the treaty. Being a man of many interests, Keyn