Lord Keynes, noted economist, dies at 62 (4-21-46)

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The Evening Star (April 22, 1946)

Lord Keynes, noted economist, dies at 62 after heart attack

Credited with having large influence on Roosevelt policies

LONDON (AP) – Lord Keynes, 62, international financier who was one of the principal negotiators for Britain’s proposed $4,400,000,000 loan from the United States, now pending in Washington, died yesterday after a heart attack at his home in Sussex.

The noted British economist, who has been credited by some observers with having an important influence on President Roosevelt’s financial policies, returned two weeks ago from the international monetary conference at Savannah, Georgia, where colleagues said he was under a considerable strain as the head of the British delegation. He had been ordered by his physician to take a complete rest.

Lord Keynes headed the British delegation to the Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, monetary conference in 1944, and was co-author of the basic plan for an international monetary fund and a world bank.

Unorthodox economic views

He and Lord Halifax headed the delegation which last September sought an American grant for Britain. After the British and American negotiators finally agreed on the loan proposal, he defended it in the House of Commons against bitter criticism, principally from Conservative members.

“I feel sure,” Lord Keynes told Commons last December, “that serious injustice is being done to the liberal purpose and intense good will toward this country of the American people… and their ardent desire to see this country a strong and effective party in getting a distressed and confused world into the ways of peace and economic order.”

He had made a number of trips to the United States during World War II in connection with lease-lend and other economic matters.

Lord Keynes first attracted attention by the unorthodoxy of his economic views. During the depression he became a leading advocate of government spending to halt deflation. He had visited President Roosevelt at the White House and was credited with an important role in shaping New Deal spending policies.

Views on spending revised

During World War II, however, his views on government spending shifted with changing circumstances, and he argued that the government should seek to slow down inflationary tendencies.

He was often quoted for his wit, as when he remarked upon his election to the directorate of the Bank of England in 1941: “Orthodoxy has at last caught up with me.”

He became an international figure through his attendance at various world monetary conferences during the last 25 years and his authorship of several books which had wide influence. Born John Maynard Keynes, he was created first Baron Keynes of Tilton in 1942.

Lord Keynes was graduated from Cambridge in 1905, and joined the civil service in the India office. After two years he returned to the university.

From 1915 to 1919 he was connected with the British treasury. In 1919 he attended the Versailles Peace Conference as a member of the British delegation, but resigned because of disagreement with some proposals. His criticism of the German reparations policy attracted wide attention later that year with publication of “economic consequences of the peace,” in which he predicted dire results from the peace treaty.

His book, “How to Pay for War,” published in 1940, advocated a drastic “forced savings” plan, some features of which was adopted by the British government.

Lord Keynes is survived by his wife, the former Lydia Lopokova, a famous Russian ballerina whom he married in 1935.

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Editorial: Lord Keynes

John Maynard Keynes influenced the lives of hundreds of millions of people and the impact of his ideas will continue to be felt upon government and industry for decades, if not for centuries, to come. His career was significant to a degree impossible to overestimate. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was the principal architect of modern economic planning.

No ordinary layman could be expected to understand what Lord Keynes did. Simple words for the explanation of his philosophy do not exist. To set forth his views a special “jargon” is necessary. Even when he consciously tried to employ none but standard, traditional phrases he could not reach the average reader. His “Economic Consequences of the Peace,” published in 1919, was a best seller in its day. yet the public could not comprehend it. The Encyclopaedia Britannica avoids attempting to explain his views by referring to them just as “certain principles.”

Lord Keynes himself, however, knew perfectly well what he was about. He was born to his profession, a son of a registrar of Cambridge University who talked money from infancy as naturally as unexceptional English youngsters talk cricket or football. When twenty-three he was appointed to a desk in the India Office. The First World War gave him an opportunity to try out his conceptions of international exchange in connection with loans to the Allies. He went to the Versailles Conference as the chief representative of the Treasury, advocated reparation policies which were rejected and in consequence resigned. When events seemed to prove him right and his critics wrong, he achieved a power in Britain which, gradually advancing, made him by 1930 the most important economic thinker alive. No development of the first order in his field from 1939 onward occurred without consultation with him. He had more to do with shaping the basic fabric of international financing during the Second World War than any other individual.

His central idea was that money is manageable. He held that its force always had been manipulated, and he contended that it was the duty of governments – and particularly of groups of governments – to guide the spending of money and the refusal to spend money in such wise as to contribute to the increase of their own political power. Price stabilization was one of his imperatives. He sought a balance of cost of production, output, volume of money available and expense or value of new investment. The determination of price levels by earnings was vital to his plan, and public spending was an elemental feature of his doctrine. Another of his objectives was a central bank for the control of international exchange in the interest of stabilization.

Dying at the peak of his accomplishment, Lord Keynes must be regarded as a man who was richly successful. None of his contemporaries is more sure of remembrance, even if his theories do not prevail everlastingly.

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Wiener Kurier (April 23, 1946)

Lord Keynes gestorben

London (AND) - John Maynard Lord Keynes starb am Sonntag plötzlich in seinem Heim in Ripe (Sussex) im Alter von 62 Jahren. Lord Keynes, einer der führenden britischen Wirtschaftler, spielte während der zwei großen Kriege und bei den Friedensverträgen als Wirtschaftsfachmann eine große Rolle. Lord Keynes kehrte erst vor vierzehn Tagen von der internationalen Währungskonferenz in Savannah nach Großbritannien zurück.