As I began writing of these four central bankers and the role each played in setting the world on the path toward the Great Depression, another figure kept appearing, almost intruding into the scene: John Maynard Keynes, the greatest economist of his generation, though only thirty-six when he first appears in 1919. During every act of the drama so painfully being played out, he refused to keep quiet, insisting on at least one monologue even if it was from offstage. Unlike the others, he was not a decision maker. In those years, he was simply an independent observer, a commentator. But at every twist and turn of the plot, there he was holding forth from the wings, with his irreverent and playful wit, his luminous and constantly questioning intellect, and above all his remarkable ability to be right.
Keynes proved to be a useful counterpoint to the other four in the story that follows. They were all great lords of finance, standard-bearers of an orthodoxy that seemed to imprison them. By contrast, Keynes was a gadfly, a Cambridge don, a self-made millionaire, a publisher, journalist, and best-selling author who was breaking free from the paralyzing consensus that would lead to such disaster. Though only a decade younger than the four grandees, he might have been born into an entirely different generation.
Ahamed offers several lessons here on self-mastery strategies for intellectuals/vipra who desire to influence the objective universe. Keynes mastered a repertoire of roles which developed his intellectual strengths through a boostrap process. Although an establishment outsider, Keynes influenced the frames and contexts of economic decision-makers and political leaders, and in doing so, created the Keynesian school of economics.
Keynes used luck, timing and dramatic situational contexts such as the Treaty of Versailles negotiations in 1919 and the Great Depression in 1929-33 to protest against the establishment, create a reputation for asking difficult questions, and to envision solutions. Through each of these exogenous shocks he used his repertoire to gain influence and public notoriety, despite financial and health setbacks. From his initial antinomian commentary, Keynes' scale and scope of his solution design expanded to its zenith: the co-design of the Bretton Woods system for international fixed exchange rate and monetary policy management, which lasted from 1944 to the Nixon Shock in 1971.
For consultants and foresight practitioners who wish to cast their influence into the world, Keynes' career path and strategies illustrates one model of how to achieve this.
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