Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury

My main message this evening is that John Maynard Keynes (Maynard to his friends), contrary to popular belief and recent caricatures in the media, was much more than a tax and spend liberal. Indeed, he was a liberal only in the original sense of that term, in that he placed the highest value on human freedom, and he believed that this freedom could most likely be gained and preserved within a smoothly functioning competitive market economy. Unlike many of the economists of his time, notably the so-called American institutionalists with whom he is often mistakenly grouped, he was deeply suspicious of government and was constantly searching for solutions to economic problems through actions in the private sector rather than the public sphere. Maynard Keynes served in government for extended periods throughout his career, so he really knew whereof he wrote.