1883–1946 · English economist, called the father of macroeconomics
John Maynard Keynes was the English economist whose The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) reshaped how governments think about slumps, spending and unemployment. He was a famous changer-of-position — on the gold standard, on public works, on his own forecasts — which is exactly why a snappy defence of changing your mind attached itself to his name so easily. But no letter, article, broadcast or book of his has ever been produced containing this sentence, and his biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky told the investment writer William Bernstein in 2003 that this line and “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” were both apocryphal.