1.
THE APOSTLE MAYNARD
THE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHER
Some surprise has been expressed about the large
fortune left by Lord Keynes. Yet Lord Keynes was one
of the few economists with the practical ability to
make money.
—Financial Times, September 30, 1946
IN SEPTEMBER 1946, FIVE MONTHS after his death, the bequest of
John Maynard Keynes was made public. His net assets
totaled just under £480,000 – of which around £400,000
was in stocks and other securities, with the bulk of the
remainder comprising his art collection and rare books –
the equivalent of around $30 million in today’s money.
Although Keynes had secured a number of board positions
at leading City institutions and had received considerable
royalties from some of his better-selling books, general
amazement greeted news of his fortune. He had, after all,
spent most of the preceding six years as an unpaid
Treasury adviser; his parents had outlived him and
therefore provided no inheritance; and Keynes, a great arts
patron, had funded many cultural ventures out of his own
pocket.
As suggested in the salmon-pink pages of the Financial
Times, it was indeed Keynes’ skill in the art of
moneymaking that contributed to the bulk of his riches.
Keynes’ facility with money was not just limited to his own
account, however. King’s College – Keynes’ spiritual,
intellectual, and sometimes physical home – was also a
beneficiary of his financial acumen. In its obituary on
Keynes, the Manchester Guardian reported that:
As bursar of his own college in Cambridge… he was
conspicuously successful, and by bold and unorthodox
methods he increased very greatly the value of its
endowments.
Although little known to the wider world, in certain circles
Keynes’ investment expertise was prized. There are stories
of other college bursars making the pilgrimage to King’s
College, where Keynes would lounge Buddha-like and
regally impart investment wisdom to an eager audience. A
colleague noted that “such was his influence in the City and
his reputation abroad” that markets would move in
response to his speeches delivered as Chairman of the
National Mutual Life Assurance Society. He sat on the
boards of numerous investment companies, from which he
would, with the unwavering conviction of a papal decree,
declaim his views on the stock market and government
economic policy.
This aspect of Keynes – the shrewd investor, the canny
player of financial markets – is rather unexpected in light of
the man’s early life and beliefs. Keynes was an aesthete, his
first allegiance to philosophy and the art of living well. At
school and university he displayed little interest in worldly
matters, and for the remainder of his life exhibited an
intensely ambivalent attitude to the pursuit of wealth. He
believed in Francis Bacon’s dictum that money makes a
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