John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes (pronounced /ˈkeɪnz/) (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have been a central influence on modern economics, both in theory and practice. He advocated interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and to prolong periods of high employment. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics.

Keynes was to spearhead a revolution in economic thinking overturning the older ideas which held that free markets would automatically provide full employment as long as workers were willing to lower their wage demands. Shortly before the end of the Great Depression his ideas were wholeheartedly put into practice by leading Western economies. During the fifties and sixties, the success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments around the world adopted its policies.

President Nixon , once known for his advocacy of laissez-faire was said to have declared : "We are all Keynesians now". Keynes's influence waned in the 1970s, after attacks from Milton Friedman and other economists who were less optimistic than Keynes about the potential for interventionist government policy to complement the free market. But in 2008 Keynes's ideas enjoyed a revival, with Keynesian thinking providing a theoretical underpinning for the plans of President Barack Obama and other global leaders to rescue the economy.

Time Magazine named Keynes one of 100 most influential people of the 20th century and reported "His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism". He is one of the fathers of modern theoretical macroeconomics. In additional to being an economist, Keynes had been a civil servant, a patron of the arts, a director of the bank of England, an advisor to several charitable funds and trusts, a writer , a private investor, a collector and a farmer.

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