This day in 1946 marks the passing of economist John Maynard Keynes, whose theories on the fiscal benefits of full employment formed a key part of the groundwork for President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the American Depression of the early 1930s. Born in Cambridge, England in 1883, Keynes worked as a civil servant in India during the early 1900s before returning to England around the time of World War I to work as an agent in the government's treasury department. Keynes began writing about economics following the close of the war, publishing materials that criticized the decision to burden Germany with heavy reparations; Keynes also began his investigation into the value of what was then the prevailing devotion to laissez-faire economic policies. By the early '30s, Keynes had become quite critical of the notion that "natural" fiscal forces, rather than government intervention, could ably guide a nation's economy.
     Keynes articulated these beliefs in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935-1936), that informed the New Deal, Roosevelt's package of policies designed to end the Depression by sending America back to work. Before his death, Keynes partook in the landmark 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, which, perhaps more at the urging of the U.S. government than Keynes, helped reshape the global economic order.