Flashback: British economist John Maynard Keynes (standing) addressing the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944.— AFP/ IMF
BARACK Obama was re-elected US President this November. He had inherited (and managed) the Great Recession that devastated the rich economies for the greater part of 2008-09.
He still struggles over a jobless recovery (which for most feels like recession) in the face of a double-dip recession in Europe and slackening growth in the emerging world. Great crises are a reminder that we just don't know what the future brings. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) never tried to conceal that he knew more than most people. Yet he knew the limits of his knowledge: “About these matters the prospect of a European war, the price of copper 20 years hence there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know.”
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