This past week I was in England and I had the privilege of looking through John Maynard Keynes’ personal papers stored at Cambridge University.  Keynes was a famous Englishman who helped lay the cornerstones of modern macroeconomics and helped create the modern financial system.  Keynes’ archive is amazing because the man was a pack rat.  He kept everything.  You can look at some of his golf scores, check book stubs, and read his personal letters to friends, family and many of the famous people alive from the 1920s until World War II.  Among the things I examined were the ledgers where Keynes recorded his personal purchases and sales of stocks, bonds, commodities and currency.  (It is a real treat to hold the books written in the great man’s own handwriting.) Continue reading →