Pat:

Excellent piece, but I should note that in researching my book "Keynes's Way to Wealth," I discovered that the great economist's investing skills evolved over time and were enhanced by his notable failures in 1920, 1929 and 1937 when he was nearly wrecked by downturns. Fortunately, Keynes recovered brilliantly and kept investing at the bottom of some of the worst declines in the 20th Century and died perhaps the wealthiest economist ever. Along the way, he pioneered some of the basic principles of value investing. His notion of "animal spirits" is also the cornerstone of behavioral economics and a solid guidepost for anyone trying to outguess the market and rely solely upon metrics like p/e ratios. Sadly, though, he's rarely given credit for being ahead of his time, although this recent research sheds some new light on his investing acumen.