John Maynard Keynes

The breadth and foresight of John Maynard Keynes, his thinking in so many areas of economic thought is breathtaking. His name, still at the forefront of modern economic thought is a touch stone, a lighthouse never to stray to far away from.

His quotes, 

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of men will do the most wicked things for the greatest good of everyone".
"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward."

"Words aught to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking"

Keynes was an interventionist, he didn't believe the Markets could sort out imbalances. He advocated fiscal and monitory policies to correct the boom and bust of the economic cycle.

The greatest threat to economic stability is the inability to recycle the surpluses which arise when individual states/countries become out of balance and one needs a mechanism of transfers to refine a balance.

The European Union has just such a problem. 

Created to develop the global stability of a functioning economic Union, with Germany at its head (part of the New Deal arrangements) little thought was given to the Keynesian need to provide a mechanism to recycle surpluses. In the 'United States' when a State has a surplus the federal government provides the State with a deficit with 'funds' and 'contracts'  to equalise the combined accounts across the USA. 

In Europe no such mechanism was possible and with a fixed currency, fixed between the various countries within the zone there was no flexibility to deflate an individual  deficit.

The clash, between Keynesian far sighted economic strategy and the goal of the New Deal followers which was to tie countries into a dollar trading block with trade washing around within the block carried repercussions we see today.

Keynesian ideas to develop 'mechanisms' to handle the contingencies which were 'international' was an anathema to the corporate interests of American Business and so we are where we are, with imbalances everywhere and corporate power unchallenged by even the most powerful democratic governments. Only the Chinese, with their choke hold over the country, can the political diktat be made to work.