Keynes explained that to keep your job you must never, ever be wrong on your own.
Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
True: Keynes's writings (e.g. The General Theory, chapter 12) say in substance that professional investors protect their jobs or reputations by going along with the crowd, and that being wrong alone is what endangers them (e.g. 'it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally'). A fair paraphrase counts. Mostly true: the idea is clearly in Keynes, but the paraphrase sharpens it somewhat (e.g. 'never, ever' as an absolute) or attaches it to a slightly different context, without changing its meaning. Mixed: Keynes expressed a related but noticeably different point, and the paraphrase blends in other people's later glosses. Mostly false: the idea is mainly a later commentator's formulation, with only a loose basis in Keynes. False: no such idea can be found in Keynes's writings, or he argued the opposite.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (2)
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E1 Chapter 12 for the 21st century - Ricardo Research Ricardo Research (Philip Edwards) · 2 February 2019
“Keynes’s widely quoted remark that *“it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally”* maps neatly to our distinction”
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E2 Chapter 12 for the 21st century - Ricardo Research Ricardo Research (Philip Edwards) · 2 February 2019
“with foreseeing changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the general public.””
Reasoning
E1 is an independent source that quotes Keynes's "widely quoted remark" that "it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally". That is the passage the criteria give as an example of the idea in Keynes. E2 quotes a passage about foreseeing changes in the conventional basis of valuation a short time ahead of the general public, which fits the theme of following the crowd. Grantham's version makes the idea absolute ("never, ever") and puts it in terms of keeping a job rather than reputation. Under the criteria, that kind of sharpening makes the claim mostly true rather than true.
Cite this claim
Jeremy Grantham, “Keynes explained that to keep your job you must never, ever be wrong on your own.” (said April 2012). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_a4b29586608e, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_a4b29586608e
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Jeremy Grantham
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Mostly false
“the lowest rates in the history of man,”
Bonds currently offer the lowest interest rates in human history.
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Mostly true
“31 years later, the land is not back, and stocks are not back.”
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“one of the two or three lowest relative points in history”
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“Now we have, since ChatGPT and October and November last year, we have a new little flurry of interest that is very concentrated.”
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Mixed
“Administrations aim to achieve precisely this objective, and to do so they must stimulate the economy 12 to 18 months earlier because the economy is large and complicated and has plenty of inertia.”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.