Eliot Janeway

Eliot Janeway (January 1, 1913—February 8, 1993), born Eliot Jacobstein, was an American economist, journalist and author, widely quoted during his lifetime, whose career spanned seven decades. For a time his ideas gained some influence within the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was an informal economic advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson, especially during Johnson's years in Congress, though he broke with Johnson over the economics of the Vietnam War. His eclectic approach focused on the interaction between political pressures, economic policy and market trends. He was at times a vigorous critic of the economic policies of presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. His enduring pessimism about US economic prospects earned him the nickname "Calamity Janeway".

Janeway was born as Eliot Jacobstein in New York City on January 1, 1913, the son of Jewish parents Meyer Joseph Jacobstein and the former Fanny Siff. Later, with the help of those around him, Eliot kept private his heritage and religion. He never acknowledged to others his Jewish religion, culture, or heritage. Similarly his family was not proud of that heritage: his mother had two nameplates for the buzzer panel in the lobby of her apartment house, Jacobstein and Janeway, and changed them, depending on whom she expected.

He majored in economics at Cornell University, graduating at the age of 19, and did graduate work early in the 1930s at the London School of Economics, where he briefly was a member of the British Communist Party. Later he traveled to Moscow and briefly wrote for The Moscow News, an English-language paper, which the strongly pro-Communist Anna Louise Strong had founded and then edited. While he did not consistently champion any particular branch of economic theory, his classic economic history and first book, Struggle for Survival, chronicled the World War II mobilization and the Keynesian fiscal policy of the Roosevelt administration.

...
Wikipedia