Why an uncertain world needs to take on more risk

The writer, an FT contributing editor, is chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts and former chief economist at the Bank of England

The Great Crash of 1929 left lasting scars on investors’ balance sheets and risk appetites. These scars, financial and psychological, gave rise to what John Maynard Keynes called the “paradox of thrift” — the paradox being that an individually virtuous act (greater saving) was collectively…