Podcasts about bagehot

He's old, he's reactionary, he's authoritarian-curious, he hates the EU… and he's dead. Why are the main parties fixated on the demands of a zombie voter who has gone to join the Choir Eternal? And at the other end of the scale, what about “Henry” – high earner, not rich yet – the urban go-getter with an “email job” who earns six figures yet somehow finds himself strapped? Duncan Robinson who writes The Economist's Bagehot column identified both these phenomena. He joins us to debate what we do about the Walking Dead – and whether Henry deserves a helping hand or a teeny-tiny violin. Who should replace Keir Starmer? Find out on the latest edition of The Bunker. ESCAPE ROUTES • Duncan recommends the Screen Rot podcast.  • Hannah recommends Uncommon People: Britpop and Beyond in 20 Songs by our own Miranda Sawyer. • Seth recommends The Deep Blue Sea by Terence Rattigan at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. • Andrew recommends Thunderbolts, coming soon to Disney+ .  • Back us on Patreon for ad-free listening, bonus materials and more.  Written and presented by Andrew Harrison with Hannah Fearn and Seth Thévoz. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Theme music by Cornershop. Produced by Chris Jones. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison OH GOD, WHAT NOW? is a Podmasters production. www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalist and author Barbara Demick discusses her new, powerful, and must-read book "Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins". With a deep boots-on-the-ground experience, she details the brutality of China's one-child policy and the profound lasting effects it continues to have. She describes the scandalous adoption frenzy that took place, where officials illegally kidnapped Chinese children from their families and disappeared them. Demick found a needle in a haystack and managed to reunite one set of twins who were strewn across the planet, from America to China. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rumble / Substack / YouTube Geopolitics & Empire · Barbara Demick: Abducted & Adopted, The Story of China's One-Child Policy #553 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://easydns.com Escape Technocracy course (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopolitics PassVult https://passvult.com Sociatates Civis (CitizenHR, CitizenIT, CitizenPL) https://societates-civis.com Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Website https://www.barbarademick.com Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins https://www.barbarademick.com/book/daughters-of-the-bamboo-grove X https://x.com/barbarademick About Barbara Demick Barbara Demick is author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood and the recently released Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, published by Random House in July 2020.  She was bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul, and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Demick grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Yale College Her work has won many awards including the Samuel Johnson prize (now the Baillie Gifford prize) for non-fiction in the U.K., the Overseas Press Club's human rights reporting award, the Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy award and Stanford University's Shorenstein Award for Asia coverage. Her North Korea book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Bagehot fellow in business journalism at Columbia University and a visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University.  She lives in New York City. *Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

The Studies Show LIVE (with special guest Jesse Singal) is next Friday, 9th of May, at Conway Hall in London. Get your tickets right HERE! Or go to bit.ly/tss_live. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can't be wrong about literally everything, can he? His latest controversial statement is that he wants to find the “environmental exposure” that has been causing the huge spike in autism rates over the past few decades.In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into whether there really is an autism epidemic in the first place—and if there isn't, why the diagnoses might be going up so quickly anyway.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. This week we discussed the article from the most recent issue about the UK's land value tax—a cautionary tale of a policy that might sound good on paper, but was utterly cursed in practice. Find this and so many more fascinating articles about human progress at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* RFK Jr's latest claims about autism (and his plans to gather data)* His statement “I believe autism comes from vaccines”, from 2023* His “Children's Health Defence” org from 2015* CDC data on autism rates in the US* And similar data from the UK* A paper on the much lower rates in 1966* “Early infantile autism” - the original 1944 paper by Leo Kanner* Hans Asperger's similarly-timed research* And on his collaboration with the Nazis* On “refrigerator mothers”* Data from after the MMR vaccine was split in Yokohama, Japan* The DSM-V checklist for autism spectrum disorder* Scott Alexander's controversial piece “Against against autism cures”* 2023 paper on the prevalence of profound autism* Article on the growing waiting lists for autism diagnoses* More details on the same* 2022 paper on the genetics of autism* Article on rates of extra time in exams in the UK* Adam Hunt's post about Renée Thornton, hot-air balloonist* The Economist's Bagehot column on the “tyranny of turning up”* Underdiagnosed autism in girlsCreditsWe're grateful to Adam Hunt for talking to us about psychiatric diagnoses for this episode. The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

O que caracteriza o Parlamentarismo? Quais sua características, peculiaridades e até semelhanças com outro modelos políticos? No SciCast 629, falamos sobre a história do parlamentarismo para, então, no episódio dessa semana nos aprofundarmos nas suas características e limitações. Patronato do SciCast: 1. Patreon SciCast 2. Apoia.se/Scicast 3. Nos ajude via Pix também, chave: contato@scicast.com.br ou acesse o QRcode: Sua pequena contribuição ajuda o Portal Deviante a continuar divulgando Ciência! Contatos: contato@scicast.com.br https://twitter.com/scicastpodcast https://www.facebook.com/scicastpodcast https://instagram.com/scicastpodcast Fale conosco! E não esqueça de deixar o seu comentário na postagem desse episódio! Expediente: Produção Geral: Tarik Fernandes e André Trapani Equipe de Gravação: André Trapani, Marcelo de Matos, Fernando Malta, Gustavo Rebelo, Maria Oliveira, Livia Nádia da Costa Leite Citação ABNT: Scicast #636: Parlamentarismo. Locução: André Trapani, Marcelo de Matos, Fernando Malta, Gustavo Rebelo, Maria Oliveira, Livia Nádia da Costa Leite. [S.l.] Portal Deviante, 25/03/2025. Podcast. Disponível em: https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/scicast-636 Imagem de capa: Parlamento da Austrália Referências e Indicações Sugestões de literatura: BONAVIDES, Paulo. Ciência Política. 10. ed. São Paulo: Malheiros, 1994. GAMBA, João Roberto Gorini. Teoria geral do Estado e ciência política. São Paulo: Atlas, 2019. BAGEHOT, Walter. The English Constitution THOMPSON, E. P. A formação da classe operária inglesa. Tradução de Renato Busatto Neto e Cláudia Rocha de Almeida. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 3.vol., 2002. BERCOW, John. Unspeakable: The Autobiography https://www.amazon.com.br/Unspeakable-Sunday-Times-Bestselling-Autobiography/ Sugestões de filmes: A Rainha (2006) A Dama de Ferro (2011) The Deal (2003) Brexit: The Uncivil War (2018) V de Vingança O Ministro da Defesa (2013, Israel dinâmica de gestão do parlamento e do IDF) Sugestões de vídeos: Nerdologia: Presidencialismo, parlamentarismo e etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TADF7PilWaE&themeRefresh=1 Plano Piloto: O que é Parlamentarismo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5z2IypBIc4 UK Parliament: An introduction to Parliament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMbIz3Y2JA TDC: Parliamentary vs. Presidential Democracy Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quK60FUvkY Sugestões de links: Fronteiras no Tempo: Historicidade #60 Censura à imprensa na época moderna https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/fronteiras-no-tempo-historicidade-60-censura-a-imprensa-na-epoca-moderna/ Fronteiras no Tempo #64 Revolução Puritana: https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/fronteiras-no-tempo-64-revolucao-puritana/ Podcast Xadrez Verbal: https://xadrezverbal.com/ Politize: O que é o Parlamentarismo? Como funciona o sistema político https://www.politize.com.br/parlamentarismo-sistemas-de-governo/ POSSIGNOLO, André Trapani. Crises políticas no Parlamentarismo. In: Portal Deviante, 23 de out. 2019. https://www.deviante.com.br/noticias/crises-politicas-no-parlamentarismo/ UK Parliament: How Parliament works https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/ Parliament of Australis: About Parliament https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament#:~:text=The%20Parliament%20consists%20of%20two,Parliament%20or%20the%20Commonwealth%20Parliament. Comparative Constitutions Project https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/ Sugestões de games: Democracy 3 Suzerain See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Onderwerp: Social DarwinBeste lezer,De filosoof Spencer legde mede door zijn slagzin “survival of the fittest”de basis voor sociaal darwinistische gedachten. Hij trok de evolutiegedachtes van Darwin zonder omwegen door naar de menselijke maatschappij. Weliswaar nam Darwin die slagzin later over, maar de kern van zijn evolutiegedachten was en bleef de natuurlijke selectie van variaties in de erfelijkheid. Die leidt tot de ontwikkeling van de soorten op aarde. Darwin realiseerde zich dat ook in de ontwikkeling van de mens specifieke eigenschappen als intelligentie een rol speelden. Maar hij was veel terughoudender om daarmee sociale structuren te willen verklaren. Toch gingen nog tijdens zijn leven velen aan de haal met ideeën over biologische evolutie bij de ontwikkeling van wat zij noemden sociale theorieën en programma's. Galton kwam met sterilisatieplannen in wat hij noemde eugenetica. Vacher de Lapouge stelde doem­scenario's op over raciale degeneratie. De bankier Bagehot kwam met een biologische theorie van de staat. En er was het extreem liberale vooruitgangsevolutionisme van Spencer en Schäffle.In zijn proefschrift concludeerde de Nederlandse historicus Cor Hermans in 2003 dat sociaal-darwinisme nooit een homogene ideologie was. Volgens hem waren wel “de redeneerpatronenwaren vaak opgebouwd rond de centrale notie dat de moderne maatschappij niet ongestraft de natuurlijke selectiemechanismen mag verstoren”. Sommigen gingen daarin heel ver in, voor hen dicteerde en rechtvaardigde de biologie extreme opvattingen over de strijd om het bestaan of zelfs het recht van de sterkste. Volgens die ideologische lijn kan men biologische selectie zowel sociaal als economisch en moreel toepassen op de menselijke ontwikkeling. En tot heil van de mensheid moet men slechte erfelijke eigenschappen uitroeien. Het leidde tot eugenetica programma van de Nazi's. Maar ook tot racistische sterilisatieprogramma's in Amerika, Canada en Australie, tot ver in de 20e eeuw, met als criteria een geestelijke achterstand, een alcoholprobleem, chronische armoede of alleen al een etnische achtergrond. En ook in deze eeuw kwam tijdens de corona-epidemie onverhuld sociaaldarwinistisch gedachtengoed weer naar boven met de subtiel gekozen bewoording van “dor hout”. “Zo werkt de natuur. We gaan door met de jonge twijgjes”, aldus de Telegraaf columniste Marianne Zwagerman. De biologisch evolutionaire basis van het menselijk bestaan is algemeen aanvaard. Daaraan twijfelt men alleen nog in enkele fanatiek religieuse kringen. De specifieke ontwikkeling van de menselijke soort roept intussen nog vele vragen op. Over de verspreiding na een Afrikaanse oorsprong van Homo sapiens, de rol van landbouw, van taal, van migratiestromen. Er zijn, zoals bij elke soort op aarde, veel eigenschappen ontstaan onder heel specifieke omstandigheden, die later er al dan niet niet meer toe deden. Het toeval speelt in evolutie een grote rol, een richting is niet aan te geven. Er zijn wel wat factoren die vaker optreden. Bijvoorbeeld kan een grote mate van specialisatie gevaarlijk zijn. Generalisten lijken op de lange duur de betere kaarten te hebben. Maar wat evolutionair goed was, zegt weinig over wat straks goed zal zijn. Dat geldt ook voor eigenschappen in sociale systemen, zoals bestudeerd in de sociobiologie. Het is des te verbazingwekkender dat steeds weer geciteerd wordt uit de biologie om menselijk handelen te rechtvaardigen. Dat geldt voor progressief, op emancipatie gerichte gedachten. Maar net zo goed, of zelfs nog meer voor het huidige onverhuld, geldgedreven liberaal kapitalisme of de machtsbeluste politiek rechtse kringen. De ecologische puinhoop die we met elkaar gemaakt hebben vraagt om gemeenschappelijke inspanningen, en een morele verantwoording van regeringen en burgers. Maar wie zich overigens voor zijn eigen gedrag wil beroepen op natuurwetten begeeft zich op glad ijs. Ons morele kompas moet het doen zonder een biologisch excuus, daar helpt geen sociaal darwinisme aan.Vond je dit leuk? Deel deze nieuwsbrief met vrienden, familie, of wie dan ook van een goed natuurverhaal houdt.Tot de volgende nieuwsbrief!Hartelijke groet,Menno & Erwin

O Parlamentarismo é um sistema de governo adotado em muitos países pelo mundo, porém pouco conhecido no Brasil. O Presidente não serve pra nada? É normal o Primeiro-ministro ser o mesmo por muito tempo? Como assim o Parlamento foi dissolvido? Bora conhecer mais desse sistema que, inclusive, por vezes é defendido pra ser implementado no Brasil. Patronato do SciCast: 1. Patreon SciCast 2. Apoia.se/Scicast 3. Nos ajude via Pix também, chave: contato@scicast.com.br ou acesse o QRcode: Sua pequena contribuição ajuda o Portal Deviante a continuar divulgando Ciência! Contatos: contato@scicast.com.br https://twitter.com/scicastpodcast https://www.facebook.com/scicastpodcast https://instagram.com/scicastpodcast Fale conosco! E não esqueça de deixar o seu comentário na postagem desse episódio! Expediente: Produção Geral: Tarik Fernandes e André Trapani Equipe de Gravação: Citação ABNT: Imagem de capa: Por Mайкл Гиммельфарб (Mike Gimelfarb) - Obra do próprio, Domínio público, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5049123 Referências e Indicações Sugestões de literatura: BONAVIDES, Paulo. Ciência Política. 10. ed. São Paulo: Malheiros, 1994. GAMBA, João Roberto Gorini. Teoria geral do Estado e ciência política. São Paulo: Atlas, 2019. BAGEHOT, Walter. The English Constitution THOMPSON, E. P. A formação da classe operária inglesa. Tradução de Renato Busatto Neto e Cláudia Rocha de Almeida. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 3.vol., 2002. Sugestões de filmes: A Rainha (2006) A Dama de Ferro (2011) The Deal (2003) Brexit: The Uncivil War (2018) V de Vingança O Ministro da Defesa (2013, Israel dinâmica de gestão do parlamento e do IDF) Sugestões de vídeos: Nerdologia: Presidencialismo, parlamentarismo e etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TADF7PilWaE&themeRefresh=1 Plano Piloto: O que é Parlamentarismo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5z2IypBIc4 UK Parliament: An introduction to Parliament https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAMbIz3Y2JA TDC: Parliamentary vs. Presidential Democracy Explained https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4quK60FUvkY Sugestões de links: Fronteiras no Tempo: Historicidade #60 Censura à imprensa na época moderna https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/fronteiras-no-tempo-historicidade-60-censura-a-imprensa-na-epoca-moderna/ Fronteiras no Tempo #64 Revolução Puritana: https://www.deviante.com.br/podcasts/fronteiras-no-tempo-64-revolucao-puritana/ Podcast Xadrez Verbal: https://xadrezverbal.com/ Politize: O que é o Parlamentarismo? Como funciona o sistema político https://www.politize.com.br/parlamentarismo-sistemas-de-governo/ POSSIGNOLO, André Trapani. Crises políticas no Parlamentarismo. In: Portal Deviante, 23 de out. 2019. https://www.deviante.com.br/noticias/crises-politicas-no-parlamentarismo/ UK Parliament: How Parliament works https://www.parliament.uk/about/how/ Parliament of Australis: About Parliament https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament#:~:text=The%20Parliament%20consists%20of%20two,Parliament%20or%20the%20Commonwealth%20Parliament. Comparative Constitutions Project https://comparativeconstitutionsproject.org/ Sugestões de games: Democracy 3 Suzerain See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Walter Bagehot skrev satirisk, men treffende, om det britiske monarkiet. VG-kommentator Yngve Kvistad har gjestet podcasten for å snakke om Bagehots tanker om monarkiet, med de naturlige avsporinger som skal til for å få en god episode. Har for eksempel politikerskandalene de siste årene styrket det norske monarkiet? Lytt og få (kanskje) svar! Vi lyttes!

On power, values and class.   [Patreon Exclusive]   British professor Matt Goodwin joins us to talk about his recent new book Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics published earlier this year with Penguin. Matt has argued that a new elite has come to dominate public life, leading institutions and the cultural industries in Britain and across the wider Western world, and that they are fixated with issues that divide them from the larger public – to whom they are bitter and hostile.   We talk about elites, old and new, as well as ideas about elites stemming back to Daniel Bell and Christopher Lasch, and how these elites are shaping the future of politics.   Matt also gives us a breakdown of the most recent local elections from the UK, what has happened with the Scottish National Party since the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, why Keir Starmer's Labour party will likely win the next election, and why the Tories are - contrary to their ruthless reputation - failing to adapt to the new political landscape.   Readings: National Swing Man, the British electorate's new-old tribe, Bagehot, The Economist A decade of SNP one-party rule left Scotland in a state, Matthew Goodwin, The Times Sunak's Tories have lost the Red Wall – and are destined for oblivion, Matthew Goodwin, The Telegraph The New Elite is in complete denial, Matthew Goodwin, spiked

Dr. Perry Mehrling, Professor of International Political Economy at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, joins Forward Guidance to discuss the health of the global dollar system. Sharing ideas from his latest book, “Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System,” Dr. Mehrling shares insights on the extension of the dollar to the global south and globalization of shadow banking. Mehrling and Farley explore whether rumors of the dollar's death are greatly exaggerated, and how the end of a zero-interest-rate-fueled credit cycle could be a “little rocky.”  __ “Money and Empire”: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/economics/macroeconomics-and-monetary-economics/money-and-empire-charles-p-kindleberger-and-dollar-system?format=HB “Money and Empire” on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Money-Empire-Kindleberger-Economic-Thinking/dp/1009158570 __ Follow Perry Mehrling on Twitter https://twitter.com/PMehrling Follow Jack Farley on Twitter https://twitter.com/JackFarley96 Follow Forward Guidance on Twitter https://twitter.com/ForwardGuidance Follow Blockworks on Twitter https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ __ “The New Lombard Street”:  https://www.amazon.com/New-Lombard-Street-Became-Dealer/dp/0691143986/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=i42Qi&content-id=amzn1.sym.ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_p=ed85217c-14c9-4aa0-b248-e47393e2ce12&pf_rd_r=144-5485129-5375822&pd_rd_wg=KL4l1&pd_rd_r=5ee218b8-1e89-4991-8a8d-ac9e7c073e06&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk Perry Mehrling, Zoltan Pozsar, Daniel Neilson, and James Sweeney, “Bagehot was a Shadow Banker: Shadow Banking, Central Banking, and the Future of Global Finance” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2232016 __ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:02) What Is The Global Dollar System? (02:32) The Dollar Is International, Not Domestic (06:43) The Inherent Instability Of Thought (08:49) "The Fed Learned Its Lesson From 2008" (11:45) Key Features Of A Global Reserve Currency (20:36) The Fall Of The Sterling Standard After World War 1 (24:02) Sterling Was The Standard, Not Gold (26:25) "The Crime Of 1971" Was Nixon's DePegging The Dollar From Gold, According to Kindleberger (27:44) Why Was There Inflation In The 1970s (Instead of Deflation)? (30:50) Next Few Years Will Be "A Little Rocky" (36:03) The Globalization Of Shadow Banking (39:06) Blockworks Research (40:05) Money Market Funds (MMFs), Comparison Between Now And Great Financial Crisis (43:44) "The Dollar System Seems To Be Holding Together" (46:45) The Four Prices Of Money (56:02) Permissionless (57:04) Kindleberger's Critique Of The Triffin Dilemma (01:06:48) The Myth Of Bretton Woods (01:12:32) What's Missing In Contemporary Understanding Of Kindleberger's School Of Thought __ Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

Sir Paul Tucker, research fellow at The Harvard Kennedy School and former deputy governor of The Bank of England, joins Forward Guidance to discuss ideas from his latest book, “Global Discord: Values And Power In A Fractured World Order.”  Tucker tells Jack Farley that China's growing economic might and rejection of liberal values poses a challenge to the U.S.' role as global hegemon, and he details ways to reinvigorate international cooperation during the current period of geopolitical strife. Tucker shares his views on the recent turmoil in the banking system, weighing on Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse, and the acute need for bank resolution that can maintain financial stability while winding down ailing banks. Tucker and Farley also discuss concepts such as the Triffin Dilemma, the offshore (“Eurodollar”) dollar system, and central banks' role as lenders of last resort.  __ “Global Discord” from Princeton Press: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691229317/global-discord Global Discord on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Global-Discord-Values-Power-Fractured/dp/0691229317 __ About Paul Tucker: http://paultucker.me/resources/ About Tucker's work at The Harvard Kennedy School: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/about/fellows/research-fellows#sir_paul_tucker More about today's guest: For over thirty years, Sir Paul Tucker was a central banker, and a member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee from 2002. He was Deputy Governor from 2009 to late 2013, including serving on the Financial Policy Committee (vice chair) and Prudential Regulatory Authority Board (vice chair). He was knighted by Britain in 2014 for his services to central banking. Internationally, he was a member of the steering committee of the G20 Financial Stability Board, and chaired its Committee on the Resolution of Cross-Border Banks to solve “too big to fail”. Tucker was a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and was chair of the Basel Committee for Payment and Settlement Systems from April 2012. After leaving central banking, Tucker was chair of the Systemic Risk Council from December 2015 to August 2021. He now writes at the intersection of political economy and political philosophy as research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. In addition to “Global Discord,” Tucker is also the author of “ Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State” (2018). __ Follow Jack Farley on Twitter https://twitter.com/JackFarley96 Follow Forward Guidance on Twitter https://twitter.com/ForwardGuidance Follow Blockworks on Twitter https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ __ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (00:55) The Rise Of China Will Have Immense Consequences On A Global Scale (04:44) Shortcomings of Trade Policy and Enforcement (10:41) Downsides of U.S.' Trade Deficit (20:18) The Bretton Woods Regime (21:59) The Triffin Dilemma (26:32) The Eurodollar System (27:31) The Fed's Swap Lines In 2008 (28:49) Importance of Multi-Disciplinary Understanding For Policymakers (31:17) The Debt Ceiling (21:27) Thucydides' Trap (25:57) The Contest Between China and The U.S. Is "Everywhere" (39:26) Document 9 of The Chinese Communist Party (45:29) Inflation (49:37) Regional Bank Failure In The U.S. (55:43) The Takeover Of Credit Suisse By UBS (01:02:49) Defining A "Bailout" As A Use Of Taxpayer Money (01:07:09) Bagehot's Dictum (01:15:31) Credit Suisse Contingent Convertible ("CoCo") Bonds (01:17:55) Tying Geopolitical And Banking Together __ Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

Given that we live in an era roiled by concerns about how democratic supposedly democratic countries actually are and when skepticism abounds about how truly representative our electoral systems are, a scholarly study of debates on many of these issues among leading theorists of democracy in Victorian Britain is just the ticket. That is what is on offer in Gregory Conti's book Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain (Cambridge UP, 2019). Conti employs the tools of the fields of political theory and political and intellectual history to render vivid and touching the fierce debates among such well-known figures as John Stuart Mill and Walter Bagehot, as well as “in-between” figures such as Thomas Hare (1806–1891). Fierce in terms of the sometimes cruel lampooning of their respective opponents and touching in that many of the proponents of these proposed reforms (e.g., proportional representation and the single transferable vote) were convinced that their nostrums would usher in a golden age for Britain's parliament and, thereby, the nation. Note, though, that for many of the figures in this book it was the proper workings of Parliament and its capacity for reasoned deliberation that they cared about, not so much democratic processes per se in terms of how representatives got elected to it. Indeed, much of what was advocated was designed to keep certain groups out of Parliament and government generally. For many of the thinkers discussed in this book, Parliament in its member makeup should mirror the composition of the nation at large. This was particularly true of adherents of the variety-of-suffrages theory who pined for the hodgepodge of electoral constituencies (especially those in the countryside that were controlled by aristocrats and which were derisively referred to as “rotten boroughs” or “pocket boroughs”) that prevailed before passage of the Reform Act of 1832. Bagehot was of this school. Others, like Mill and Hare, were enamored of the rather complex system of proportional representation, believing that it would militate against what they saw as the evil of too much power devolving to political parties, which they feared would be dominated by intellectually inferior plebians. The word “swamped” was often used. Finally, there were straight-up democrats such as the future leader of the Labour Party and future prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed proportional representation as fundamentally elitist and a hindrance to robust debate and effective government. Conti's book is a fascinating exploration of a relatively neglected period in the history of discourse on what democracies need to thrive, who should be allowed to vote, how voting should be done and whether votes mattered so much as seats in Parliament. There were even arguments that if some people did not get to vote but their interests were represented, that was good enough. Let's hear from Professor Conti himself about this lively period of democracy talk. Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

It is 5am on a Monday morning in Washington, D.C.I have no shortage of work that needs to be done. I have emails to send, meetings for which to prep and schedule, calls to make, just a lot of things to do that really cannot be put off. And yet, here I am, at an ungodly hour, watching dignitaries slowly file in for the funeral of a woman I never met and who never did anything for me. Why?How does a kid raised in trailer parks in Central Texas come to be obsessed with the British Monarchy and admire Queen Elizabeth II?Nowadays, TLC is a channel where you'll find programming as illuminating and varied as “90 Day Fiancé” and “90 Day Fiancé: Pillow Talk” and “90 Day Fiancé: Just Landed” and “90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days” (I'm not kidding; these are all real titles, and I've intentionally kept the list short).But in the early ‘90s, it was literally known as The Learning Channel, and in the only real bonding moments I can remember having with my maternal grandmother, we would sit beside each other in her bed in my grandparents' trailer and watch episodes of “Great Castles of Europe”, a series that ran for two seasons on the network.The show would take viewers on tours of these castles and the royalty that lived in them and the culture and social structure of the time in which they lived. My grandmother would smoke a cig that she had asked me to spark on the kitchen stove and have me grab her a coke and we'd sit there for half an hour marveling at the gorgeous scenery on the tube while she told me the bits and pieces she knew about the British Royals.I was hooked. I knew what “divine right” meant long before 4th grade social studies, to say nothing of the increasing controversy surrounding Charles & Diana, earning a fluency in House of Windsor scandals, via my grandmother, that would later shock my elementary school teachers.The typical American view in the ‘90s was this: we didn't think much of Charles, but we loved both Diana and the Queen—for different reasons. More on that in a second.Some of our British friends have openly wondered why Americans are obsessed with the Windsors, especially given our supposed aversion to elitism and complicated class politics and living thousands of miles away and the not-so-small fact that our nation was borne out of rebellion against the British Crown.Honestly, I wish it were complicated, but it's not. The simple answer is that it's free and glorious entertainment. It costs us nothing. Americans don't have to pay for the show, but we still get to watch it. There's the soap opera drama, sure, but even were it not for the salaciousness, there's still the over-the-top pageantry. We love a big wedding.Nor has it ever really cost us having an opinion on the existence of the Monarchy. We have never been truly obligated to any degree of partisanship on the question. Vehemently oppose the Monarchy? Okay. Weirdo American royalist? Okay, too. Who cares — let's all watch the shenanigans together and comprise a ridiculous peanut gallery from across the pond. Nothing lost and nothing gained.There's a sort of unspoken inside joke to observing the Monarchy as an American, something which we historically don't even acknowledge to each other because, until recently (with the ludicrous, racist treatment of Meghan), there's been no need. It would be stating the obvious.That is: does any American really believe the British Monarchy represents the best of humanity, the embodiment of morality? Hell no. It's a silly question, one so obviously answered that there's no need to discuss it.The 19th-century British writer Walter Bagehot is most frequently cited when explaining the justification for the existence of the Crown. Bagehot wrote that Parliament is the “efficient” part of the State and the Crown is the “dignified” part of it.The Crown is meant to be above the fray, never sullied with day-to-day politics and, instead, serves as the supposed living embodiment of British values. The Crown is meant to provide a steady and unwavering bulwark of morality.This is, on its face, completely ridiculous. How can the Crown supposedly embody British values without ever speaking to what those values should be or how they should evolve? No one really seems to know, but moreover, that's not really the point. It's silly to defend the British Monarch as a head of state. The Crown has no real legal power on paper. It cannot make new laws. It can't dictate the Armed Forces. It can't express partisan opinions. Even the speeches offered by the Monarch to open Parliament aren't written by the Monarch. It is merely a formal mouthpiece used by the government.The Crown does not really exist to express defined and irrefutable values. The most dedicated royalist, in good faith, must inevitably concede that the British Sovereign does not really perform as a nuanced arbiter of right and wrong. And deep down, regardless of nationality, we all kinda know that. The reality is that the House of Windsor's primary purpose is being one of the most popular entertainment brands in the world. This is an acting troupe. With few exceptions, every member of the British Royal Family is simply playing a role for the public that is typically at odds with their authentic self.Ah, but the exceptions. That's where it gets interesting. To be an exception to this framework is to go one of two directions: either breaking away from the firm completely or having an existence, public and private, that is indistinguishable from it.Diana broke way. As did Harry and Meghan. And they are beloved for it. They said “to hell with this” and rejected the obligation of playing a role. We love them for their commitment to authenticity in opposition to their institutional obligations.We love Queen Elizabeth II for a different reason. She was not acting. She truly believed that every fiber of her being must serve in existence as an anchor for the Commonwealth. In the place of evolution, she offered an ironclad resolve to tradition and dignity. The Queen in private was essentially the Queen in public, and we all knew that.You didn't have to like the Queen to know that she would have never abandoned the United Kingdom. If that island had been invaded at any point during her reign, she was committed to going down with the ship. And you respected that about her.Ironically, in a role that is meant to be bereft of opinion, her commitment to outward neutrality made her partisan moments all the more powerful, however subtle or implied — her opposition to Apartheid, her annoyance with Thatcher's austerity, her tacit support of LGBTQ rights, her less-than-subtle disgust with Trump, her protocol-breaking warmth toward Michelle Obama.When she came down to London to address the nation and the world in the wake of Diana's death, that was more than enough to alleviate the outrage at the Crown's initial response. When she made her historic trip to the Republic of Ireland in 2011 and demonstrated a substantial degree of humility and respect, literally bowing and speaking in Gaelic, that was more than enough to win over her hosts.There was a density to her gravitas that made every gesture and word carry enormous impact, far more than any other world leader.She truly believed in her earthly commission during a reign that increasingly saw global leaders become more cynical and openly performative, and thus, most of us gave her substantial benefit of the doubt.If there were ever an Era of Earnestness in global politics, that has definitively come to a close with her death. Sobering, to say the least.During one of our evenings in her bedroom, I remember asking my grandmother why she despised Charles but loved the Queen, and she didn't say anything for a moment, the smoke billowing from her hand as she briefly appeared lost in thought.“You never have to guess with her”, she answered a few moments later, her voice raspy. “What you see is what you get.”And we'll never have that again.Charlotte's Web Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Hi, I'm Charlotte Clymer, and this is Charlotte's Web Thoughts, my Substack. It's completely free to access and read, but if you feel so moved to support my writing, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription: just $7/month or save money with the $70/annual sub. You can also go way above and beyond by becoming a Founding Member at $210. Get full access to Charlotte's Web Thoughts at charlotteclymer.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Forward Guidance, fan favourites Michael Howell and Joseph Wang pair up to discuss the overarching theme of liquidity and the Fed. After sounding the alarm and forecasting a decline in equity markets towards the end of 2021, those predictions are now beginning to manifest in markets.  Michael walks listeners through how he tracks market liquidity as a leading indicator for equity prices. Joseph provides an in depth look at the signals driving the Fed in this environment. Both guests share their thoughts on the Powell pivot myth, volatility, signs of stagflation, QT and so much more. This episode is jam packed with insights you can't afford to miss, but to hear them, you'll have to tune in! -- Follow Joseph Wang on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FedGuy12 Follow Michel Howell on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crossbordercap Follow Jack Farley on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackFarley96 Follow Blockworks on Twitter https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ Subscribe To Fed Guy: https://fedguy.com/ Subscribe To The Blockworks Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter -- Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (00:28) What Is Liquidity? (09:10) Declining Refinancing Capacity (13:46) Bagehot's Rule and The Discount Window (24:50) Is This Unprecedented? (28:35) Is Waiting For A Powell Pivot Futile? (30:16) The Fed And The VIX (33:16) Inflation and Recession (36:24) How Much QT Can The Fed Actually Do? (39:20) Gold and Crypto (41:17) The U.S. Dollar's Role (45:17) The People's Bank of China (46:43) How Much Power Does the Fed Actually Have? (49:12) The Commercial Banking System (53:33) Where Are Long-Duration Bond Yields Headed? (1:02:28) Yield Curve Interpretations (1:07:08) Is There A Problem Lurking In Credit? (1:09:03) "Good Liquidity" vs. "Bad Liquidity" (1:12:55) China (1:18:10) Closing Thoughts On The Market  -- Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

“Liquidity” is a critical concept in markets that many may have heard, but few truly understand. Michael Howell, managing director at Cross Border Capital, is the global liquidity flows. He breaks down what liquidity is and he explains to Jack Farley how the tide of liquidity that has lifted asset prices over the past two years is reversing very quickly. Howell argues that, since 95% of central banks are tightening at the same time, the short-term risk/reward for stocks is poor, and he thinks a further 20% correction is ahead for the equity market. Howell explains the complex yield curve dynamics, and explains why the ongoing liquidity collapse might finally make long-term government bonds attractive once again.  Filmed on Tuesday, April 19, 2022. A note on the title: Howell's expectation of a 30% in stocks is from peak-to-trough, and since equities are down nearly 10% already, that would equate to a further fall of 20% from current levels (not 30% from current levels). _ Follow Cross Border Capital on Twitter @crossbordercap Follow Jack Farley on Twitter @JackFarley96 Follow Blockworks on Twitter @Blockworks _____ Bit.com is a full-suite cryptocurrency exchange launched by Matrixport, an integrated financial services firm headquartered in Singapore. Since August 2020, Bit.com has been online supporting the spot, perpetual, futures, fixed income and options products, with a particular highlight being pioneers to launch BCH options. Bit.com is the second-largest in the BTC and ETH options market. Call to action: For any further enquiry, please contact vip@bit.com. Sign up URL: https://bit.ly/3KlgLR3 App download URL: https://bit.ly/3xer6uI -- If you like this episode be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at https://blockworks.co/newsletter -- Timestamps -- (00:00) Introduction (00:45) What Is Liquidity?  (10:59) The Turbulence Zone (21:06) What Will Be The First To Break? (23:58) Why Are Stocks And Credit Still So Richly Priced? (26:35) But What About Inflation? (32:24) Bit.com Ad (43:32) Can China Save the Day? (47:05) Why Falling Liquidity Causes A Dollar Squeeze (50:33) How High Oil Prices Further Deteriorate Liquidity (53:04) History of Global Liquidity (56:28) Capital Wars and Bretton Woods III (1:08:25) Is The Yield Curve Signaling A Recession? (1:09:56) How Far Will The Fed Get With QT? (Bagehot's Dictum)

Episode Notes:This episode's guest is David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic is online discourse, nationalism, the intensifying contest for global discourse power and US-China relations.Excerpts:I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator…He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect…One of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked….To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline…I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it…The fundamental message and I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile…And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimmer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo-Saxons.On US-China relations:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department…You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise…..their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?…The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well.Links:China’s online nationalists turn paranoia into clickbait | The Economist 赛雷：我接受了英国《经济学人》采访，切身体验了深深的恶意 David Rennie on Twitter @DSORennieTranscript:You may notice a couple of choppy spots. We had some Beijing-VPN issues and so had to restart the discussion three times. Bill:Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the `Sinocism podcast. It's been a bit of a break, but we are back and we will continue going forward on a fairly regular schedule today. For the fourth episode, I'm really happy to be able to chat with David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic today is online discourse, nationalism, and the intensifying contest for global discourse power.Bill:I've long been a fan of David's work and the approximate cause for inviting him to join the podcast today was an article on the January 8th issue of The Economist on online nationalism. Welcome David.David:Hello.Bill:So just to start, could you tell us how you got to where you are today?David:I've been a foreign correspondent for frighteningly long time, 24 years. And it's my second China posting. I've been out there so long. I've done two Chinas, two Washingtons, five years in Brussels. I was here in the '90s and then I went off, spent a total of nine years in Washington, DC. And then I came back here in 2018 and I was asked to launch a new column about China called Chaguan, because previously I wrote our Lexington column and our Bagehot column about Britain and our Charlemagne column about Europe. They all have strange names, but that's what we do. And so this is my fourth column for The Economist.Bill:We last met, I think in 2018 in Beijing in what seems like before times in many ways at The Opposite House, I believe.David:And the days when we had visitors, people came from the outside world, all of those things.Bill:Yes. You are quite the survivor, as they say. Although there are advantages to not worry about walking outside and getting sick all the time. Although it's better here in DC now.David:It's a very safe bubble. It's a very large bubble, but it's a bubble.Bill:So let's talk about your article, the January 8th issue. It was titled “China's online nationalist turned paranoia into click bait”. And I thought it was a very good distillation of the surge in nationalists and anti foreign content that is really flooding or was flooded the internet in China. And you interviewed one of the people who's profiting from it because it turns out that not only is it good from a sort of a sentiment perspective, but it's also good from a business perspective.Bill:And that person Sai Lei, interestingly enough, then recorded your conversation and turned it into a whole new post and video about the whole experience of talking to a foreign correspondent. Can you tell us a little about the story and why you chose to write it and just to add the links to David's article and the Sai Lei article will be in the podcast notes.David:So I heard from friends and colleagues, a couple of things in two directions. One was that in the world of private sector media, a couple of reasonably well known explainer sites, popular science video companies had been taken out of business by nationalist attacks. One was called Paperclip, the other called Elephant Union. And their crime in the eyes of online nationalists had been to talk about things which are fairly uncontroversial in Western media, that eating beef from the Amazon or eating beef that is fed soy grown in the Amazon is potentially bad for the rainforest and maybe we should eat less meat.David:But because this was in the Chinese context, that China is the biggest buyer of soybeans, this explainer video was attacked as a plot to deny the Chinese people the protein that they need to be strong, that this was a race traitor attack on the Chinese. And it was outrageous because the West eats so much more meat than China. And so that was one element of it. And I heard that these companies had been shut down. The other was that I'd been picking up that this was an extremely bad time for NGOs, particularly Chinese NGOs that get money from overseas. And we'd seen some really nasty attacks, not just on the idea that they were getting money from overseas, but that they were somehow guilty of espionage.David:And there was an NGO that did incredibly benign work. Tracking maritime and Marine trash, as it floats around the coasts of China based in Shanghai, Rendu Ocean. I'd done a column on them the year before I'd been out with their volunteers. It was a bunch of pensioners and retirees and school kids picking up styrofoam and trash off beaches, weighing it, tracking where it came from and then uploading this data to try and track the fact that China is a big generator of the plastic and other trash in the oceans. They were accused of espionage and taking foreign money to track ocean currents that would help foreign militaries, attack China, that they were guilty of grave national security crimes.David:And they were attacked in a press conference, including at the national defense ministry. And they're basically now in a world of pain. They're still just about clinging on. And so these two things, you have these NGOs under really serious attack, and you also have this attack on online explainer videos. The common theme was that the nationalist attack, they were somehow portraying the country and its national security was a weird combination of not just the security forces, but also private sector, Chinese online nationalists. And in particularly I was told there was a guy called Sai Lei. That's his non to plume who was one of the people making videos taking on these people. He went after celebrities who talked about China should be more careful about eating seafood.David:This was again, sort of race traitors. And he was using this really horrible language about these celebrities who talked about eating more sustainable seafood that they were ‘er guizi”, which is this time about the collaborationist police officers who worked with the Japanese during the World War II. He calls them Hanjian, the s-called traitors to the Chinese race. Very, very loaded language. Went after a group that’s working with Africans down in the south of China, talking about how they faced discrimination. This got them attacked. They had talked also about the role of Chinese merchants in the illegal ivory trade that got them attacked by the nationalists.David:So I thought this question of whether the government is behind this or whether this is a private sector attack on that. There's the profits to be made from this online nationalism struck me something I should write about. So I talked to some of the people whose organizations and companies had been taken down, they were very clear that they thought that was a unholy nexus of profit, clickbait and things like the communist youth league really liking the way that they can turbocharge some of these attacks-Bill:Especially on bilibili, they use that a lot.David:Especially on... Yeah. And so there's this weird sort of sense that, and I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.David:Yes. And so I reached out to the founder of a big, well known nationalist website who I happen to know. And I said, do you know this guy Sai Lei? And he said, I do, I'll get in touch with him. Sai Lei was very, very anxious about speaking to the Western media. Thought I was going to misquote him. And so eventually we did this deal that he was going to record the whole thing. And that if he thought I had misquoted him, that he was going to run the entire transcript on full on this other very well known nationalist website that had made the introduction. So I said, okay, fine. I have nothing to hide. That's all good. I wrote the column. I quoted Sai Lei. I didn't quote a tremendous amount of Sai Lei because what he said was not especially revealing.David:He was just an extremely paranoid guy. And there was a lot of whataboutism and he was saying, well, how would the American public react if they were told that what they eat damages the Amazon rainforest? And I said, well, they're told that all the time-Bill:All the time.David:It was an incredibly familiar argument. It's on the front page of America newspapers all the time. And so he wasn't willing to engage. And so, I ran this. He then put out this attack on me. It's fair. Look, I make a living handing out my opinions. I knew he was recording me, was it a bit disappointing that he cut and edited it to make me sound as bad as possible rather than running the full transcript. I mean, I interviewed a troll and that was the thing. He attacked me on the basis of my family, which then triggered a whole bunch of stuff that was pretty familiar to me, a lot of wet and journalists get a lot of attacks and it was an unpleasant experience, but I feel that the added value of being here is to talk to people, who The Economist does not agree with.David:And his fundamental problem was that I was using online as a disapproving time. But my line with people like him, or with some of the very prominent nationalists online academics, media entrepreneurs, also with the Chinese foreign ministry, when I'm called in is my job in China is to try to explain how China sees the world. To speak to people in China to let their voices be heard in The Economist. And I absolutely undertake to try and reflect their views faithfully, but I do not promise to agree with them, because The Economist does not hide the fact that we are a Western liberal newspaper. We're not anti-China, we are liberal. And so, if we see illiberall things happening in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo Bay or-Bill:DC.David:Being done by Donald Trump or being done by Boris Johnson or Brexit, or Viktor Orbán or in China, we will criticize them because we are what we say we are. We are a liberal newspaper. We have been since 1843. And what's interesting is that online, the reaction was... For a while, I was trending on Bilibili. And that was new. And I take that on the chin. I mean, I'm here, I'm attacking nationalists. They're going to attack back. I think what's interesting is that the online of nationalist attacks were, I hope that the ministry of state security arrest this guy, he should be thrown out of China. Why is he in China? They should be expelled. This guy has no right to be in China.David:I think that at some level, some parts of the central government machinery do still see a value to having newspapers like The Economist, reasonably well read Western media in China. And it's this conversation I've had a lot with the foreign ministry, with the State Council Information Office, which is as you know, it's the front name plate for the propaganda bureau. And I say to them, we are liberals.David:We are not anti-China any more than we're anti-American because we criticize Donald Trump, but you know where we're coming from, but I do believe that if China is concerned about how it's covered, if they throw all of us out, they're not going to get better coverage. I mean, some of the most aggressive coverage about China in the states comes from journalists who never go to China and economists who never go to China. And I think that, that argument resonates with some parts of the machine, to the people whose job is to deal with people like me.David:What I worry about is that there are other parts of the machine, whether it's the Communist Youth League or whether it's the ministry of state security or some other elements in the machine who do also see a tremendous value in delegitimizing Western media full stop, because if you're being criticized and you don't enjoy it. Tactic number one, whether you are Donald Trump talking about fake news, or Vladimir Putin talking about hostile foreign forces, or the Chinese is to delegitimize your critics.David:And I do think that that is going on in a way that in the four years that I've been here this time. And if, I think back to my time here 20 years ago, I do think the attempts to go after and intimidate and delegitimize the Western media they're getting more aggressive and they're trying new tactics, which are pretty concerning.Bill:So that's a great segue into the next question. But first, I just want to ask the nationalist website that you said ran Sai Lei's piece that was Guancha.cn?David:Yeah. And so it's probably not secret, but so I know a bit, Eric Li, Li Shimo, the co-founder Guancha.Bill:Eric actually famous for his TED Talk, went to Stanford business school, venture capitalist. And now, I guess he's affiliated with Fudan, And is quite an active funder of all sorts of online discourse it seems among other things.David:That's right. And I would point out that The Economist, we have this by invitation online debate platform and we invite people to contribute. And we did in fact, run a piece by Eric Li, the co-founder of Guancha, the nationalist website a couple of weeks before this attack, that Guancha ran. And I actually had debate with some colleagues about this, about whether as liberals, we're the suckers that allow people who attack us to write, he wrote a very cogent, but fairly familiar argument about the performance legitimacy, the communist party and how that was superior to Western liberal democracy.David:And I think that it's the price of being a liberal newspaper. If we take that seriously, then we occasionally have to give a platform to people who will then turn around and attack us. And if I'm going to live in China and not see of my family for a very long period of time, and it's a privilege to live in China, but there are costs. If you are an expert, then I'm not ready to give up on the idea of talking to people who we strongly disagree with. If I'm going to commit to living here to me the only reason to do that is so you talk to people, not just liberals who we agree with, but people who strongly disagree with us.Bill:No. And I think that's right. And I think that also ties in for many years, predating Xi Jinping there's been this long stated goal for China to increase its global discourse power as they call it. And to spread more the tell the truth, tell the real story, spread more positive energy about China globally instead of having foreign and especially Western, or I think, and this ties into some of the national stuff increasing what we hear is called the Anglo-Saxons media dominate the global discourse about China. And to be fair, China has a point. I mean, there should be more Chinese voices talking about China globally.Bill:That's not an unreasonable desire, or request from a country as big and powerful as China is. One thing that seems like a problem is on the one hand you've got, the policy makers are pushing to improve and better control discourse about China globally. At the same time, they're increasing their control over the domestic discourse inside the PRC about the rest of the world. And so in some ways, yes, there's an imbalance globally, but there's also a massive imbalance domestically, which seems to fit into what you just went through with Sai Lei and where the trends are. I don't know. I mean, how does China tell a more convincing story to the world in a way that isn't just a constant struggle to use the term they actually use, but more of an actual fact based honest discussion, or is that something that we're just not going to see anytime soon?David:I think there's a couple of elements to that. I mean, you are absolutely right that China like any country has the right to want to draw the attention of the world to stuff that China does. That's impressive. And I do think, one of my arguments when I talk to Chinese officials as to why they should keep giving out visas to people like me is, when I think back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I've not left China for more than two years. I've not left since the pandemic began, you had a lot of media writing that this incredibly ferocious crackdown was going to be very unpopular with the Chinese public. And that's because of the very beginning you had people, there lots of stuff on Chinese social media, little videos of people being beaten up by some [inaudible 00:16:26] in a village or tied to a tree, or their doors being welded shot.David:And it did look unbelievably thuggish. And people playing Majiang being arrested. But actually about three weeks into the pandemic, and I was traveling outside Beijing and going to villages and then coming back and doing the quarantine, you'd go into these villages in the middle of Henan or Hunan. And you'd have the earth bomb at the entrance to the village and all the old guys in the red arm bands. And the pitchforks and the school desk, or the entrance to the village with a piece of paper, because you got to have paperwork as well. And you've realized that this incredibly strict grassroots control system that they'd put in motion, the grid management, the fact that the village loud speakers were back up and running and broadcasting propaganda was actually a source of comfort.David:That it gave people a sense that they could do something to keep this frightening disease at bay. And I think to me, that's an absolute example that it's in China's interest to have Western journalists in China because it was only being in China that made me realize that this strictness was actually welcomed by a lot of Chinese people. It made them feel safe and it made them feel that they were contributing to a national course by locking themselves indoors and obeying these sometimes very strange and arbitrary rules. In addition, I think you are absolutely right, China has the right to want the foreign media to report that stuff.David:Instead of looking at China through a Western lens and saying, this is draconian, this is ferocious, this is abuse of human rights. It's absolutely appropriate for China to say no, if you're doing your job properly, you will try and understand this place on China's own terms. You will allow Chinese voices into your reporting and let them tell the world that they're actually comforted by this extremely strict zero COVID policy, which is tremendously popular with the majority of the Chinese public. That is a completely legitimate ambition. And I never failed to take the chance to tell officials that's why they should give visas to have journalists in the country, because if you're not in the country, you can't think that stuff up.David:What I think is much more problematic is that there is alongside that legitimate desire to have China understood on China's own terms, there is a very conscious strategy underway, which is talked about by some of the academics at Fudan who work for Eric Li at Guancha as a discourse war, a narrative war, or to redefine certain key terms.Bill:And the term and the term is really is like struggle. I mean, they see it as a public opinion war globally. I mean, that the language is very martial in Chinese.David:Absolutely. Yeah. And do not say that we are not a democracy. If you say that we are not a democracy, you are ignoring our tremendous success in handling COVID. We are a whole society democracy, which it's basically a performance legitimacy argument, or a collective utilitarian, the maximizing the benefits for the largest number of argument. It's not particularly new, but the aggression with which it's being pushed is new and the extraordinary resources they put into going after Western media for the language that we use of our China. And I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator who attacked me online, on Twitter and said that I was a... It was sort of like you scratch an English when you'll find a drug dealer or a pirate.David:Now there's a lot of Opium War rhetoric around if you're a British journalist in China. You're never too far from Opium War reference. And for the record, I don't approve of the war, but it was also before my time. So I actually, the guy attacked me fairly aggressively on Twitter. So I said, can you try and be professional? I'm being professional here why won't you be professional. He invited me with coffee. So we had coffee. And we talked about his work for CGTN and for Chaguan and his view of his interactions to Western media. And he said, this very revealing thing. He said, the reason we do this stuff is because it works.David:He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect.David:And so I think that this attempt to grind us down is working, although in their view, it's working. And I think that, that ties in with a broader conversation that I have a lot in Beijing with foreign ambassadors or foreign diplomats who they get called into the foreign ministry, treated politically aggressively and shouted at and humiliated. And they say, how does the Chinese side not see that this causes them problems? And I think that in this moment of, as you say, an era of struggle, this phrase that we see from speeches, from leaders, including Xi, about an era of change, not seen in 100 years.David:They really do feel that as the West, particularly America is in decline and as China is rising, that it's almost like there's a turbulence in the sky where these two the two axis are crossing. And that China has to just push through that turbulence. To use a story that I had kept secret for a long time, that I put in a column when Michael Kovrig was released. So, listeners will remember Michael Kovrig was one of the two Canadians who was held cover couple of years, basically as a hostage by the Chinese state security. And fairly early on, I had heard from some diplomats in Beijing from another Western embassy, not the UK, I should say, that the fact that Michael Kovrig in detention was being questioned, not just about his work for an NGO, the international crisis group that he was doing when he was picked up.David:But he was also being questioned about work he'd been doing for the Canadian embassy when he had diplomatic immunity. The fact that that was going on was frightening to Western diplomats in Beijing. And soon after that conversation, I was sitting there talking to this guy, reasonably senior official. And I said to him, I explained this conversation to him. And I said, I've just been having a conversation with these diplomats. And they said, the word that they used was frightened about what you are doing to Michael Kovrig. And I said, how does it help China to frighten people from that country?David:And he'd been pretty cheerful up till then. He switched to English so that he could be sure that I understood everything he wanted to say to me. And he said, this absolute glacial tone. He said, Canada needs to feel pain. So that the next time America asks an ally to help attack China, that ally will think twice. And that's it.Bill:That's it. And it probably works.David:It works. And yeah. So I think that, again, one of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked.Bill:No. I agree. And I'm not actually sure that they're making a mistake because if you look at so far, what have the cost been? As you said, I mean, behavior is shift, but I think it's definitely open for question. I mean, it's like the assumptions you still see this week, multiple columns about how China's COVID policy is inevitably going to fail. And I'm sitting here in DC, we're about to cross a million people dead in this country, and I'm thinking what's failure. It's a very interesting time.Bill:I mean, to that point about this attitude and the way that there seem to be prosecuting a very top down or top level design communication strategy, Zhang Weiwei, who's at Fudan University. And also I think Eric Li is a closer associate of his, he actually was the, discussant at a Politburo study session. One of the monthly study sessions a few months ago, where I think the theme was on improving international communication. And talking about, again, how to better tell China's story, how to increase the global discourse power.Bill:Some people saw that as, oh, they're going to be nicer because they want to have a more lovable China image. I’m very skeptical because I think that this more aggressive tone, the shorthand is “Wolf warriors. wolf-warriorism”, I think really that seems to me to be more of a fundamental tenant of Xi Jinping being thought on diplomacy, about how China communicates to the world. I mean, how do you see it and how does this get better, or does it not get better for a while?David:It's a really important question. So I think, what do they think they're up to? To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline.David:And so I think that these aggressive acts like detaining the two Michaels or their diplomatic an economic coercion of countries like Australia or Lithuania. They hear all the Pearl clutching dismay from high officials in Brussels, or in Washington DC-Bill:And the op-eds in big papers about how awful this is and-David:And the op-eds and yeah, self-defeating, and all those things. But I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it. I think they think that's what they're up to-Bill:And by getting it basically stepping a side in certain areas and letting the Chinese pursue some of their key goals, the core interests, whatever you want to call it, that we, yeah.David:That we accommodate. Yeah. The fundamental message I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo Saxons. And so they're giving us the touch, the whip. Now, do I think that, that is inevitably going to be great for them? And you ask how does this end well? I mean, I guess my reason for thinking that they may yet pay some price, not a total price, is that they are engaged in a giant experiment. The Chinese government and party are engaged in a giant experiment, that it didn't matter that much, that the Western world was permissive and open to engagement with China.David:That, That wasn't really integral to their economic rise for the last 40 years that China basically did it by itself. And that if the Western world becomes more suspicious and more hostile, that China will not pay a very substantial price because its market power and its own manufacturing, industrial strength, we'll push on through. And so there'll be a period of turbulence and then we'll realized that we have to accommodate. And I think that in many cases they will be right. There will be sectors where industries don't leave China. They in fact, double down and reinvest and we're seeing that right now, but I do worry that there are going to be real costs paid.David:I mean, when I think back to... I did a special report for The Economists in May, 2019 about us generations. And one of the parts of that was the extraordinary number of Chinese students in us colleges. And I went to the University of Iowa and I spoke to Chinese students and you know that now, the levels of nationalism and hostility on both sides and the fear in American campuses, that's a real cost. I mean, I think if you imagine China's relationship with the Western world, particularly the U.S. as a fork in the road with two forks, one total engagement, one total decoupling, then absolutely China is right. There's not going to be total decoupling because we are as dependent as we were on China's, it's just-Bill:Right. Not realistic.David:China is an enormous market and also the best place to get a lot of stuff made. But I wonder, and it's an image I've used in a column, I think. I think that the relationship is not a fork in the road with two forks. It's a tree with a million branches. And each of those branches is a decision. Does this Western university sign a partnership with that Chinese university? Does this Western company get bought by a Chinese company? Does the government approve of that? Does this Western media organization sign a partnership with a Chinese media organization?David:Does this Western country buy a 5g network or an airline or a data cloud service or autonomous vehicles from China that are products and services with very high value added where China wants to be a dominant player. And that's an entirely reasonable ambition, because China's a big high tech power now. But a lot of these very high value added services or these relationships between universities, or businesses, or governments in the absence of trust, they don't make a bunch of sense because if you don't trust the company, who's cloud is holding your data or the company who's made you the autonomous car, which is filled with microphones and sensors and knows where you were last night and what you said in your car last night, if you don't trust that company or the country that made that, none of that makes sense.David:And I think that China's willingness to show its teeth and to use economic coercion and to go to European governments and say, if you don't take a fine Chinese 5g network we're going to hurt you. If you boil that down to a bumper sticker, that's China saying to the world, or certainly to the Western world stay open to China, or China will hurt you. Trust China or China will hurt you. That's the core message for a lot of these Wolf warrior ambassadors. And that's the core message to people like me, a guy who writes a column living in Beijing. And a lot of the time China's market power will make that okay. But I think that's, if you look at that tree with a million decisions, maybe more of those than China was expecting will click from a yes to a no.David:If you're a Western university, do you now open that campus in Shanghai? Do you trust your local Chinese partner when they say that your academics are going to have freedom of speech? And what's heartbreaking about that is that the victims of that are not going to be the politic bureau it's going to be people on the ground, it's going to be researchers and students and consumers and-Bill:On both sides. I mean, that's-David:On both sides. Yeah.Bill:Yeah. That's the problem.David:Yeah.Bill:So that's uplifting. No, I mean, I-David:I've got worse.Bill:Wait until the next question. I think I really appreciate your time and it'd be respective but I just have two more questions. One is really about just being a foreign correspondent in China and the Foreign correspondents' Club of China put out its annual report, I think earlier this week. And it's depressing you read as it's been in years and every year is extremely depressing, but one of the backdrops is really the first foreign ministry press conference of the last year of 2021. It really struck me that Hua Chunying, who is... She's now I think assistant foreign minister, vice foreign minister at the time, she was the head of the information office in I think the one of the spokespeople, she made a statement about how it was kicking off the 100th anniversary year.Bill:And I'm just going to read her couple sentences to get a sense of the language. So she said, and this was on the, I think it was January 4th, 2021, "In the 1930s and 1940s when the Guangdong government sealed off Yunnan and spared, no efforts to demonize the CPC foreign journalists like Americans, Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes Smedley, curious about who and what the CPC is, chose to blend in with the CPC members in Yunnan and wrote many objective reports as well as works like the famous Red star over China, giving the world, the first clip of the CPC and its endeavor in uniting and leading the Chinese people in pursuing national independence and liberation."Bill:And then went on with more stuff about how basically wanting foreign correspondents to be like Snow, Strong or Smedley. How did that go over? And I mean, is that just part of the, your welcome as long as you're telling the right story message?David:So there was a certain amount of... Yeah. I mean, we also got this from our handlers at the MFA, why couldn't it be more like Edgar Snow? And I fear the first time I had that line in the meeting, I was like, well, he was a communist, if that's the bar, then I'm probably going to meet that one. Edgar Snow went to Yan’an he spent a tremendous amount of time in Mao hours interviewing Mao. If Xi Jinping wants to let me interview him for hours, I'd be up for that. But I would point out that Edgar Snow, after interviewing Mao for hours, then handed the transcripts over to Mao and had them edited and then handed back to him. And that probably would not be-Bill:But doesn't work at The Economist.David:That wouldn't fly with my editors. No. So I think we may have an inseparable problem there. Look, isn't it the phrase that Trump people used to talk about working the refs? I mean, what government doesn't want to work the refs. So, that's part of it. And I'm a big boy, I've been at Trump rallies and had people scream at me and tell me, I'm fake news. And it was still a good thing to meet. I've interviewed Afghan warlords who had happily killed me, but at that precise moment, they wanted the Americans to drop a bomb on the mountain opposite.David:And so they were willing to have me in their encampment. So, the worker of being a journalist, you need to go and talk to people who don't necessarily agree with you or like you and that's the deal. So I'm not particularly upset by that. What is worrying and I think this is shown in the FCC annual server, which is based on asking journalists in China how their job goes at the moment is there is a sense that the Chinese machine and in particular things like the communist youth league have been very effective at whipping up low public opinion.David:So when we saw the floods in Hunan Province in the summer of 2021, where in fact, we recently just found out that central government punished a whole bunch of officials who had covered up the death doll there, journalists who went down there to report this perfectly legitimate, large news story, the communist youth league among other organizations put out notices on their social media feeds telling people they're a hostile foreign journalists trying to make China look bad, to not talk to them, if you see them, tell us where they are. And you've got these very angry crowds chasing journalists around Hunan in a fairly worry way.David:And again, if you're a foreign correspondent in another country, we are guests in China. So, the Chinese people, they don't have to love me. I hope that they will answer my questions, because I think I'm trying to report this place fairly, but I'm not demanding red carpet treatment, but there is a sense that the very powerful propaganda machine here is whipping up very deliberately something that goes beyond just be careful about talking to foreign journalists. And I think in particular, one thing that I should say is that as a middle aged English guy with gray hair, I still have an easier time of it by far because some of the nastiest attacks, including from  the nastiest online nationalist trolls.David:They're not just nationalists, but they're also sexist and chauvinist and the people who I think really deserve far more sympathy than some like me is Chinese American, or Chinese Australian, or Chinese Canadian journalists, particularly young women journalists.Bill:I know Emily Feng at NPR was just the subject of a really nasty spate of attacks online about some of her reporting.David:And it's not just Emily, there's a whole-Bill:Right. There's a whole bunch.David:There's a whole bunch of them. And they get called you know er guizi all sorts of [crosstalk 00:37:15]. And this idea and all this horrible stuff about being race traitors and again, one of the conversations I've had with Chinese officials is, if you keep this up, someone is going to get physically hurt. And I don't think that's what you want. David:And again, I fall back on the fact that I'm a Western liberal. What I say to them is if you tell me that a Chinese-British journalist is not as British as me, then you are to my mind, that's racial prejudice. And if some right wing Western white politician said to me that a Chinese immigrant wasn't fully American, or wasn't fully British, that's racism, right?Bill:That's racism. Yeah.David:And I think that is the really troubling element to this level of nationalism. China is a very big country that does some very impressive things that does some less impressive things and does some very wicked things, but we have every reason to give it credit for the things it does well. And it is not that surprising when any government tries to work the refs.David:And get the best coverage they can by intimidating us and calling us out. I've interviewed Donald Trump and he asked me, when are you going to write something nice about me? I mean, we're grownups, this is how it works, but if they are making it toxic for young women journalists to work in China, or if they are driving foreign correspondent out of China, because their families they're under such intimidation that they can't even go on holiday without their children being followed around by secret police. I think there will be a cost.Bill:But that may be a what the Chinese side sees as a benefit, because then it opens the field for them controlling how the story's told. And then you can bring in a bunch of people or pull a bunch of people out of the foreigners working for state media, hey, the new Edgar Snow, the new Agnes Smedley. I mean, that is one of the things that I think potentially is what they're trying to do, which seems self-defeating, but as we've been discussing, what we think is self-defeating the policy makers, or some of them may see as a success.David:So what I think they're confident of is that being aggressive and making us much more jumpy is a win, but throwing all of us out, I think the people at the top get that, that's not a win because the New York times and the BBC and the Washington post, they're still going to cover China, even if they can't have people in China. And a bunch of that coverage is not going to be stuff that China likes, North Korea doesn't have any resident foreign correspondent, but it doesn't get a great press.Bill:And the other group, of course, but beyond the foreign journalists is all the PRC national journalists working for the foreign correspondent as researchers and, I mean, many of them journalists in all but name because they can't legally be that I've certainly, been hearing some pretty distressing stories about how much pressure they're under. And I think they're in almost an impossible situation it seems like right now.David:Now they're amazingly brave people. They're completely integral to our coverage. And many of them, as you say, they're journalists who in any other country, we would be getting to write stuff with their own bylines. I mean, in incredibly cautious about what we have our Chinese colleagues do now, because they are under tremendous pressure. I mean, not naming news organizations, but the just the level of harassment of them and their families and is really bad. And it's the most cynical attempt to make it difficult for us to do our jobs and to divide Chinese people from the Western media.David:But fundamentally at some level, this does not end well because, and this is not me just talking up the role of the Western media, because I think we're magnificently important people, but at some level there's a big problem under way with this level of nationalism in modern China. I was in China in the '90s, you were in China in the '90s, I think. We remember it was-Bill:'80s, '90s, 2000s. Yeah.David:Yeah. You were there before me, but it was not a Jeffersonian democracy. It was a dictatorship, but this level of nationalism is much more serious now. Why does that matter? Well, because I think that for a lot of particularly young Chinese, the gap between their self perception and the outside world's perception of China has become unbearably wide. They think this country has never been so impressive and admirable. And yet I keep seeing foreign media questioning us and criticizing us. And that just enrages them. They can't conceive of any sincere principle on our part that would make us criticize China that way.David:And going back to my conversation with the online nationalist Sai Lei, when he was saying, well, how would the Americans take it if they were told that eating avocados was bad for the environment? When I said to him, but they are told that. There are lots of environmental NGOs that talk about sustainable fisheries, or the cost, the carbon footprint of crops and things in the West. The two countries are pulling apart and the pandemic has just accelerated that process. And so if you are a Chinese nationalist, not only are you angry about being criticized, but you don't believe that the West is ever critical about itself. You think that the West is only bent on criticizing China. And that gap in perceptions is just really dangerously wide.Bill:And widening, it seems like. I mean, I'm not there now, but it certainly, from everything I can see outside of China, it feels like that's what's happening too.David:Yeah. We need to know more about China.Bill:I agree.David:And report more about China. And I don't just say that because that's how I earn my living. I think it's really, really dangerous for us to think that the solution is less reporting about China.Bill:Well, and certainly, I mean, and all sorts of avenues, not just media, but all sorts of avenues, we're seeing a constriction of information getting out of China. And on the one hand China's growing in importance globally and power globally. And on the other hand, our ability to understand the place seems to be getting harder. And it goes back to, I mean, we just, I think it'll be a mistake if we just get forced into accepting the official version of what China is. That's disseminated through the officially allowed and sanctioned outlets in China. Maybe that'll help China, but I'm not sure it helps the rest of the world.David:And it's not compatible with China's ambitions to be a high tech superpower. China wants to be a country that doesn't just-Bill:That's a very fundamental contradiction.David:Yeah. China wants to sell us vaccines and wants the Western world to buy Chinese vaccines and approve Chinese vaccines. Why has the FDA not yet approved Chinese vaccines? Well, one reason is because China hasn't released the data. You can't play this secretive defensive hermit state and be a global high tech superpower. And China is a very, very big country with a lot of good universities, a lot of smart people. It has every right to compete at the highest levels in global high tech. But you can't do that, if you are not willing to earn trust by sharing the data, or by letting your companies be audited, when they list overseas. They need to decide.Bill:Or being able to handle legitimate criticism. I mean, certainly there has been illegitimate criticism and the attacks on the Western media, I mean, I know the BBC was a frequent target last year. And I think they were able to pull out some errors of the reporting and then magnify it. I mean, it is a struggle. And I think one of the things I think is on the Chinese side, they're very much geared up for this ongoing global opinion struggle. And we're not and we're never going to be, because it's just not how our systems are structured. So it's going to be an interesting few years.David:It is. And it's a tremendous privilege to still be here. And as long as I'm allowed, I'm going to keep letting Chinese people, letting their voices be heard in my column. That's what I think I'm here for.Bill:Okay. Last question. Just given your experience in living in DC and writing for The Economist from here, where do you see us, China relations going? And there is a one direct connection to what we just talked about, the foreign journalists where there theoretically has been some sort of an improvement or a deal around allowing more journalists from each side to go to other country. Although what I've heard is that the Chinese side was been very clear that some of the folks who were forced to leave or were experienced are not going to be welcome back. It's going to have to be a whole new crop of people who go in for these places, which again, seems to be, we don't want people who have priors or longer time on the ground, potentially.David:We think that each of the big American news organizations just going to get at least one visa, initially. And that Is going to be this deal done and it's high time. And you're right, as far as we can tell the people who were expelled or forced to leave are not going to come back. And that's a real tragedy because I have Chinese officials say to me, we wish that the Western media sent people who speak good Chinese and who understand China. And I was like Ian Johnson and Chris Buckley, these people lived for, their depth of knowledge and their love for China was absolutely unrivaled. So, if you're going to throw those people out, you can't complain about journalists who don't like China.Bill:Exactly.David:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department.Bill:I agree completely there. It's not a joke because it's too serious, but it's just ludicrous, hypocrisy and shortsightedness. It's disgusting.David:You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise. So there's a general observation about, if dysfunction continues at this level, then-Bill:No wonder the Chinese are so confident.David:Yeah. I mean, the Chinese line on president Biden is interesting. One of the big things about my first couple of years here when president Trump was still in office was, I'd any number of people in the states saying confidently that Donald Trump was a tremendous China hawk. I never believed. And I've interviewed Trump a few times and spoken to him about China and spoken to his China people. I never believed that Donald Trump himself was a China hawk. If you define a China hawk, as someone who has principled objections to the way that China runs itself. I think that Donald Trump couldn't care less about the Uighurs and Xinjiang. In fact, we know he approved to what they were doing.David:Couldn't care less about Hong Kong couldn't care less frankly, about Taiwan. His objection to the China relationship was that I think he thinks the American economy is the big piece of real estate, and you should pay rent to access it. And he thought China wasn't paying enough rent. So he was having a rent review. I mean, that's what the guy. It was about, they needed to pay more and then he was going to be happy. So he was not a China hawk. What was really interesting was that here in China, officials would be pretty open by the end, took them time to get their heads around Trump. For a long time they thought he was New York business guy. Then they realized that was, he wasn't actually like the other New York business guy they knew.David:And then they thought he was like a super China hawk. And then they realized that that wasn't true. By the end, they had a nail. They thought he was a very transactional guy. And the deal that they could do with him was one that they were happy to do, because it didn't really involve structural change on the Chinese side. Then their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?Bill:And not only the next election but is probably going to lose control of the House, at least in nine, what is it? Nine months or 10 months. So why worry? And that they do and I think, I mean, one of the big milestones will be the national security strategy, the national defense strategy, which in the Trump administration they came out in the December of the first year and then January for the NDS. It's February, we still haven't seen those here. I think certainly as you said, but certainly from Chinese interlock is the sense of, is that they can't come to an agreement on what it should be, the U.S. China policy.David:Yeah. And China has some legitimate concerns. I mean, for example, if you are Xi Jinping and you're trying to work out how ambitious your climate change timetables going to be. How much pain are you going to ask co-producing provinces in the Northeast to take to get out to carbon neutrality as quickly as say, the Europeans are pushing you to do. And part of the equation is America going to take some pain too, or are we going to end up being uncompetitive? Because America's not actually going to do the right thing? Well, Joe Biden can talk a good game on climate as an area for cooperation with China. But if he loses the next election and Donald Trump or someone like Donald Trump wins the White House then if you're shooting pink, why would you kind of strike a painful deal with America if you don't think it's going to last beyond 2024?Bill:Right. You'll do what makes sense for your country and not offer anything up to America because we already have a record of backing out of these deals. That's the problem.David:So that has real world consequences. The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well. There is no end game that I think makes both sides happy, because I think the Chinese vision is America sucks it up and accommodates.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:Yeah, exactly. And the American vision, I think, is that China stumbles, that China is making mistakes, that the state is getting involved in the economy too much. That Xi Jinping is centralizing power too much. And that somehow China's going to make so many mistakes that it ends up to feed defeating itself. I think that's one of the arguments you here in DC.Bill:Yes. It's wishful thinking it's not necessarily based on a rigid rigorous analysis. It seems like it's much more wishful thinking.David:So, that is a reason to be pessimistic about the medium and the long-term. The one thing that I will say based here in China is that when I write really specific color about things like what does China think of the idea of Russia invading Ukraine? And I talk to really serious scholars who spent their lives studying things like Russia policy or foreign policy or international relations, or if I talk to really senior tech people, Chinese tech companies, they do take America's power very seriously. Even though there is absolutely sincere disdain for American political dysfunction.David:I think that America's innovation power, the areas of technology, whether it's semiconductors or some forms of AI algorithms where America just really is still ahead by a long way, the really serious people, when you talk to them off the record, they still take America seriously. And on that Ukraine example, what was really interesting, the prompt for that was seeing commentators in the U.S. saying that Xi Jinping would like Putin to invade Ukraine because this was going to be a test that Biden was going to fail and America was going to look weak. And maybe that would lead Xi Jinping to then invade Taiwan.David:And when I spoke to Chinese scholars, really serious Chinese scholars of Russia, their Irish, it's like, no, no, no. Russia is an economy, the size of Guangdong and they sell us oil and gas, which is nice. But our trade to them is not enough to sacrifice our relationship with America.Bill:Thank you, David Rennie. That was a really good conversation. I think very useful, very illuminating. The links, some of the articles we talked about, the links will be in the show notes. And just a note on the schedule for the sinocism podcast. It is not, I think going to be weekly or biweekly as I thought originally, I'm still working it out, but it will be every, at least once a month. I hope it's the plan, if not, a little more frequent depending on the guests.Bill:So thanks for your patience and look forward to hearing from you. I love your feedback. The transcript will be on the website when it goes live. So please let me know what you think. And as always, you can sign up for sinocism at sinocism.com, S-I-N-O-C-I-S-M.com. Thank you. Get full access to Sinocism at sinocism.com/subscribe

In Chapter 4 Darwin begins to sketch out his views on how complicated human behaviors, like sacrifice, empathy for others, and group defense would evolve when selection would favor us to act otherwise.Chapter 4 is entitled Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals - continued, but the short title at the top of the page is Moral Sense, which suggests what Darwin really thinks he is discussing. although he never clearly defines morality Mark shares with us a couple of definitions of morality and notes that Darwin hints at the idea that morality is actions that we feel we ought to do, not necessarily what we want to do. Later in the chapter Darwin entangles into the concept of morality ideas of choice, doing things that are not innate, and having a sense of what others expect of us, and us wanting to avoid disapprobation from our social group.We discussed altruistic and defensive behaviors exhibited in social animals and asked if those actions were actually moral. Here is an image of a baboon facing off a leopard to protect the baboon troop, is that action moral?James proposed of the idea that there is a set of morals that are independent of religion or culture but are based upon equality and fairness that all rationale people would agree upon. Sarah referred to this as capital M morality and rejected the notion. Mark stayed silent of the idea....Chapter 5 is where Darwin outlines his view that groups selection could explain the shift for moral behaviors, those behaviors that benefit the group at the cost to the individual. Darwin noted that- When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other. Let it be borne in mind how all-important in the never-ceasing wars of savages, fidelity and courage must be. The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows chiefly from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. Obedience, as Mr. Bagehot has well shewn, is of the highest value, for any form of government is better than none. Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes: but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed. Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world.We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of group selection argument and also explored the conflicted tone Darwin used in these two Chapter. In these two chapters alone, Darwin used the term "savages" thirty-two times. In the entire text, Darwin used the term "savages" 187 times! We discussed what he meant by that term and considered modern alternative.In this episode Sarah, Mark, and James discuss Chapter 4 & 5 of Darwin's The Descent of Man.  Before we got started, James noted that Mark is the campus champion of Crokinole which he plays in his campus office on this board. Mark Jackson's office Crokinole championship arenaThe opening and closing theme to Discovering Darwin is "May" by Jared C. Balogh.Interlude music is Overthrow by Shaolin Dub

Photo:  An early 19th-century illustration showing the east wall of the House of Lords in the centre. Eight Hundred Lords. Adrian Wooldridge, Bagehot @TheEconomist https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/11/25/boris-johnson-should-pick-fights-with-conservative-institutions?frsc=dg%7Ce Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist.  @AdWooldridge @TheEconomist HFN

Photo:  Royal carriage Court and Country, 21st Century. Adrian Wooldridge, Bagehot @TheEconomist https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/11/20/britains-establishment-has-split-into-two-each-convinced-it-is-the-underdog Adrian Wooldridge, The Economist.  @AdWooldridge @TheEconomist HFN

The hereditary lottery, in many democracies, has effectively been replaced by a system in which talent, grit, and ability are meant to determine success. Yet, amidst income inequality and legacy of racism, many wonder whether meritocracy works. Critics point to generational wealth and networks that lead to lucrative jobs and fancy educations. Those who defend meritocracy argue that talent ultimately wins out, and despite its flaws, meritocracy remains the most effective way of lifting disenfranchised groups.     Arguing “yes” is Daniel Markovits, professor at Yale Law School and author of "The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite."   Arguing “no” is Adrian Wooldridge, political editor and "Bagehot" columnist for The Economist and author of "The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World."  Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan moderates.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans love rags-to-riches stories, believing hard work and talent — not connections — should be rewarded. But meritocracy has come under scrutiny, with some questioning how well America lives up to its ideals, while others ask if they're even worth striving for. In this episode, we'll discuss whether meritocracy succeeds in pulling talent up from the bottom, or if the system has become rigged by the already rich and powerful. To answer those questions, I've brought on Adrian Wooldridge. Adrian is the political editor and Bagehot columnist at The Economist. His latest book is https://www.amazon.com/Aristocracy-Talent-Meritocracy-Modern-World/dp/1510768610/ (The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World).

Americans love rags-to-riches stories, believing hard work and talent — not connections — should be rewarded. But meritocracy has come under scrutiny, with some questioning how well America lives up to its ideals, while others ask if they’re even worth striving for. In this episode, we’ll discuss whether meritocracy succeeds in pulling talent up from the bottom, or if the system has become rigged by the already rich and powerful. To answer those questions, I’ve brought on Adrian Wooldridge. Adrian is the political editor and Bagehot columnist at The Economist. His latest book is The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.

On Episode #45 of the Book Talk Today podcast we are joined by Adrian Wooldridge. Adrian in the Economist's political editor and author of its Bagehot column. He is author of ten previous books and today we will be discussing his most recent book, 'The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World'. We discussed:

Barbara Demick is the author of Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (2020), Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009), and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo neighborhood (1996). She spent 12 years as bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Barbara has won many awards for her work, including the Samuel Johnson prize (now the Baillie Gifford prize) for non-fiction in the UK, the Overseas Press Club's human rights reporting award, the George Polk Award, the Robert F Kennedy Award, and Stanford University's Shorenstein Award for Asia coverage. Her North Korea book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a Bagehot fellow in business journalism at Columbia University, and a visiting professor of journalism at Princeton University. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from Yale College, and now lives in New York City.Barbara joins NuVoices board member Sophia Yan to discuss her most recent book, Eat the Buddha, which tells the story of Ngaba, a town high on a Tibetan plateau that is one of the most hidden corners of the world, and near-impossible for foreigners to visit. Through the rich tales of those linked to this town, Barbara illuminates decades of intertwined Tibetan and Chinese history, and explores what it means to be Tibetan today — to preserve a culture, faith and language despite all odds. Barbara talks about navigating reporting on China, despite the challenges, imparts sage writing advice, and previews her next book in the works. Recommendations:Sophia: Read Barbara's books! Eat the Buddha; Nothing to Envy; Logavina Street. Also this fascinating New Yorker article from May that I just read (the issues take forever to arrive abroad) about cutting-edge research on using electricity to regenerate limbs.Barbara: The Ministry for the Future, a science fiction book set in the near future about people trying to save the world from the ravages of climate change. I was reading it as the New York City subways flooded from the tail of Hurricane Ida. Evan Osnos' forthcoming Wildland: The Making of America's Fury, about how America is tearing itself apart with political polarization. Yes, I know you'd say not exactly soothing bedtime reading. More cheerful listening to podcaster Mike Duncan's Hero of Two Worlds about the Marquis de Lafayette.Self-Care Suggestions:Sophia: Not looking at your phone and emails/messages the minute you wake up! Try setting a timeframe – say half an hour – or perhaps until your morning routine is over (ie brushing teeth, washing face, making/having breakfast. Look out the window, enjoy your coffee/tea/Oatly/delivered jianbing! Then.... thumb scroll! Barbara: I'd say read before bed (don't watch Netflix or other streaming late at night) and turn off the lights before midnight. Researchers say if you don't get enough sleep in middle age, you increase your chances of dementia.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Photo: The British Indian Army Before the First World War Artillery and cavalry awaiting the arrival of Yackoob Khan. Afghanistan. CBS Eyes on the World with John Batchelor CBS Audio Network @Batchelorshow Britain shocked at Kabul. Adrian Wooldridge (Bagehot) @TheEconomist https://www.ft.com/content/3ea7e87e-ab3a-4e14-8396-8061420942b0?segmentId=3f81fe28-ba5d-8a93-616e-4859191fabd8

Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist‘s political editor and writes the Bagehot column; an analysis of British life and politics, in the tradition of Walter Bagehot, editor of The Economist from 1861-77. Adrian also used to write the Schumpeter column on business, finance and management. He was previously based in Washington, DC, as the Washington bureau chief where he also wrote the Lexington column. Prior to his role in Washington, he has been The Economist‘s West Coast correspondent, management correspondent and Britain correspondent. He is the co-author of “The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea”, “A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation”, “Witch Doctors”, a critical examination of management theory, and “The Right Nation”, a study of conservatism in America. His most recent books are “The Great Disruption: How Business Is Coping With Turbulent Times (2015) and “Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and their Ideas have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse” (2011). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://quiteaquote.in/2021/02/03/walter-bagehot-public-opinion/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/quiteaquote/message

When people end up in a job or position they love, was it because they worked hard in school, or did they just get lucky? Why is the idea of progressing on merit under threat? Is there a way we can modernise it for the 21st century? Should we we even try?Adrian Wooldridge, Political Editor of the Economist and author of its Bagehot column, talks to Ros Taylor about his new book The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, why Britain is becoming less meritocratic… and how we can make meritocracy work in today's world. “While America claims to be the ultimate meritocracy, they are fascinated by our own aristocracy”“You need competent people to do the work of the world, and aristocrats are quite often born stupid and lazy”“The Davos class of people at the top are divorced from the rest of society, floating above our meritocratic mechanisms”Presented by Ros Taylor. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

CAPITALISM IN AMERICA: A HISTORYAdrian Wooldridge, otherwise known as Bagehot from the Economist, describes America's evolution from a small patchwork of colonies to an unsurpassed engine of wealth and innovation. He addresses the crucial debates, from the role of slavery in the antebellum Southern economy to the real impact of Roosevelt's New Deal and America's violent mood swings in its openness to global trade. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

“Excellent… and written in a gripping style.” —The Economist During the upheavals of 2007–09, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of one Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, and inventor of the Treasury bill, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that—decades later—inspired the radical responses to the world's worst financial crises. Persuasive and precocious, he was also the esteemed editor of the Economist. He offered astute commentary on the financial issues of his day, held sway in political circles, made as many high-profile friends as enemies, and won the admiration of Matthew Arnold and Woodrow Wilson. Drawing on a wealth of historical documents, correspondence, and publications, James Grant paints a vivid portrait of the banker and his world. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pbliving/support

John Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, and Adrian Wooldridge is political editor of the Economist, and author of their Bagehot column. In their latest book they analyse the disastrous failure of many western countries to control the Coronavirus, and what it exposes about the weaknesses of their systems of government. It is a wake up call to learn from the more successful responses of countries like Singapore or South Korea. What are the lessons in better government the west can now learn from the east? To discuss the UK's capacity to learn such lessons, and the likelihood of its doing so, they are joined by Philip Rycroft CB, former Head of the UK Governance Group in the Cabinet Office, Permanent Secretary in DExEU, and now Visiting Professor at Edinburgh University.

The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge and John Mickelthwait argue that authoritarian East Asian governments have outperformed Western governments in their response to the stress test of the COVID-19 pandemic and, as a result, “In terms of geopolitics, the crisis has left the West weaker and Asia stronger.” As the public’s trust in government’s abilities has declined over the last fifty years, they point to excessive regulation stifling innovation and a lawyer-driven political culture versus science and engineering. “Leviathan overreached, promising more than it could deliver.” Adrian Wooldridge is The Economist’s political editor and writes the “Bagehot” column on British life and politics. From 2000 to 2010 he was based in Washington, DC as bureau chief and “Lexington columnist” and served as West Coast correspondent, management correspondent and Britain correspondent. Wooldridge is the author of nine previous books, including “Capitalism in America” co-written with Alan Greenspan and six co-written with John Micklethwait. Wooldridge earned a doctorate in history from Oxford University, where he was a Fellow of All Souls College. . . Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers. Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

La Fundación Rafael del Pino organizó, el 17 de diciembre de 2020, el diálogo titulado “Economía de la Eurozona. Viabilidad de las uniones monetarias”, en el que participaron Luis de Guindos, vicepresidente del Banco Central Europeo; Pedro Schwartz, catedrático de Economía de la Universidad Camilo José Cela, y Juan Castañeda, profesor de economía en la Universidad de Buckingham y director del Institute of International Monetary Research (Buckingham), con motivo de la publicación de la obra de Juan Castañeda, Alessandro Roselli y Geoffrey Wood titulada «The Economics of Monetary Unions. Past Experiences and the Eurozone», editada por Routledge. Pedro Schwartz empezó comentando que la Unión Monetaria Europea ha resistido a grandes dificultades en su corta viva. Sigue viva porque se está transformando. De una manera indirecta, el patrón oro es el modelo que ha intentado repetir el euro para hacer una unión monetaria. El patrón oro fue una unión monetaria de mucho éxito. Las convergencias deseables dentro de una unión monetaria siguen las reglas del siglo XIX, especialmente las de Bagehot, que escribió “Lombard Street” y definió cómo funcionaba el patrón oro. Lo que tienen que mirar las autoridades, en primer lugar, es lo que Bagehot denominó ratio de cobertura, esto es cuanta moneda internacional tienen que tener los distintos miembros para que no haya peligro de que la gente huya del euro, tanto en el país como en el resto del mundo. Luego está el ratio de preocupación, que refleja cuando las cosas empiezan a ponerse de tal manera que hay que tomar medidas. La pregunta sobre cómo organizar el euro se plantea respecto a si se hace de él un sistema automático como el patrón oro, o si por otras razones se cambia a un sistema en el que ninguno de los miembros de la unión monetaria se ve forzado a abandonar la situación. Ahora hay que preguntarse por qué ya no se aplican las reglas de Maastricht sobre las que se fundó el euro. No se aplican porque habría supuesto la expulsión de Grecia del euro. Y como el euro es nuevo y está creando su reputación, una salida de uno de sus miembros habría puesto en peligro el euro. En este contexto, la pregunta es si debemos crear una unión fiscal para acompañar a la unión monetaria. Ahora, cuando estábamos recuperándonos de la crisis de 2008, ha llegado la crisis del Covid-19, que ha trastocado la política monetaria del BCE, que ha prolongado los tipos de interés hacia cero. La oferta monetaria en Europa y en Estados Unidos ha crecido a cifras extraordinarias. Se ha suspendido la obligación de reducir los déficits públicos por debajo del 3% del PIB. Se ha permitido al BCE la compra de deuda pública de forma indirecta, lo que es un cambio en las condiciones de Maastricht. Por fin, habría que ver si los fondos europeos para la recuperación van a ser condicionales, si se dan a ciegas o se impone una forma de reorganizar la economía. La pregunta, por tanto, es cómo volver a una política monetaria normal después de los líos de liquidez que el BCE ha creado en la zona euro. Juan Castañeda se refirió a cuán óptima es el área del euro en comparación con otras economías. Para ello, Castañeda y Schwartz calculan un índice de convergencia macroeconómica a partir de doce indicadores macroeconómicos del área euro. Empiezan por calcular la desviación típica para tratar de estimar cuán de convergentes o cuán de divergentes han sido las economías de los países del área euro en relación a esos doce indicadores. Esos doce indicadores se agrupan en cuatro subíndices: aquellos que se relacionan con el ciclo económico de un país (PIB, PIB per cápita y tasa de desempleo), los que se refieren a la competitividad (IPC, costes laborales y tipo de cambio real), finanzas públicas (tasas de variación del déficit y la deuda pública, en porcentaje del PIB) e indicadores monetarios (tasas de variación del crecimiento monetario, del crédito al sector privado, la balanza por cuenta corriente y los saldos de Target2). Para calcular el índice se toma como año base 1999, el año de creación del euro y se calcula la desviación típica para cada año y para cada uno de los países que formaban parte del área euro en cada momento. La dispersión se calcula de dos formas alternativas. Primero se calcula la desviación típica de la media no ponderada de la Eurozona, como si la dispersión de cada uno de los estados miembros importara lo mismo. La segunda manera es calcular la desviación típica respecto de una media ponderada en función del peso económico de cada Estado miembro en la Eurozona. Las dos formas de cálculo son relevantes. Con la primera, la dispersión en crecimiento económico y finanzas públicas es bastante baja. Las lecciones que nos da el euro desde 1998 son bastante positivas. Las malas noticias vienen por los indicadores monetarios porque la dispersión ha aumentado, sobre todo a partir de la crisis de 2008. Y la dispersión en los indicadores de competitividad ha crecido incluso más. En este caso, las diferencias en salarios, en precios, en tipo de cambio real, ha sido muchísimo mayor, tanto antes como después de la crisis. Si se agrupa la información de estos cuatro indicadores en un índice agregado de dispersión, la dispersión no ponderada refleja que ya antes de la crisis la dispersión ya había aumentado mucho. Por tanto, la situación ya no era buena antes de la crisis. Después de ellas, se acentuaron esas diferencias entre países. A continuación, se calculan los índices de dispersión ponderados. En este caso, la evolución de la Eurozona ha sido mucho más simétrica, pero después de la crisis se volvió a valores mejores que antes de la crisis. Después, se comparan estos resultados con otras áreas monetarias comparables, y se aplica el mismo método para calcular los mismos índices en otras dos zonas monetarias, la del dólar de Estados Unidos y la de la libra esterlina del Reino Unido. La comparación no es sencilla porque en éstas áreas hay un presupuesto común y la unión monetaria lleva muchos años funcionando. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la economía que se ha comportado peor desde el punto de vista de la dispersión ha sido la de la Eurozona, antes y después de la crisis. La economía de Estados Unidos tampoco se ha comportado bien, pero no llega a los niveles de dispersión de los de la Eurozona. La que más simetría ha alcanzado es la del Reino Unido. Con los índices ponderados, la dispersión del área euro es similar a las de otras economías. Tiene sentido hacer los cálculos de las dos maneras, porque si uno está viviendo en una economía pequeña, como Grecia, Chipre o Portugal, y ve que sus tasas de desempleo son muy distintas de las de la Eurozona, y que la política monetaria realmente no le está ayudando a resolver esos problemas, importa mucho desde el punto de vista económico y político. El euro no facilitaría la convergencia de sus miembros y dificulta el papel del BCE como hacedor de una política monetaria única para todos los países miembros. Por tanto, ¿hacia dónde ir? Hay dos modelos. Uno es la Eurozona como un Estado centralizado, en el que las políticas macroeconómicas estén más armonizadas. Esto implicaría una mutualización de la deuda, una unión fiscal y la emisión de bonos europeos. Esto convertiría al BCE en un banco central moderno, es decir, un banco central dispuesto a ayudar a su Estado. Parece que esta es la vía por la que vamos. La otra vía es una descentralización a lo Maastricht, en la que la política fiscal sea una competencia plenamente nacional, con la responsabilidad de cada Estado de pagar su deuda, en la que no habría rescates. Habría la posibilidad de suspender a un Estado miembro, incluso de expulsarlo. Esta opción no se ha probado. Luis de Guindos recordó que el BCE es el banco central de una unión monetaria compuesta por diecinueve países, que es una unión monetaria que no está completa. En la Unión Bancaria falta la existencia de un fondo de garantía de depósitos único. Tampoco tenemos una unión de capitales única. Tenemos una dispersión de reglas, por ejemplo, sobre la imposición del ahorro o sobre situaciones de insolvencia, que hace muy difícil tener un mercado de capitales único. Después está el tema de la unión fiscal, que es el más importante. El fondo de recuperación que se aprobó en julio para hacer frente a la pandemia es, sin duda, un paso muy importante en la dirección correcta: por primera vez hay una emisión de deuda conjunta, parte de las transferencias ya no son reembolsables y la distribución del dinero se hace en función de lo que ha sido el daño producido en cada uno de los países. Es muy importante el que no se haya aceptado nunca la posibilidad de que un Estado miembro abandonara la zona euro. Se eliminó el riesgo de cola, que hubiera tenido unas consecuencias devastadoras sobre la unión monetaria. Esto pone de manifiesto el enorme capital político que existe detrás del euro y que no se debe subestimar nunca. En la situación actual nos encontramos con un shock exógeno, que ha producido un shock sanitario y una caída del PIB de una intensidad y con una rapidez sin precedentes desde el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Entre marzo y mayo, el PIB de la zona euro cae en prácticamente doce puntos. Es importante el impacto financiero que tiene esto porque, a diferencia de otras crisis en las que la restricción financiera proviene del sector bancario o de la restricción de la política monetaria, en este caso se produce a través de las empresas, con una caída de la facturación muy intensa en un periodo muy corto de tiempo. Después, a medida que se produce el desconfinamiento, van recuperándose los niveles de actividad. Es un shock que ha sido común, pero cuyas consecuencias no han sido idénticas. Había economías más expuestas al sector turístico, o que tenían menos margen fiscal, que son las que han sufrido más el impacto de la pandemia. Eso lleva a una primera consideración: para hacer frente a esta dispersión, el instrumento adecuado es la política fiscal. En un primer momento, la política fiscal tiene que ser nacional. Pero, dado el diferente espacio fiscal que tenían los distintos países, no podía ser homogénea y no podía dar lugar a una fragmentación desde el punto de vista de la política fiscal. Por eso, ha sido fundamental la aprobación del fondo de recuperación. Ahí sí se puede hacer una diferenciación de lo que son las situaciones comparativas de los distintos países desde el punto de vista del impacto y de la recuperación. La aportación de la política monetaria también ha sido muy distinta a la de la crisis anterior. En este caso, la política monetaria reacción rápidamente, a través de tres pilares: poner a disposición de los bancos muchísima liquidez en condiciones muy favorables, el programa específico de compra de deuda y medidas macroprudenciales para facilitar que los bancos utilizaran el capital disponible para conceder crédito. Desde el punto de vista del impacto de las condiciones financieras, el BCE ha tenido éxito. No se ha producido una fragmentación del mercado de deuda soberana, que hubiera sido tremendo. Las condiciones de financiación, incluso, se han mantenido en una situación más favorable que la que había antes de la pandemia. Eso ha evitado que a la crisis sanitaria se superponga una crisis de deuda. La actuación del BCE está permitiendo a los gobiernos costes de financiación muy moderados para llevar a cabo la primera línea de actuación, que es la política fiscal. El futuro pasa necesariamente por más integración. Es fundamental completar la estructura institucional del euro. Seguimos teniendo bancos nacionales, sigue habiendo muy pocas transacciones internacionales dentro de la zona euro en procesos de consolidación bancaria, lo que pone de manifiesto que todavía hay algo que impide tener bancos realmente europeos. Es fundamental tener un mercado de capitales único en la zona euro, especialmente después del Brexit. Londres y la City son la unión de capitales de la zona euro y con el Brexit esto se va a ir modificando. Eso exige tomar medidas a nivel nacional a efectos de armonización, especialmente de normativas fiscales y de normativas de insolvencia, que no siempre son sencillas, para conseguir escalas de mercados de capitales que permitan competir con los principales mercados de capitales del mundo y proporcionar financiación a las empresas y familias europeas en las mejores condiciones posibles. Por último, la creación de una institución paneuropea que lleve a cabo una política fiscal común no es un tema sencillo, en el cual todavía hay que llevar a cabo un proceso en paralelo entre la reducción de riesgos junto con compartir riesgos. Antes o después acabará pasando porque, si uno mira en perspectiva lo que han sido los veinte años desde el lanzamiento del euro, se aprecia que el proceso de integración siempre ha ido a más.

La Fundación Rafael del Pino organizó, el 17 de diciembre de 2020, el diálogo titulado “Economía de la Eurozona. Viabilidad de las uniones monetarias”, en el que participaron Luis de Guindos, vicepresidente del Banco Central Europeo; Pedro Schwartz, catedrático de Economía de la Universidad Camilo José Cela, y Juan Castañeda, profesor de economía en la Universidad de Buckingham y director del Institute of International Monetary Research (Buckingham), con motivo de la publicación de la obra de Juan Castañeda, Alessandro Roselli y Geoffrey Wood titulada «The Economics of Monetary Unions. Past Experiences and the Eurozone», editada por Routledge. Pedro Schwartz empezó comentando que la Unión Monetaria Europea ha resistido a grandes dificultades en su corta viva. Sigue viva porque se está transformando. De una manera indirecta, el patrón oro es el modelo que ha intentado repetir el euro para hacer una unión monetaria. El patrón oro fue una unión monetaria de mucho éxito. Las convergencias deseables dentro de una unión monetaria siguen las reglas del siglo XIX, especialmente las de Bagehot, que escribió “Lombard Street” y definió cómo funcionaba el patrón oro. Lo que tienen que mirar las autoridades, en primer lugar, es lo que Bagehot denominó ratio de cobertura, esto es cuanta moneda internacional tienen que tener los distintos miembros para que no haya peligro de que la gente huya del euro, tanto en el país como en el resto del mundo. Luego está el ratio de preocupación, que refleja cuando las cosas empiezan a ponerse de tal manera que hay que tomar medidas. La pregunta sobre cómo organizar el euro se plantea respecto a si se hace de él un sistema automático como el patrón oro, o si por otras razones se cambia a un sistema en el que ninguno de los miembros de la unión monetaria se ve forzado a abandonar la situación. Ahora hay que preguntarse por qué ya no se aplican las reglas de Maastricht sobre las que se fundó el euro. No se aplican porque habría supuesto la expulsión de Grecia del euro. Y como el euro es nuevo y está creando su reputación, una salida de uno de sus miembros habría puesto en peligro el euro. En este contexto, la pregunta es si debemos crear una unión fiscal para acompañar a la unión monetaria. Ahora, cuando estábamos recuperándonos de la crisis de 2008, ha llegado la crisis del Covid-19, que ha trastocado la política monetaria del BCE, que ha prolongado los tipos de interés hacia cero. La oferta monetaria en Europa y en Estados Unidos ha crecido a cifras extraordinarias. Se ha suspendido la obligación de reducir los déficits públicos por debajo del 3% del PIB. Se ha permitido al BCE la compra de deuda pública de forma indirecta, lo que es un cambio en las condiciones de Maastricht. Por fin, habría que ver si los fondos europeos para la recuperación van a ser condicionales, si se dan a ciegas o se impone una forma de reorganizar la economía. La pregunta, por tanto, es cómo volver a una política monetaria normal después de los líos de liquidez que el BCE ha creado en la zona euro. Juan Castañeda se refirió a cuán óptima es el área del euro en comparación con otras economías. Para ello, Castañeda y Schwartz calculan un índice de convergencia macroeconómica a partir de doce indicadores macroeconómicos del área euro. Empiezan por calcular la desviación típica para tratar de estimar cuán de convergentes o cuán de divergentes han sido las economías de los países del área euro en relación a esos doce indicadores. Esos doce indicadores se agrupan en cuatro subíndices: aquellos que se relacionan con el ciclo económico de un país (PIB, PIB per cápita y tasa de desempleo), los que se refieren a la competitividad (IPC, costes laborales y tipo de cambio real), finanzas públicas (tasas de variación del déficit y la deuda pública, en porcentaje del PIB) e indicadores monetarios (tasas de variación del crecimiento monetario, del crédito al sector privado, la balanza por cuenta corriente y los saldos de Target2). Para calcular el índice se toma como año base 1999, el año de creación del euro y se calcula la desviación típica para cada año y para cada uno de los países que formaban parte del área euro en cada momento. La dispersión se calcula de dos formas alternativas. Primero se calcula la desviación típica de la media no ponderada de la Eurozona, como si la dispersión de cada uno de los estados miembros importara lo mismo. La segunda manera es calcular la desviación típica respecto de una media ponderada en función del peso económico de cada Estado miembro en la Eurozona. Las dos formas de cálculo son relevantes. Con la primera, la dispersión en crecimiento económico y finanzas públicas es bastante baja. Las lecciones que nos da el euro desde 1998 son bastante positivas. Las malas noticias vienen por los indicadores monetarios porque la dispersión ha aumentado, sobre todo a partir de la crisis de 2008. Y la dispersión en los indicadores de competitividad ha crecido incluso más. En este caso, las diferencias en salarios, en precios, en tipo de cambio real, ha sido muchísimo mayor, tanto antes como después de la crisis. Si se agrupa la información de estos cuatro indicadores en un índice agregado de dispersión, la dispersión no ponderada refleja que ya antes de la crisis la dispersión ya había aumentado mucho. Por tanto, la situación ya no era buena antes de la crisis. Después de ellas, se acentuaron esas diferencias entre países. A continuación, se calculan los índices de dispersión ponderados. En este caso, la evolución de la Eurozona ha sido mucho más simétrica, pero después de la crisis se volvió a valores mejores que antes de la crisis. Después, se comparan estos resultados con otras áreas monetarias comparables, y se aplica el mismo método para calcular los mismos índices en otras dos zonas monetarias, la del dólar de Estados Unidos y la de la libra esterlina del Reino Unido. La comparación no es sencilla porque en éstas áreas hay un presupuesto común y la unión monetaria lleva muchos años funcionando. Los resultados obtenidos indican que la economía que se ha comportado peor desde el punto de vista de la dispersión ha sido la de la Eurozona, antes y después de la crisis. La economía de Estados Unidos tampoco se ha comportado bien, pero no llega a los niveles de dispersión de los de la Eurozona. La que más simetría ha alcanzado es la del Reino Unido. Con los índices ponderados, la dispersión del área euro es similar a las de otras economías. Tiene sentido hacer los cálculos de las dos maneras, porque si uno está viviendo en una economía pequeña, como Grecia, Chipre o Portugal, y ve que sus tasas de desempleo son muy distintas de las de la Eurozona, y que la política monetaria realmente no le está ayudando a resolver esos problemas, importa mucho desde el punto de vista económico y político. El euro no facilitaría la convergencia de sus miembros y dificulta el papel del BCE como hacedor de una política monetaria única para todos los países miembros. Por tanto, ¿hacia dónde ir? Hay dos modelos. Uno es la Eurozona como un Estado centralizado, en el que las políticas macroeconómicas estén más armonizadas. Esto implicaría una mutualización de la deuda, una unión fiscal y la emisión de bonos europeos. Esto convertiría al BCE en un banco central moderno, es decir, un banco central dispuesto a ayudar a su Estado. Parece que esta es la vía por la que vamos. La otra vía es una descentralización a lo Maastricht, en la que la política fiscal sea una competencia plenamente nacional, con la responsabilidad de cada Estado de pagar su deuda, en la que no habría rescates. Habría la posibilidad de suspender a un Estado miembro, incluso de expulsarlo. Esta opción no se ha probado. Luis de Guindos recordó que el BCE es el banco central de una unión monetaria compuesta por diecinueve países, que es una unión monetaria que no está completa. En la Unión Bancaria falta la existencia de un fondo de garantía de depósitos único. Tampoco tenemos una unión de capitales única. Tenemos una dispersión de reglas, por ejemplo, sobre la imposición del ahorro o sobre situaciones de insolvencia, que hace muy difícil tener un mercado de capitales único. Después está el tema de la unión fiscal, que es el más importante. El fondo de recuperación que se aprobó en julio para hacer frente a la pandemia es, sin duda, un paso muy importante en la dirección correcta: por primera vez hay una emisión de deuda conjunta, parte de las transferencias ya no son reembolsables y la distribución del dinero se hace en función de lo que ha sido el daño producido en cada uno de los países. Es muy importante el que no se haya aceptado nunca la posibilidad de que un Estado miembro abandonara la zona euro. Se eliminó el riesgo de cola, que hubiera tenido unas consecuencias devastadoras sobre la unión monetaria. Esto pone de manifiesto el enorme capital político que existe detrás del euro y que no se debe subestimar nunca. En la situación actual nos encontramos con un shock exógeno, que ha producido un shock sanitario y una caída del PIB de una intensidad y con una rapidez sin precedentes desde el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Entre marzo y mayo, el PIB de la zona euro cae en prácticamente doce puntos. Es importante el impacto financiero que tiene esto porque, a diferencia de otras crisis en las que la restricción financiera proviene del sector bancario o de la restricción de la política monetaria, en este caso se produce a través de las empresas, con una caída de la facturación muy intensa en un periodo muy corto de tiempo. Después, a medida que se produce el desconfinamiento, van recuperándose los niveles de actividad. Es un shock que ha sido común, pero cuyas consecuencias no han sido idénticas. Había economías más expuestas al sector turístico, o que tenían menos margen fiscal, que son las que han sufrido más el impacto de la pandemia. Eso lleva a una primera consideración: para hacer frente a esta dispersión, el instrumento adecuado es la política fiscal. En un primer momento, la política fiscal tiene que ser nacional. Pero, dado el diferente espacio fiscal que tenían los distintos países, no podía ser homogénea y no podía dar lugar a una fragmentación desde el punto de vista de la política fiscal. Por eso, ha sido fundamental la aprobación del fondo de recuperación. Ahí sí se puede hacer una diferenciación de lo que son las situaciones comparativas de los distintos países desde el punto de vista del impacto y de la recuperación. La aportación de la política monetaria también ha sido muy distinta a la de la crisis anterior. En este caso, la política monetaria reacción rápidamente, a través de tres pilares: poner a disposición de los bancos muchísima liquidez en condiciones muy favorables, el programa específico de compra de deuda y medidas macroprudenciales para facilitar que los bancos utilizaran el capital disponible para conceder crédito. Desde el punto de vista del impacto de las condiciones financieras, el BCE ha tenido éxito. No se ha producido una fragmentación del mercado de deuda soberana, que hubiera sido tremendo. Las condiciones de financiación, incluso, se han mantenido en una situación más favorable que la que había antes de la pandemia. Eso ha evitado que a la crisis sanitaria se superponga una crisis de deuda. La actuación del BCE está permitiendo a los gobiernos costes de financiación muy moderados para llevar a cabo la primera línea de actuación, que es la política fiscal. El futuro pasa necesariamente por más integración. Es fundamental completar la estructura institucional del euro. Seguimos teniendo bancos nacionales, sigue habiendo muy pocas transacciones internacionales dentro de la zona euro en procesos de consolidación bancaria, lo que pone de manifiesto que todavía hay algo que impide tener bancos realmente europeos. Es fundamental tener un mercado de capitales único en la zona euro, especialmente después del Brexit. Londres y la City son la unión de capitales de la zona euro y con el Brexit esto se va a ir modificando. Eso exige tomar medidas a nivel nacional a efectos de armonización, especialmente de normativas fiscales y de normativas de insolvencia, que no siempre son sencillas, para conseguir escalas de mercados de capitales que permitan competir con los principales mercados de capitales del mundo y proporcionar financiación a las empresas y familias europeas en las mejores condiciones posibles. Por último, la creación de una institución paneuropea que lleve a cabo una política fiscal común no es un tema sencillo, en el cual todavía hay que llevar a cabo un proceso en paralelo entre la reducción de riesgos junto con compartir riesgos. Antes o después acabará pasando porque, si uno mira en perspectiva lo que han sido los veinte años desde el lanzamiento del euro, se aprecia que el proceso de integración siempre ha ido a más.

Today's guest is Kaleb Nygaard, host of the Bankster podcast - the best show out there for learning about central bank history - as well as a researcher at the Yale Program on Financial Stability's New Bagehot Project. We talk to him about the new playbook for fighting systemic risk, his experience as a public educator, and a mutual hero of ours: Marriner Eccles.***LINKS***Kaleb on twitter: @KalebNygaardThe Centralverse: https://www.centralverse.org/FedWatcherClaudia Sahm, "Economics is a disgrace": http://macromomblog.com/2020/07/29/economics-is-a-disgrace/Federal Reserve's historical self-presentation: https://www.federalreserveeducation.org/about-the-fed/historyAndrew Metrick and Timothy Geithner Course on the GFC: https://www.coursera.org/learn/global-financial-crisis

James Grant, founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and author of the biography “Bagehot,” the life of times of the muse of modern central banking (published in 2019), returns to “The Sherman Show” to discuss, among other topics, paradoxical market ... Read More

Season 3, Episode 1. The economic crisis response playbook was written in 1873 by Walter Bagehot, and central bankers have called upon the sacred text for the century and a half since. Who was Walter Bagehot and what does he prescribe central bankers do to stop bank runs and economic panics? This and a speedy 200 year history of central banking before Bagehot in Episode 1 of Season 3. Go to www.centralverse.org for episode transcripts and interactive graphics explaining how modern central banks work today. Connect with me on twitter @KalebNygaard Subscribe! Rate! Share!

Adrian Wooldridge is the political editor and Bagehot columnist of The Economist. After WWII it was promised and hoped that globalization would produce massive benefits for the masses. However, Adrian will explore the deeper problems with globalization and the backlash we are feeling from hyper-globalization over the past several decades. For more visit https://motivatingspeech.com/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to make sense of the latest tech surge, (10:20) examining Jeff Bezos’s $10bn promise to fight climate change (15:30) and, Bagehot on Boris - the imperial prime minister. Zanny Minton-Beddoes, The Economist’s Editor-in-chief hosts.Please subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to make sense of the latest tech surge, (10:20) examining Jeff Bezos’s $10bn promise to fight climate change (15:30) and, Bagehot on Boris - the imperial prime minister. Zanny Minton-Beddoes, The Economist’s Editor-in-chief hosts.Please subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This episode is for Patrons only. Go to patreon.com/bungacast for access.On forecasts for the next decade.   In this month's 'Three Articles' - in which we each bring to the table a key article to unpick and unpack - we take apart mainstream predictions of the future, over the next decade, the next couple of years, and 2020. Readings: 25 Ideas That Will Shape the 2020s, Various, Fortune Boris Johnson is reinventing one-nation Conservatism, Bagehot, The Economist Forecasting the world in 2020, Various, Financial Times

What can Britain today learn from Walter Bagehot? He was The Economist’s greatest editor who mixed with the cream of British society in the 19th century. The Economist’s current Bagehot columnist, Adrian Wooldridge, talks to James Grant, financial journalist and biographer of Bagehot, about Bagehot’s prose, politics and lasting influencePlease subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What can Britain today learn from Walter Bagehot? He was The Economist’s greatest editor who mixed with the cream of British society in the 19th century. The Economist’s current Bagehot columnist, Adrian Wooldridge, talks to James Grant, financial journalist and biographer of Bagehot, about Bagehot’s prose, politics and lasting influencePlease subscribe to The Economist for full access to print, digital and audio editions:www.economist.com/radiooffer See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Grant is author of Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian.Cato Book Forum: Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

James Grant’s new book,Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian, tells the story of Walter Bagehot — a 19th century banker, an essayist, and a former editor ofThe Economist. Born in a small town in late-Georgian England, Bagehot became one of the most influential figures in Victorian-era finance and politics. Indeed, thanks to his celebrated 1873 treatise,Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market, Bagehot remains influential today, not just in England but in financial centers everywhere.Lombard Streetis a work to which all modern central bankers pay homage, even if they often fail to heed its advice. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

McAlvany Weekly Commentary This week James Grant of the Grant’s Interest Rate Observer joins the weekly commentary. Buy James Grant Latest Book: Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian Gold now pays better interest at 0 than $13 trillion in negative paying bonds! Socialized Risk: Big boys get winnings & tax payer takes all losses Bagehot: […] The post Jim Grant: “Cycles Begin & End In Excess” appeared first on McAlvany Weekly Commentary.

Recent polling data and election results paint a picture of woe for Britain's two main political parties. Of course both Labour and the Conservatives have suffered periods of decline throughout their history. But arguably never before have both parties been so riven by internal divides and suffered such a loss of public confidence at the same time. Edward Stourton looks to historical precedents for guidance on today's political turmoil and asks if the two parties' decline is now terminal. With Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London; Lord Lexden, official historian of the Conservative Party; Deborah Mattinson of Britain Thinks; Charlotte Lydia Riley of the University of Southampton; John Sergeant, former BBC Chief Political Correspondent; and Adrian Wooldrige, author of the "Bagehot" column at The Economist.

This week's episode of Free Exchange is a recording of the most recent CapX Live event: a conversation with Adrian Wooldridge, the political editor of the Economist, where he also writes the Bagehot column on British politics. Adrian came to CapX HQ to talk about his new book. He and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan have recently published Capitalism in America, a brilliant economic history of the United States.In explaining America's unlikely rise -- one of the greatest success stories in human history -- Greenspan and Wooldridge make the case for popular capitalism. In doing so, they use the past to explain how America can rediscover its dynamism and make the most of the future. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is Donald Trump or Ted Cruz the real ideologue? What would Brexit mean for the future of the UK? And why is Cambridge so different from Peterborough? We talk the EU referendum with Jeremy Cliffe, who writes the hugely influential Bagehot column on British politics for the Economist, and he tells us what divides the Eurosceptics from the rest: it's not what you think. Plus the panel catch up on the news from the US as we track developments in the endlessly fascinating and occasionally terrifying race to the White House. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Maria och Katrine befinner sig på anrika tidningen The Economist. Jeremy Cliffe, journalisten bakom Bagehot-kolumnen, ger sin analys av vänsterns val av Corbyn som partiledare för Labour.