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Capitalism and government go hand in hand – one feeding the other Some people think of economic history as a trifle dry, but how can you resist a book that includes quotes like these: “The love of money (as a possession) is… a somewhat disgusting morbidity.” (Keynes). “Capitalism is an economic system, but it's also so much more than that. It's become a sort of ideology, this all-encompassing force that rules over our lives and our minds.” (Rund Abdelfatah) How many critics of Capitalism can you name? I bet you can only think of a very few. Marx and Engels, I suppose. Keynes. Maybe Thomas Picketty in recent years. But … Continue reading →
Yesterday, the self-styled San Francisco “progressive” Joan Williams was on the show arguing that Democrats need to relearn the language of the American working class. But, as some of you have noted, Williams seems oblivious to the fact that politics is about more than simply aping other people's language. What you say matters, and the language of American working class, like all industrial working classes, is rooted in a critique of capitalism. She should probably read the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy's excellent new book, Capitalism and its Critics, which traces capitalism's evolution and criticism from the East India Company through modern times. He defines capitalism as production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets, encompassing various forms from Chinese state capitalism to hyper-globalization. The book examines capitalism's most articulate critics including the Luddites, Marx, Engels, Thomas Carlisle, Adam Smith, Rosa Luxemburg, Keynes & Hayek, and contemporary figures like Sylvia Federici and Thomas Piketty. Cassidy explores how major economists were often critics of their era's dominant capitalist model, and untangles capitalism's complicated relationship with colonialism, slavery and AI which he regards as a potentially unprecedented economic disruption. This should be essential listening for all Democrats seeking to reinvent a post Biden-Harris party and message. 5 key takeaways* Capitalism has many forms - From Chinese state capitalism to Keynesian managed capitalism to hyper-globalization, all fitting the basic definition of production for profit by privately-owned companies in markets.* Great economists are typically critics - Smith criticized mercantile capitalism, Keynes critiqued laissez-faire capitalism, and Hayek/Friedman opposed managed capitalism. Each generation's leading economists challenge their era's dominant model.* Modern corporate structure has deep roots - The East India Company was essentially a modern multinational corporation with headquarters, board of directors, stockholders, and even a private army - showing capitalism's organizational continuity across centuries.* Capitalism is intertwined with colonialism and slavery - Industrial capitalism was built on pre-existing colonial and slave systems, particularly through the cotton industry and plantation economies.* AI represents a potentially unprecedented disruption - Unlike previous technological waves, AI may substitute rather than complement human labor on a massive scale, potentially creating political backlash exceeding even the "China shock" that contributed to Trump's rise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. A couple of days ago, we did a show with Joan Williams. She has a new book out, "Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back." A book about language, about how to talk to the American working class. She also had a piece in Jacobin Magazine, an anti-capitalist magazine, about how the left needs to speak to what she calls average American values. We talked, of course, about Bernie Sanders and AOC and their language of fighting oligarchy, and the New York Times followed that up with "The Enduring Power of Anti-Capitalism in American Politics."But of course, that brings the question: what exactly is capitalism? I did a little bit of research. We can find definitions of capitalism from AI, from Wikipedia, even from online dictionaries, but I thought we might do a little better than relying on Wikipedia and come to a man who's given capitalism and its critics a great deal of thought. John Cassidy is well known as a staff writer at The New Yorker. He's the author of a wonderful book, the best book, actually, on the dot-com insanity. And his new book, "Capitalism and its Critics," is out this week. John, congratulations on the book.So I've got to be a bit of a schoolmaster with you, John, and get some definitions first. What exactly is capitalism before we get to criticism of it?John Cassidy: Yeah, I mean, it's a very good question, Andrew. Obviously, through the decades, even the centuries, there have been many different definitions of the term capitalism and there are different types of capitalism. To not be sort of too ideological about it, the working definition I use is basically production for profit—that could be production of goods or mostly in the new and, you know, in today's economy, production of services—for profit by companies which are privately owned in markets. That's a very sort of all-encompassing definition.Within that, you can have all sorts of different types of capitalism. You can have Chinese state capitalism, you can have the old mercantilism, which industrial capitalism came after, which Trump seems to be trying to resurrect. You can have Keynesian managed capitalism that we had for 30 or 40 years after the Second World War, which I grew up in in the UK. Or you can have sort of hyper-globalization, hyper-capitalism that we've tried for the last 30 years. There are all those different varieties of capitalism consistent with a basic definition, I think.Andrew Keen: That keeps you busy, John. I know you started this project, which is a big book and it's a wonderful book. I read it. I don't always read all the books I have on the show, but I read from cover to cover full of remarkable stories of the critics of capitalism. You note in the beginning that you began this in 2016 with the beginnings of Trump. What was it about the 2016 election that triggered a book about capitalism and its critics?John Cassidy: Well, I was reporting on it at the time for The New Yorker and it struck me—I covered, I basically covered the economy in various forms for various publications since the late 80s, early 90s. In fact, one of my first big stories was the stock market crash of '87. So yes, I am that old. But it seemed to me in 2016 when you had Bernie Sanders running from the left and Trump running from the right, but both in some way offering very sort of similar critiques of capitalism. People forget that Trump in 2016 actually was running from the left of the Republican Party. He was attacking big business. He was attacking Wall Street. He doesn't do that these days very much, but at the time he was very much posing as the sort of outsider here to protect the interests of the average working man.And it seemed to me that when you had this sort of pincer movement against the then ruling model, this wasn't just a one-off. It seemed to me it was a sort of an emerging crisis of legitimacy for the system. And I thought there could be a good book written about how we got to here. And originally I thought it would be a relatively short book just based on the last sort of 20 or 30 years since the collapse of the Cold War and the sort of triumphalism of the early 90s.But as I got into it more and more, I realized that so many of the issues which had been raised, things like globalization, rising inequality, monopoly power, exploitation, even pollution and climate change, these issues go back to the very start of the capitalist system or the industrial capitalist system back in sort of late 18th century, early 19th century Britain. So I thought, in the end, I thought, you know what, let's just do the whole thing soup to nuts through the eyes of the critics.There have obviously been many, many histories of capitalism written. I thought that an original way to do it, or hopefully original, would be to do a sort of a narrative through the lives and the critiques of the critics of various stages. So that's, I hope, what sets it apart from other books on the subject, and also provides a sort of narrative frame because, you know, I am a New Yorker writer, I realize if you want people to read things, you've got to make it readable. Easiest way to make things readable is to center them around people. People love reading about other people. So that's sort of the narrative frame. I start off with a whistleblower from the East India Company back in the—Andrew Keen: Yeah, I want to come to that. But before, John, my sense is that to simplify what you're saying, this is a labor of love. You're originally from Leeds, the heart of Yorkshire, the center of the very industrial revolution, the first industrial revolution where, in your historical analysis, capitalism was born. Is it a labor of love? What's your family relationship with capitalism? How long was the family in Leeds?John Cassidy: Right, I mean that's a very good question. It is a labor of love in a way, but it's not—our family doesn't go—I'm from an Irish family, family of Irish immigrants who moved to England in the 1940s and 1950s. So my father actually did start working in a big mill, the Kirkstall Forge in Leeds, which is a big steel mill, and he left after seeing one of his co-workers have his arms chopped off in one of the machinery, so he decided it wasn't for him and he spent his life working in the construction industry, which was dominated by immigrants as it is here now.So I don't have a—it's not like I go back to sort of the start of the industrial revolution, but I did grow up in the middle of Leeds, very working class, very industrial neighborhood. And what a sort of irony is, I'll point out, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to play golf on a municipal golf course called Gotts Park in Leeds, which—you know, most golf courses in America are sort of in the affluent suburbs, country clubs. This was right in the middle of Armley in Leeds, which is where the Victorian jail is and a very rough neighborhood. There's a small bit of land which they built a golf course on. It turns out it was named after one of the very first industrialists, Benjamin Gott, who was a wool and textile industrialist, and who played a part in the Luddite movement, which I mention.So it turns out, I was there when I was 11 or 12, just learning how to play golf on this scrappy golf course. And here I am, 50 years later, writing about Benjamin Gott at the start of the Industrial Revolution. So yeah, no, sure. I think it speaks to me in a way that perhaps it wouldn't to somebody else from a different background.Andrew Keen: We did a show with William Dalrymple, actually, a couple of years ago. He's been on actually since, the Anglo or Scottish Indian historian. His book on the East India Company, "The Anarchy," is a classic. You begin in some ways your history of capitalism with the East India Company. What was it about the East India Company, John, that makes it different from other for-profit organizations in economic, Western economic history?John Cassidy: I mean, I read that. It's a great book, by the way. That was actually quoted in my chapter on these. Yeah, I remember. I mean, the reason I focused on it was for two reasons. Number one, I was looking for a start, a narrative start to the book. And it seemed to me, you know, the obvious place to start is with the start of the industrial revolution. If you look at economics history textbooks, that's where they always start with Arkwright and all the inventors, you know, who were the sort of techno-entrepreneurs of their time, the sort of British Silicon Valley, if you could think of it as, in Lancashire and Derbyshire in the late 18th century.So I knew I had to sort of start there in some way, but I thought that's a bit pat. Is there another way into it? And it turns out that in 1772 in England, there was a huge bailout of the East India Company, very much like the sort of 2008, 2009 bailout of Wall Street. The company got into trouble. So I thought, you know, maybe there's something there. And I eventually found this guy, William Bolts, who worked for the East India Company, turned into a whistleblower after he was fired for finagling in India like lots of the people who worked for the company did.So that gave me two things. Number one, it gave me—you know, I'm a writer, so it gave me something to focus on a narrative. His personal history is very interesting. But number two, it gave me a sort of foundation because industrial capitalism didn't come from nowhere. You know, it was built on top of a pre-existing form of capitalism, which we now call mercantile capitalism, which was very protectionist, which speaks to us now. But also it had these big monopolistic multinational companies.The East India Company, in some ways, was a very modern corporation. It had a headquarters in Leadenhall Street in the city of London. It had a board of directors, it had stockholders, the company sent out very detailed instructions to the people in the field in India and Indonesia and Malaysia who were traders who bought things from the locals there, brought them back to England on their company ships. They had a company army even to enforce—to protect their operations there. It was an incredible multinational corporation.So that was also, I think, fascinating because it showed that even in the pre-existing system, you know, big corporations existed, there were monopolies, they had royal monopolies given—first the East India Company got one from Queen Elizabeth. But in some ways, they were very similar to modern monopolistic corporations. And they had some of the problems we've seen with modern monopolistic corporations, the way they acted. And Bolts was the sort of first corporate whistleblower, I thought. Yeah, that was a way of sort of getting into the story, I think. Hopefully, you know, it's just a good read, I think.William Bolts's story because he was—he came from nowhere, he was Dutch, he wasn't even English and he joined the company as a sort of impoverished young man, went to India like a lot of English minor aristocrats did to sort of make your fortune. The way the company worked, you had to sort of work on company time and make as much money as you could for the company, but then in your spare time you're allowed to trade for yourself. So a lot of the—without getting into too much detail, but you know, English aristocracy was based on—you know, the eldest child inherits everything, so if you were the younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, you actually didn't inherit anything. So all of these minor aristocrats, so major aristocrats, but who weren't first born, joined the East India Company, went out to India and made a fortune, and then came back and built huge houses. Lots of the great manor houses in southern England were built by people from the East India Company and they were known as Nabobs, which is an Indian term. So they were the sort of, you know, billionaires of their time, and it was based on—as I say, it wasn't based on industrial capitalism, it was based on mercantile capitalism.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the beginning of the book, which focuses on Bolts and the East India Company, brings to mind for me two things. Firstly, the intimacy of modern capitalism, modern industrial capitalism with colonialism and of course slavery—lots of books have been written on that. Touch on this and also the relationship between the birth of capitalism and the birth of liberalism or democracy. John Stuart Mill, of course, the father in many ways of Western democracy. His day job, ironically enough, or perhaps not ironically, was at the East India Company. So how do those two things connect, or is it just coincidental?John Cassidy: Well, I don't think it is entirely coincidental, I mean, J.S. Mill—his father, James Mill, was also a well-known philosopher in the sort of, obviously, in the earlier generation, earlier than him. And he actually wrote the official history of the East India Company. And I think they gave his son, the sort of brilliant protégé, J.S. Mill, a job as largely as a sort of sinecure, I think. But he did go in and work there in the offices three or four days a week.But I think it does show how sort of integral—the sort of—as you say, the inheritor and the servant in Britain, particularly, of colonial capitalism was. So the East India Company was, you know, it was in decline by that stage in the middle of the 19th century, but it didn't actually give up its monopoly. It wasn't forced to give up its monopoly on the Indian trade until 1857, after, you know, some notorious massacres and there was a sort of public outcry.So yeah, no, that's—it's very interesting that the British—it's sort of unique to Britain in a way, but it's interesting that industrial capitalism arose alongside this pre-existing capitalist structure and somebody like Mill is a sort of paradoxical figure because actually he was quite critical of aspects of industrial capitalism and supported sort of taxes on the rich, even though he's known as the great, you know, one of the great apostles of the free market and free market liberalism. And his day job, as you say, he was working for the East India Company.Andrew Keen: What about the relationship between the birth of industrial capitalism, colonialism and slavery? Those are big questions and I know you deal with them in some—John Cassidy: I think you can't just write an economic history of capitalism now just starting with the cotton industry and say, you know, it was all about—it was all about just technical progress and gadgets, etc. It was built on a sort of pre-existing system which was colonial and, you know, the slave trade was a central element of that. Now, as you say, there have been lots and lots of books written about it, the whole 1619 project got an incredible amount of attention a few years ago. So I didn't really want to rehash all that, but I did want to acknowledge the sort of role of slavery, especially in the rise of the cotton industry because of course, a lot of the raw cotton was grown in the plantations in the American South.So the way I actually ended up doing that was by writing a chapter about Eric Williams, a Trinidadian writer who ended up as the Prime Minister of Trinidad when it became independent in the 1960s. But when he was younger, he wrote a book which is now regarded as a classic. He went to Oxford to do a PhD, won a scholarship. He was very smart. I won a sort of Oxford scholarship myself but 50 years before that, he came across the Atlantic and did an undergraduate degree in history and then did a PhD there and his PhD thesis was on slavery and capitalism.And at the time, in the 1930s, the link really wasn't acknowledged. You could read any sort of standard economic history written by British historians, and they completely ignored that. He made the argument that, you know, slavery was integral to the rise of capitalism and he basically started an argument which has been raging ever since the 1930s and, you know, if you want to study economic history now you have to sort of—you know, have to have to address that. And the way I thought, even though the—it's called the Williams thesis is very famous. I don't think many people knew much about where it came from. So I thought I'd do a chapter on—Andrew Keen: Yeah, that chapter is excellent. You mentioned earlier the Luddites, you're from Yorkshire where Luddism in some ways was born. One of the early chapters is on the Luddites. We did a show with Brian Merchant, his book, "Blood in the Machine," has done very well, I'm sure you're familiar with it. I always understood the Luddites as being against industrialization, against the machine, as opposed to being against capitalism. But did those two things get muddled together in the history of the Luddites?John Cassidy: I think they did. I mean, you know, Luddites, when we grew up, I mean you're English too, you know to be called a Luddite was a term of abuse, right? You know, you were sort of antediluvian, anti-technology, you're stupid. It was only, I think, with the sort of computer revolution, the tech revolution of the last 30, 40 years and the sort of disruptions it's caused, that people have started to look back at the Luddites and say, perhaps they had a point.For them, they were basically pre-industrial capitalism artisans. They worked for profit-making concerns, small workshops. Some of them worked for themselves, so they were sort of sole proprietor capitalists. Or they worked in small venues, but the rise of industrial capitalism, factory capitalism or whatever, basically took away their livelihoods progressively. So they associated capitalism with new technology. In their minds it was the same. But their argument wasn't really a technological one or even an economic one, it was more a moral one. They basically made the moral argument that capitalists shouldn't have the right to just take away their livelihoods with no sort of recompense for them.At the time they didn't have any parliamentary representation. You know, they weren't revolutionaries. The first thing they did was create petitions to try and get parliament to step in, sort of introduce some regulation here. They got turned down repeatedly by the sort of—even though it was a very aristocratic parliament, places like Manchester and Leeds didn't have any representation at all. So it was only after that that they sort of turned violent and started, you know, smashing machines and machines, I think, were sort of symbols of the system, which they saw as morally unjust.And I think that's sort of what—obviously, there's, you know, a lot of technological disruption now, so we can, especially as it starts to come for the educated cognitive class, we can sort of sympathize with them more. But I think the sort of moral critique that there's this, you know, underneath the sort of great creativity and economic growth that capitalism produces, there is also a lot of destruction and a lot of victims. And I think that message, you know, is becoming a lot more—that's why I think why they've been rediscovered in the last five or ten years and I'm one of the people I guess contributing to that rediscovery.Andrew Keen: There's obviously many critiques of capitalism politically. I want to come to Marx in a second, but your chapter, I thought, on Thomas Carlyle and this nostalgic conservatism was very important and there are other conservatives as well. John, do you think that—and you mentioned Trump earlier, who is essentially a nostalgist for a—I don't know, some sort of bizarre pre-capitalist age in America. Is there something particularly powerful about the anti-capitalism of romantics like Carlyle, 19th century Englishman, there were many others of course.John Cassidy: Well, I think so. I mean, I think what is—conservatism, when we were young anyway, was associated with Thatcherism and Reaganism, which, you know, lionized the free market and free market capitalism and was a reaction against the pre-existing form of capitalism, Keynesian capitalism of the sort of 40s to the 80s. But I think what got lost in that era was the fact that there have always been—you've got Hayek up there, obviously—Andrew Keen: And then Keynes and Hayek, the two—John Cassidy: Right, it goes to the end of that. They had a great debate in the 1930s about these issues. But Hayek really wasn't a conservative person, and neither was Milton Friedman. They were sort of free market revolutionaries, really, that you'd let the market rip and it does good things. And I think that that sort of a view, you know, it just became very powerful. But we sort of lost sight of the fact that there was also a much older tradition of sort of suspicion of radical changes of any type. And that was what conservatism was about to some extent. If you think about Baldwin in Britain, for example.And there was a sort of—during the Industrial Revolution, some of the strongest supporters of factory acts to reduce hours and hourly wages for women and kids were actually conservatives, Tories, as they were called at the time, like Ashley. That tradition, Carlyle was a sort of extreme representative of that. I mean, Carlyle was a sort of proto-fascist, let's not romanticize him, he lionized strongmen, Frederick the Great, and he didn't really believe in democracy. But he also had—he was appalled by the sort of, you know, the—like, what's the phrase I'm looking for? The sort of destructive aspects of industrial capitalism, both on the workers, you know, he said it was a dehumanizing system, sounded like Marx in some ways. That it dehumanized the workers, but also it destroyed the environment.He was an early environmentalist. He venerated the environment, was actually very strongly linked to the transcendentalists in America, people like Thoreau, who went to visit him when he visited Britain and he saw the sort of destructive impact that capitalism was having locally in places like Manchester, which were filthy with filthy rivers, etc. So he just saw the whole system as sort of morally bankrupt and he was a great writer, Carlyle, whatever you think of him. Great user of language, so he has these great ringing phrases like, you know, the cash nexus or calling it the Gospel of Mammonism, the shabbiest gospel ever preached under the sun was industrial capitalism.So, again, you know, that's a sort of paradoxical thing, because I think for so long conservatism was associated with, you know, with support for the free market and still is in most of the Republican Party, but then along comes Trump and sort of conquers the party with a, you know, more skeptical, as you say, romantic, not really based on any reality, but a sort of romantic view that America can stand by itself in the world. I mean, I see Trump actually as a sort of an effort to sort of throw back to mercantile capitalism in a way. You know, which was not just pre-industrial, but was also pre-democracy, run by monarchs, which I'm sure appeals to him, and it was based on, you know, large—there were large tariffs. You couldn't import things in the UK. If you want to import anything to the UK, you have to send it on a British ship because of the navigation laws. It was a very protectionist system and it's actually, you know, as I said, had a lot of parallels with what Trump's trying to do or tries to do until he backs off.Andrew Keen: You cheat a little bit in the book in the sense that you—everyone has their own chapter. We'll talk a little bit about Hayek and Smith and Lenin and Friedman. You do have one chapter on Marx, but you also have a chapter on Engels. So you kind of cheat. You combine the two. Is it possible, though, to do—and you've just written this book, so you know this as well as anyone. How do you write a book about capitalism and its critics and only really give one chapter to Marx, who is so dominant? I mean, you've got lots of Marxists in the book, including Lenin and Luxemburg. How fundamental is Marx to a criticism of capitalism? Is most criticism, especially from the left, from progressives, is it really just all a footnote to Marx?John Cassidy: I wouldn't go that far, but I think obviously on the left he is the central figure. But there's an element of sort of trying to rebuild Engels a bit in this. I mean, I think of Engels and Marx—I mean obviously Marx wrote the great classic "Capital," etc. But in the 1840s, when they both started writing about capitalism, Engels was sort of ahead of Marx in some ways. I mean, the sort of materialist concept, the idea that economics rules everything, Engels actually was the first one to come up with that in an essay in the 1840s which Marx then published in one of his—in the German newspaper he worked for at the time, radical newspaper, and he acknowledged openly that that was really what got him thinking seriously about economics, and even in the late—in 20, 25 years later when he wrote "Capital," all three volumes of it and the Grundrisse, just these enormous outpourings of analysis on capitalism.He acknowledged Engels's role in that and obviously Engels wrote the first draft of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 too, which Marx then topped and tailed and—he was a better writer obviously, Marx, and he gave it the dramatic language that we all know it for. So I think Engels and Marx together obviously are the central sort of figures in the sort of left-wing critique. But they didn't start out like that. I mean, they were very obscure, you've got to remember.You know, they were—when they were writing, Marx was writing "Capital" in London, it never even got published in English for another 20 years. It was just published in German. He was basically an expat. He had been thrown out of Germany, he had been thrown out of France, so England was last resort and the British didn't consider him a threat so they were happy to let him and the rest of the German sort of left in there. I think it became—it became the sort of epochal figure after his death really, I think, when he was picked up by the left-wing parties, which are especially the SPD in Germany, which was the first sort of socialist mass party and was officially Marxist until the First World War and there were great internal debates.And then of course, because Lenin and the Russians came out of that tradition too, Marxism then became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union when they adopted a version of it. And again there were massive internal arguments about what Marx really meant, and in fact, you know, one interpretation of the last 150 years of left-wing sort of intellectual development is as a sort of argument about what did Marx really mean and what are the important bits of it, what are the less essential bits of it. It's a bit like the "what did Keynes really mean" that you get in liberal circles.So yeah, Marx, obviously, this is basically an intellectual history of critiques of capitalism. In that frame, he is absolutely a central figure. Why didn't I give him more space than a chapter and a chapter and a half with Engels? There have been a million books written about Marx. I mean, it's not that—it's not that he's an unknown figure. You know, there's a best-selling book written in Britain about 20 years ago about him and then I was quoting, in my biographical research, I relied on some more recent, more scholarly biographies. So he's an endlessly fascinating figure but I didn't want him to dominate the book so I gave him basically the same space as everybody else.Andrew Keen: You've got, as I said, you've got a chapter on Adam Smith who's often considered the father of economics. You've got a chapter on Keynes. You've got a chapter on Friedman. And you've got a chapter on Hayek, all the great modern economists. Is it possible, John, to be a distinguished economist one way or the other and not be a critic of capitalism?John Cassidy: Well, I don't—I mean, I think history would suggest that the greatest economists have been critics of capitalism in their own time. People would say to me, what the hell have you got Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek in a book about critics of capitalism? They were great exponents, defenders of capitalism. They loved the system. That is perfectly true. But in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, middle of the 20th century, they were actually arch-critics of the ruling form of capitalism at the time, which was what I call managed capitalism. What some people call Keynesianism, what other people call European social democracy, whatever you call it, it was a model of a mixed economy in which the government played a large role both in propping up demand and in providing an extensive social safety net in the UK and providing public healthcare and public education. It was a sort of hybrid model.Most of the economy in terms of the businesses remained in private hands. So most production was capitalistic. It was a capitalist system. They didn't go to the Soviet model of nationalizing everything and Britain did nationalize some businesses, but most places didn't. The US of course didn't but it was a form of managed capitalism. And Hayek and Friedman were both great critics of that and wanted to sort of move back to 19th century laissez-faire model.Keynes was a—was actually a great, I view him anyway, as really a sort of late Victorian liberal and was trying to protect as much of the sort of J.S. Mill view of the world as he could, but he thought capitalism had one fatal flaw: that it tended to fall into recessions and then they can snowball and the whole system can collapse which is what had basically happened in the early 1930s until Keynesian policies were adopted. Keynes sort of differed from a lot of his followers—I have a chapter on Joan Robinson in there, who were pretty left-wing and wanted to sort of use Keynesianism as a way to shift the economy quite far to the left. Keynes didn't really believe in that. He has a famous quote that, you know, once you get to full employment, you can then rely on the free market to sort of take care of things. He was still a liberal at heart.Going back to Adam Smith, why is he in a book on criticism of capitalism? And again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. He actually wrote "The Wealth of Nations"—he explains in the introduction—as a critique of mercantile capitalism. His argument was that he was a pro-free trader, pro-small business, free enterprise. His argument was if you get the government out of the way, we don't need these government-sponsored monopolies like the East India Company. If you just rely on the market, the sort of market forces and competition will produce a good outcome. So then he was seen as a great—you know, he is then seen as the apostle of free market capitalism. I mean when I started as a young reporter, when I used to report in Washington, all the conservatives used to wear Adam Smith badges. You don't see Donald Trump wearing an Adam Smith badge, but that was the case.He was also—the other aspect of Smith, which I highlight, which is not often remarked on—he's also a critic of big business. He has a famous section where he discusses the sort of tendency of any group of more than three businessmen when they get together to try and raise prices and conspire against consumers. And he was very suspicious of, as I say, large companies, monopolies. I think if Adam Smith existed today, I mean, I think he would be a big supporter of Lina Khan and the sort of antitrust movement, he would say capitalism is great as long as you have competition, but if you don't have competition it becomes, you know, exploitative.Andrew Keen: Yeah, if Smith came back to live today, you have a chapter on Thomas Piketty, maybe he may not be French, but he may be taking that position about how the rich benefit from the structure of investment. Piketty's core—I've never had Piketty on the show, but I've had some of his followers like Emmanuel Saez from Berkeley. Yeah. How powerful is Piketty's critique of capitalism within the context of the classical economic analysis from Hayek and Friedman? Yeah, it's a very good question.John Cassidy: It's a very good question. I mean, he's a very paradoxical figure, Piketty, in that he obviously shot to world fame and stardom with his book on capital in the 21st century, which in some ways he obviously used the capital as a way of linking himself to Marx, even though he said he never read Marx. But he was basically making the same argument that if you leave capitalism unrestrained and don't do anything about monopolies etc. or wealth, you're going to get massive inequality and he—I think his great contribution, Piketty and the school of people, one of them you mentioned, around him was we sort of had a vague idea that inequality was going up and that, you know, wages were stagnating, etc.What he and his colleagues did is they produced these sort of scientific empirical studies showing in very simple to understand terms how the sort of share of income and wealth of the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent basically skyrocketed from the 1970s to about 2010. And it was, you know, he was an MIT PhD. Saez, who you mentioned, is a Berkeley professor. They were schooled in neoclassical economics at Harvard and MIT and places like that. So the right couldn't dismiss them as sort of, you know, lefties or Trots or whatever who're just sort of making this stuff up. They had to acknowledge that this was actually an empirical reality.I think it did change the whole basis of the debate and it was sort of part of this reaction against capitalism in the 2010s. You know it was obviously linked to the sort of Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement at the time. It came out of the—you know, the financial crisis as well when Wall Street disgraced itself. I mean, I wrote a previous book on all that, but people have sort of, I think, forgotten the great reaction against that a decade ago, which I think even Trump sort of exploited, as I say, by using anti-banker rhetoric at the time.So, Piketty was a great figure, I think, from, you know, I was thinking, who are the most influential critics of capitalism in the 21st century? And I think you'd have to put him up there on the list. I'm not saying he's the only one or the most eminent one. But I think he is a central figure. Now, of course, you'd think, well, this is a really powerful critic of capitalism, and nobody's going to pick up, and Bernie's going to take off and everything. But here we are a decade later now. It seems to be what the backlash has produced is a swing to the right, not a swing to the left. So that's, again, a sort of paradox.Andrew Keen: One person I didn't expect to come up in the book, John, and I was fascinated with this chapter, is Silvia Federici. I've tried to get her on the show. We've had some books about her writing and her kind of—I don't know, you treat her critique as a feminist one. The role of women. Why did you choose to write a chapter about Federici and that feminist critique of capitalism?John Cassidy: Right, right. Well, I don't think it was just feminist. I'll explain what I think it was. Two reasons. Number one, I wanted to get more women into the book. I mean, it's in some sense, it is a history of economics and economic critiques. And they are overwhelmingly written by men and women were sort of written out of the narrative of capitalism for a very long time. So I tried to include as many sort of women as actual thinkers as I could and I have a couple of early socialist feminist thinkers, Anna Wheeler and Flora Tristan and then I cover some of the—I cover Rosa Luxemburg as the great sort of tribune of the left revolutionary socialist, communist whatever you want to call it. Anti-capitalist I think is probably also important to note about. Yeah, and then I also have Joan Robinson, but I wanted somebody to do something in the modern era, and I thought Federici, in the world of the Wages for Housework movement, is very interesting from two perspectives.Number one, Federici herself is a Marxist, and I think she probably would still consider herself a revolutionary. She's based in New York, as you know now. She lived in New York for 50 years, but she came from—she's originally Italian and came out of the Italian left in the 1960s, which was very radical. Do you know her? Did you talk to her? I didn't talk to her on this. No, she—I basically relied on, there has been a lot of, as you say, there's been a lot of stuff written about her over the years. She's written, you know, she's given various long interviews and she's written a book herself, a version, a history of housework, so I figured it was all there and it was just a matter of pulling it together.But I think the critique, why the critique is interesting, most of the book is a sort of critique of how capitalism works, you know, in the production or you know, in factories or in offices or you know, wherever capitalist operations are working, but her critique is sort of domestic reproduction, as she calls it, the role of unpaid labor in supporting capitalism. I mean it goes back a long way actually. There was this moment, I sort of trace it back to the 1940s and 1950s when there were feminists in America who were demonstrating outside factories and making the point that you know, the factory workers and the operations of the factory, it couldn't—there's one of the famous sort of tire factory in California demonstrations where the women made the argument, look this factory can't continue to operate unless we feed and clothe the workers and provide the next generation of workers. You know, that's domestic reproduction. So their argument was that housework should be paid and Federici took that idea and a couple of her colleagues, she founded the—it's a global movement, but she founded the most famous branch in New York City in the 1970s. In Park Slope near where I live actually.And they were—you call it feminists, they were feminists in a way, but they were rejected by the sort of mainstream feminist movement, the sort of Gloria Steinems of the world, who Federici was very critical of because she said they ignored, they really just wanted to get women ahead in the sort of capitalist economy and they ignored the sort of underlying from her perspective, the underlying sort of illegitimacy and exploitation of that system. So they were never accepted as part of the feminist movement. They're to the left of the Feminist Movement.Andrew Keen: You mentioned Keynes, of course, so central in all this, particularly his analysis of the role of automation in capitalism. We did a show recently with Robert Skidelsky and I'm sure you're familiar—John Cassidy: Yeah, yeah, great, great biography of Keynes.Andrew Keen: Yeah, the great biographer of Keynes, whose latest book is "Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of AI." You yourself wrote a brilliant book on the last tech mania and dot-com capitalism. I used it in a lot of my writing and books. What's your analysis of AI in this latest mania and the role generally of manias in the history of capitalism and indeed in critiquing capitalism? Is AI just the next chapter of the dot-com boom?John Cassidy: I think it's a very deep question. I think I'd give two answers to it. In one sense it is just the latest mania the way—I mean, the way capitalism works is we have these, I go back to Kondratiev, one of my Russian economists who ended up being killed by Stalin. He was the sort of inventor of the long wave theory of capitalism. We have these short waves where you have sort of booms and busts driven by finance and debt etc. But we also have long waves driven by technology.And obviously, in the last 40, 50 years, the two big ones are the original deployment of the internet and microchip technology in the sort of 80s and 90s culminating in the dot-com boom of the late 90s, which as you say, I wrote about. Thanks very much for your kind comments on the book. If you just sort of compare it from a financial basis I think they are very similar just in terms of the sort of role of hype from Wall Street in hyping up these companies. The sort of FOMO aspect of it among investors that they you know, you can't miss out. So just buy the companies blindly. And the sort of lionization in the press and the media of, you know, of AI as the sort of great wave of the future.So if you take a sort of skeptical market based approach, I would say, yeah, this is just another sort of another mania which will eventually burst and it looked like it had burst for a few weeks when Trump put the tariffs up, now the market seemed to be recovering. But I think there is, there may be something new about it. I am not, I don't pretend to be a technical expert. I try to rely on the evidence of or the testimony of people who know the systems well and also economists who have studied it. It seems to me the closer you get to it the more alarming it is in terms of the potential shock value that there is there.I mean Trump and the sort of reaction to a larger extent can be traced back to the China shock where we had this global shock to American manufacturing and sort of hollowed out a lot of the industrial areas much of it, like industrial Britain was hollowed out in the 80s. If you, you know, even people like Altman and Elon Musk, they seem to think that this is going to be on a much larger scale than that and will basically, you know, get rid of the professions as they exist. Which would be a huge, huge shock. And I think a lot of the economists who studied this, who four or five years ago were relatively optimistic, people like Daron Acemoglu, David Autor—Andrew Keen: Simon Johnson, of course, who just won the Nobel Prize, and he's from England.John Cassidy: Simon, I did an event with Simon earlier this week. You know they've studied this a lot more closely than I have but I do interview them and I think five, six years ago they were sort of optimistic that you know this could just be a new steam engine or could be a microchip which would lead to sort of a lot more growth, rising productivity, rising productivity is usually associated with rising wages so sure there'd be short-term costs but ultimately it would be a good thing. Now, I think if you speak to them, they see since the, you know, obviously, the OpenAI—the original launch and now there's just this huge arms race with no government involvement at all I think they're coming to the conclusion that rather than being developed to sort of complement human labor, all these systems are just being rushed out to substitute for human labor. And it's just going, if current trends persist, it's going to be a China shock on an even bigger scale.You know what is going to, if that, if they're right, that is going to produce some huge political backlash at some point, that's inevitable. So I know—the thing when the dot-com bubble burst, it didn't really have that much long-term impact on the economy. People lost the sort of fake money they thought they'd made. And then the companies, obviously some of the companies like Amazon and you know Google were real genuine profit-making companies and if you bought them early you made a fortune. But AI does seem a sort of bigger, scarier phenomenon to me. I don't know. I mean, you're close to it. What do you think?Andrew Keen: Well, I'm waiting for a book, John, from you. I think you can combine dot-com and capitalism and its critics. We need you probably to cover it—you know more about it than me. Final question, I mean, it's a wonderful book and we haven't even scratched the surface everyone needs to get it. I enjoyed the chapter, for example, on Karl Polanyi and so much more. I mean, it's a big book. But my final question, John, is do you have any regrets about anyone you left out? The one person I would have liked to have been included was Rawls because of his sort of treatment of capitalism and luck as a kind of casino. I'm not sure whether you gave any thought to Rawls, but is there someone in retrospect you should have had a chapter on that you left out?John Cassidy: There are lots of people I left out. I mean, that's the problem. I mean there have been hundreds and hundreds of critics of capitalism. Rawls, of course, incredibly influential and his idea of the sort of, you know, the veil of ignorance that you should judge things not knowing where you are in the income distribution and then—Andrew Keen: And it's luck. I mean the idea of some people get lucky and some people don't.John Cassidy: It is the luck of the draw, obviously, what card you pull. I think that is a very powerful critique, but I just—because I am more of an expert on economics, I tended to leave out philosophers and sociologists. I mean, you know, you could say, where's Max Weber? Where are the anarchists? You know, where's Emma Goldman? Where's John Kenneth Galbraith, the sort of great mid-century critic of American industrial capitalism? There's so many people that you could include. I mean, I could have written 10 volumes. In fact, I refer in the book to, you know, there's always been a problem. G.D.H. Cole, a famous English historian, wrote a history of socialism back in the 1960s and 70s. You know, just getting to 1850 took him six volumes. So, you've got to pick and choose, and I don't claim this is the history of capitalism and its critics. That would be a ridiculous claim to make. I just claim it's a history written by me, and hopefully the people are interested in it, and they're sufficiently diverse that you can address all the big questions.Andrew Keen: Well it's certainly incredibly timely. Capitalism and its critics—more and more of them. Sometimes they don't even describe themselves as critics of capitalism when they're talking about oligarchs or billionaires, they're really criticizing capitalism. A must read from one of America's leading journalists. And would you call yourself a critic of capitalism, John?John Cassidy: Yeah, I guess I am, to some extent, sure. I mean, I'm not a—you know, I'm not on the far left, but I'd say I'm a center-left critic of capitalism. Yes, definitely, that would be fair.Andrew Keen: And does the left need to learn? Does everyone on the left need to read the book and learn the language of anti-capitalism in a more coherent and honest way?John Cassidy: I hope so. I mean, obviously, I'd be talking my own book there, as they say, but I hope that people on the left, but not just people on the left. I really did try to sort of be fair to the sort of right-wing critiques as well. I included the Carlyle chapter particularly, obviously, but in the later chapters, I also sort of refer to this emerging critique on the right, the sort of economic nationalist critique. So hopefully, I think people on the right could read it to understand the critiques from the left, and people on the left could read it to understand some of the critiques on the right as well.Andrew Keen: Well, it's a lovely book. It's enormously erudite and simultaneously readable. Anyone who likes John Cassidy's work from The New Yorker will love it. Congratulations, John, on the new book, and I'd love to get you back on the show as anti-capitalism in America picks up steam and perhaps manifests itself in the 2028 election. Thank you so much.John Cassidy: Thanks very much for inviting me on, it was fun.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Give to help Chris make Truce Gerald Ford's administration was in trouble. The country was experiencing stagflation, where prices were going up but employment was going down. What could he do? He announced his desire to lower taxes. This proposal was met with opposition by... Ronald Reagan. Reagan was worried that these cuts would increase the national debt. Then, just a few years later, Reagan changed his mind. Two major things happened. One was the invention of supply-side economics (also called trickle-down economics) and the other was the tax revolt of the 1970s. Supply-side economics was invented by an economist named Arthur Laffer. His ideas were based on an old concept but with a new twist. Laffer and his friends published their ideas in The Wall Street Journal and shared them with people like Dick Cheney. Author and historian Rick Perlstein joins us for this episode. His books are The Invisible Bridge and Reaganland. Sources: The Invisible Bridge and Reaganland by Rick Perlstein NPR story about Laffer's napkin legend International Inequalities Institute study of supply-side economics Investopedia article comparing inflation rates Reagan's "Restore America" speech Ford Library's documents about Reagan's inaccuracies in his speech Federal Reserve article about inflation. Here's another History of COVID stimulus payments Investopedia article on Keynes Zombie Economics by John Quiggin Historical tax bracket rates Proposition 13 article Discussion Questions: What is supply-side economics? How does it compare to Keynes' ideas? Does the Bible specify a tax policy? Where did you first hear about trickle-down economics? Who benefits from it the most? Rick Perlstein, former President George HW Bush, John Quiggin, and many others say that supply-side economics is bogus. What do you think? Why might supply-side economics appeal to some evangelicals? To people of the 1970s? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Keynes, economista britannico, introdusse teorie che promuovono l'intervento governativo per garantire piena occupazione e stabilità economica.
John Cassidy, staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI (Macmillan, 2025), traces the last three hundred years of global capitalism from its beginnings.
Amid rising concerns about AI, inequality, trade wars, and globalization, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist John Cassidy takes a bold approach: he tells the story of capitalism through its most influential critics. From the Luddites and early communists to the Wages for Housework movement and modern degrowth advocates, Cassidy's global narrative features both iconic thinkers—Smith, Marx, Keynes—and lesser-known voices like Flora Tristan, J.C. Kumarappa, and Samir Amin. John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He writes a regular column, The Financial Page. He holds degrees from Oxford, Columbia, and New York Universities. His new book is Capitalism and Its Critics: A History from the Industrial Revolution to AI.
Sign up for Alex's course here: https://www.patreon.com/courseswithalex/shop/introduction-to-political-economy-3-20-1424227?utm_campaign=productshare_fan "Political Economy" is precisely what the name implies: a unity between political and economic policy. It is the father of modern economics, joined with the mother (cousin?) of history and political science. As the scientific study of economics emerged, it was integrally tied to political incentives and, by extension, questions of morality. We will explore the foundational texts of modern political economy from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Menger, Marshall, Keynes, and more. This course is highly recommended before exploring Karl Marx's Capital. Check out our new bi-weekly series, "The Crisis Papers" here: https://www.patreon.com/bitterlakepresents/shop Thank you guys again for taking the time to check this out. We appreciate each and everyone of you. If you have the means, and you feel so inclined, BECOME A PATRON! We're creating patron only programing, you'll get bonus content from many of the episodes, and you get MERCH! Become a patron now https://www.patreon.com/join/BitterLakePresents? Please also like, subscribe, and follow us on these platforms as well, (specially YouTube!) THANKS Y'ALL YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG9WtLyoP9QU8sxuIfxk3eg Twitch: www.twitch.tv/thisisrevolutionpodcast Twitter: @TIRShowOakland Instagram: @thisisrevolutionoakland Read Jason Myles in Sublation Magazine https://www.sublationmag.com/writers/jason-myles Read Jason Myles in Damage Magazine https://damagemag.com/2023/11/07/the-man-who-sold-the-world/ Read Jason in Unaligned here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-161586946?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Conclusión:Wagner explica por qué el Estado crece históricamente.Keynes justifica el gasto público como herramienta anticrisis.
US President Donald Trump wants to use tariffs as part of a plan to save the dominance of the dollar as the global reserve currency. His top economic advisor Stephen Miran outlined the Trump administration's strategy to force other countries to pay the USA to maintain its imperial financial and military order. Ben Norton explains the idea behind the hypothetical "Mar-a-Lago Accord". VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnajhDMAWVA Topics 0:00 Trump's top economic advisor 0:42 Trump wants to save dollar hegemony 1:04 (CLIP) Trump on US dollar 1:21 Dedollarization 2:01 BRICS 2:46 (CLIP) Trump threatens BRICS 3:15 Tariffs 3:50 Bretton Woods system 4:38 Keynes' Bancor proposal 5:07 US exorbitant privilege 5:39 Nixon shock, gold standard, petrodollar 6:43 Financialization 7:35 Billionaires 8:01 Deindustrialization 8:10 Current account deficit 8:33 Trump advisor Stephen Miran 9:17 Overvaluation of US dollar 10:30 Stephen Miran's plan 11:16 Mar-a-Lago Accord 12:59 Economic nuclear war 14:07 Trump admin's goals 15:20 Paying for US empire 17:30 Trump admin's 5 demands 20:25 (CLIP) Sharing costs of US empire 21:13 China 21:32 (CLIP) Decoupling from China 21:55 Hudson Institute 23:58 US financial crisis of 2008 25:42 Manufacturing 26:02 Trump hits China with 104% tariffs 27:23 Economic game of chicken 27:50 Can USA win trade war? 30:04 (CLIP) Miran: US has leverage over China 30:59 China vows "to fight to the end" 32:00 US economic dependence on China 33:00 Chinese exports 34:01 China's top export destinations 34:36 ASEAN is China's top trading partner 35:16 Indonesia 36:08 China is world's top trading partner 36:54 China's trade with Russia 38:34 Can USA reindustrialize? 38:52 (CLIP) "We can make stuff at home" 39:09 Reindustrialization is very difficult 41:40 Trade war will hurt Americans 42:17 Moving taxes from rich to poor 43:15 Do other countries pay US tariffs? 43:34 Dollar falls 44:38 Yield on US Treasury securities 46:10 Mortgage rate spread 46:42 Credit card interest rate 47:14 Interest payments on US national debt 48:37 Backlash on US economy 49:51 Danger of blowback 50:31 Plaza Accord revisited 51:16 Changes in global economy 52:50 China learned from Japan crisis 54:33 Imperial hubris 55:12 Vietnam in a multipolar world 58:07 Outro
Un épisode à part de ce podcast dans lequel Marianne Rubinstein ne répond pas au questionnaire traditionnel du « Bonheur c'est Les Autres » mais dialogue avec moi sur sa vie, son expérience, ses oeuvres, nos ressemblances (qui sont nombreuses) et nos différences (qui le sont tout autant).Marianne, qui m'a reçu chez elle, est en effet ma plus « vieille » amie avec laquelle je suis resté en contact puisqu'elle fut ma condisciple, dès le CE2, à l'école primaire de La Ponsonne à Manosque (04) dans les années 70.Aujourd'hui, son parcours brillant l'a conduite à la réussite dans deux activités en apparence différentes : Maitresse de conférences à l'Université en économie (enseignante et chercheuse) et Ecrivain (romans, récits, essais, livres pour la jeunesse).Deux activités et une quête perpétuelle, commencée très tôt. Celle de l'équilibre entre les deux univers hérités de ses parents : un père cardiologue, seul survivant de sa famille d'origine juive polonaise pendant la Shoah et une mère bretonne ingénieure.Dans cet entretien, centré sur le parcours de Marianne, je révèle aussi au passage quelques-uns de mes vérités intimes. Le dernier livre de Marianne s'appelle « Bord de mère » (éditions Verticales) et il est épatant. Mais je vous conseille de lire tous ses autres ouvrages, dont :· C'est maintenant du passé (Verticales) ;· Nous sommes deux (Albin Michel);· Détroit dit-elle (Verticales) ;· Le Journal de Yaël Koppman (Sabine Wiespeser) ;· Tout le monde n'a pas la chance d'être orphelin (Verticales).PS : Une erreur se glisse dans nos échanges, je parle d'Agnès Durbet (Giono) mon éphémère condisciple au collège, la petite-fille de Jean Giono. J'en fais la fille d'Aline Giono, fille ainée de l'écrivain, alors qu'elle est en réalité la fille de Sylvie Giono épouse Durbet, la cadette du grand écrivain bas-alpin. Mea Culpa.Retrouvez ces interviews sur toutes les plateformes de podcast, sur YouTube, ainsi que sur Instagram (@bla.bla.lebonheurlesautres)et Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Lebonheurcestlesautres).Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Was Keynes a brilliant economist—or the architect of modern socialism? In this explosive lecture, Edward Fuller uncovers the political roots of Keynesian theory and exposes the myth behind its most influential model.The Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Shone Sadler. Includes a welcome by Joseph T. Salerno.The Austrian Economics Research Conference is the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian school, bringing together leading scholars doing research in this vibrant and influential intellectual tradition. For more information, visit https://Mises.org.
Hvem skal betale for opprusting? Spørsmålet er høyt på dagsorden i dag, men var også et sentralt spørsmål for John Maynard Keynes i hans "How to Pay for the War?". Keynes argumenterte blant annet for viktigheten at kostnaden måtte fordeles sosialt rettferdig. Axel Fjeldavli og Hilde Nagell snakker med Morgenbladet-journalist Maria Berg Reinertsen
From this week's Moneyweek Magazine …Two rumours have been swirling around the gold markets for many years. Some have called them conspiracy theories. Others note that conspiracy theories often prove true. What's the difference between conspiracy and truth? About 30 years.The first is that China has far more gold than it says it does. We actually now know this to be true. The other is that America has far less than the 8,133 tonnes of gold it says it possesses.This rumour has been doing the rounds since 1971, when Peter Beter, a lawyer and financial adviser to former president John F. Kennedy, said he had been informed that gold in Fort Knox had been removed. He went on to write a best-selling book about it: The Conspiracy Against the Dollar.The problem is a total lack of transparency on the part of the US authorities, something that according to current US president Donald Trump, and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, will not be the case for much longer.Roosevelt triggers a boomBut to understand this situation we need to go back in time, all the way to 1933, when US president Franklin D. Roosevelt famously devalued the US dollar and revalued gold upwards by 70%, from $20 an ounce (oz) to $35/oz, in order to bolster growth. US gold reserves would increase to unprecedented levels in the next 15 years.Some of the gold came from US citizens. It was now illegal for them to own gold and they had to hand any they owned over to the authorities. Some came from the fact that the government then bought all US mined supply (the upwards revaluation of gold triggered a mining boom) and any gold imported to the US assay office. The US even began buying gold on foreign markets to protect the new higher price.Thus US official holdings in 1939 on the eve of World War II totalled 15,679 tonnes. They would only increase. With Nazi invasions, European nations sent all the gold they could across the Atlantic, either for safekeeping or to buy essential supplies; 1949 saw the high watermark of US gold holdings – 22,000 tonnes, as much as half of all the gold ever mined.In July 1944, with it clear that the Allies were going to win the war, representatives from the 44 Allied nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference to design a new system of money for the new world order.International accounts would be settled in dollars, and those dollars were convertible to gold at $35/oz. Countries had to maintain exchange rates within 1% of the US dollar. In effect, the US was on a gold standard, and the rest of the world was on a dollar standard.The system relied on the integrity of the US dollar to work, and that integrity was in question, even before the end of the war. The June 1945 Federal Reserve Act reduced required gold reserves for notes outstanding from 40% to 25%, and against deposits from 35% to 25%. Between 1944 and 1954, because of increased supply, the dollar lost a third of its purchasing power, though the $35 Bretton Woods price remained.“Six major European countries,along with the UK, co-ordinated sales to suppress the gold price”US government spending was soaring, and it began running balance of payments deficits – made worse by the costs of foreign aid, America's new welfare systems and maintaining a military presence in Europe and Asia. Gold began leaving the US. By 1965 reserves had fallen by 9,500 tonnes, down 40% from the 1949 peak.Successive US administrations tried to stop the outflow, without success. Dwight D. Eisenhower banned Americans from buying gold overseas, Kennedy imposed the “equalisation tax” on foreign investments, and Lyndon B. Johnson discouraged Americans from travelling altogether. “We may need to forgo the pleasures of Europe for a while,” he said.Fears that the dollar would devalue following the election (won by Kennedy) sent the gold price in London to $40/oz. The Bank of England, in collusion with the Federal Reserve, began increasing gold sales to keep the price down.Thus did the London gold pool begin, with the addition of six major European nations the following year (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and Switzerland), which co-ordinated sales to suppress, or “stabilise”, to use their word, the gold price and defuse unwanted, upward market pressure.But the pool struggled against growing demand. In 1965, an ounce of gold was still $35, but the purchasing power of the dollar had decreased by 57% from 1945, while gold reserves had also fallen sharply. The culprit was the costs of the US government, in particular the Vietnam War and president Johnson's enormous welfare spending.If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times - and you should if you do not already own some - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Bretton Woods under pressureWith inflation rising at home and international confidence in the dollar waning, these programmes were not just costly – they undermined Bretton Woods. Non-American nations felt aggrieved that they had to produce $100 worth of goods and services to get a $100 bill, when the US could just print one. French finance minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called it “America's exorbitant privilege”.President de Gaulle, meanwhile, had had enough. He ignored the pool to turn all French dollars and sterling balances into gold. The French even sent battleships to New York to collect their gold. De Gaulle became the target of several assassination attempts – coincidence, I'm sure. There were rather more US dollars in the world than there was gold to back them, he felt, and he was right.By 1967, US foreign liabilities were $36bn, but it only had $12bn in gold reserves – a third of what was needed to back the dollar. West Germany, Spain and Switzerland began demanding gold for their dollars. Even the British, with sterling going through one of its quadrennial collapses, asked the Americans to prepare $3bn worth of Fort Knox gold for withdrawal. Private gold demand was overwhelming.“The floor of the Bank of England's weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the bullion”In November 1967, the British government devalued the pound by 14%, from $2.80 to $2.40, in order to “achieve a substantial surplus on the balance of payments consistent with economic growth and full employment”.In that month, the London market saw greater bullion demand than it would typically see in nine: as much as 100 tonnes per day. To stem demand they banned forward buying, leverage and the purchase of gold with credit. The pool still lost 1,400 tonnes that year, more than a whole year's mined supply.Selling pressure on the US dollar only increased when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam launched the first of a series of surprise attacks on US armed forces in South Vietnam in January 1968.Desperate to prop up the system, US military aircraft flew tonne after tonne of gold to RAF Lakenheath from where it was trucked in military convoys to the back entrance of the Bank of England: at one point the floor of the Bank of England's weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the gold.You really should subscribe to this amazing publication.Shoring up the systemIn the four days between 11 March and 14 March 1968, some 780 tonnes were sold to market. The effort to protect the price was deemed hopeless. On 15 March, UK chancellor Roy Jenkins declared a bank holiday, and the gold market was closed for a fortnight, “at the request of the United States”.Zurich also closed. Paris stayed open with gold trading at a 25% premium. All in all, the final 15 months saw over 3,000 tonnes sold to market to protect that $35 price. The pool had lost more than an eighth of its reserves.Two days later, in the rushed-through Washington Agreement, governors of the central banks in the gold pool declared there would be one fixed gold marketfor official government transactions at $35/oz and another, free-market, price for private transactions. Not for the last time, central bankers were living in a world of their own.Gold is one thing. Gold standards are another. They tend not to last, particularly bogus ones such as this one, under which citizens themselves did not handle gold. Keynes called them barbarous – ironic, perhaps, given that he was one of the architects of this one.In August 1971, president Nixon took the US off the gold standard, a “temporary” measure that remains more than 50 years later. For the first time in history, gold – Switzerland aside – played no part in the global monetary system.Of course it was the fault of the speculators. It always is. “I have directed the secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar against the speculators,” Nixon said, deflecting responsibility, and “to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold”.High time for a US gold auditThe US keeps its gold in four places: at Fort Knox, Kentucky (roughly 56% of its 8,133 tonnes); at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (8%); and the remaining 36% at the mints in Denver and West Point. There has not been a proper public audit of this gold since 1953. There have been internal audits, especially between 1974 and 1986, but these were not transparent.There are many people, among them gold experts, who do not believe the gold is there. The US spent it trying to suppress the gold price in the 1960s, theysay. But in this new age of American transparency, both Trump and Musk have repeatedly pledged that this gold will be audited.There is talk of it being done on a livestream. Trump has even suggested the gold has been stolen. “We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there,” he said, “because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tonnes of gold.”They've been making such light of it, one has to assume they know the gold is there. Musk was laughing about the conspiracies on podcasts, and he even posted a picture of a Fort Knox starter kit: a brick and some gold spray. I can't see how they would be joking if there were any serious doubts.Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, has said quite categorically that the gold is there. The last audit was in September 2024, he said in a recent Bloomberg interview, before looking down the camera and assuring the US people that “all the gold is present and accounted for”. But this would only have been an internal audit, and it would not have been a full audit.According to the US Mint, “the only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits”. No other gold has been transferred to or from the depository “for many years”. How long is many years, though? As far back as the 1960s?It's quite astonishing just how secretive the whole thing is. They opened the vaults for a congressional delegation and certain members of the press to view the gold in 1974. There were rumours swirling about then too. “We've never done this before and we'll probably never do it again,” said the then director of the US Mint Mary Brooks.“The gold commonly confiscated under Roosevelt contained some copper, and is not pure enough for sale”Then in 2017, during Trump's first administration, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell were invited to view the gold. “The gold was there,” Mnuchin said. He is “sure” nobody's moved it. There are “serious security protocols in place”. But there are more than 4,000 tonnes in Fort Knox. A tonne would be about the size of a medium to large suitcase. Did he see all 4,000 of them?The other big issue is the purity of the gold. What is there might not all be of good delivery quality, meaning it would not be readily accepted in international bullion markets. If much of the gold is the bullion Roosevelt confiscated in the 1930s, it will be in the form of “coinmelt”: melted down coins.The commonly confiscated coins, such as the $20 double eagle, were only 90% pure and mixed with copper to make them harder. When melted down, they were not always properly refined to modern standards, while the bars they were melted into weighed 320-330 ounces, not the 400 oz bars of good delivery standard today. In practice, this means Fort Knox gold would not be accepted without additional processing.But, until a proper audit takes place, this is all speculation, albeit reasoned speculation. We don't know the full facts. The reasons given for not conducting a full audit are flimsy: we don't need to, it would be too much of an undertaking. Please!If the US gold turns out not to be there, then the gold price goes up – potentially a lot. If it is there, it's business as usual.For now, I'd say the markets are behaving as though it is business as usual. They are climbing, and every dip is being bought, largely, it seems, by central banks (especially in Asia), who are diversifying their holdings and de-dollarising. But this audit cannot come quickly enough.Large volumes of physical gold - over 1,000 tonnes by some counts - have recently been transferred from London to New York. One theory is that was the gold was transferred in anticipation of tariffs. Another is that it was the US buying ahead of its audit. We will soon find out.Finally, I would just like to debunk one theory doing the rounds. US gold is currently marked to market at $42/oz. After the audit, those 8,133 tonnes – assuming they are there and of good delivery quality – could be marked to market at current prices, meaning a significant uplift in the value of holdings.The theory doing the rounds is that Treasury ecretary Bessent will use some of the upwards revaluation to monetise the balance sheet – not unlike how Roosevelt did in 1933 – to create funds for, among other things, the strategic bitcoin reserve. But Bessent has quite clearly stated that is not his intention.This article first appeared in Moneyweek Magazine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe
From this week's Moneyweek Magazine …Two rumours have been swirling around the gold markets for many years. Some have called them conspiracy theories. Others note that conspiracy theories often prove true. What's the difference between conspiracy and truth? About 30 years.The first is that China has far more gold than it says it does. We actually now know this to be true. The other is that America has far less than the 8,133 tonnes of gold it says it possesses.This rumour has been doing the rounds since 1971, when Peter Beter, a lawyer and financial adviser to former president John F. Kennedy, said he had been informed that gold in Fort Knox had been removed. He went on to write a best-selling book about it: The Conspiracy Against the Dollar.The problem is a total lack of transparency on the part of the US authorities, something that according to current US president Donald Trump, and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, will not be the case for much longer.Roosevelt triggers a boomBut to understand this situation we need to go back in time, all the way to 1933, when US president Franklin D. Roosevelt famously devalued the US dollar and revalued gold upwards by 70%, from $20 an ounce (oz) to $35/oz, in order to bolster growth. US gold reserves would increase to unprecedented levels in the next 15 years.Some of the gold came from US citizens. It was now illegal for them to own gold and they had to hand any they owned over to the authorities. Some came from the fact that the government then bought all US mined supply (the upwards revaluation of gold triggered a mining boom) and any gold imported to the US assay office. The US even began buying gold on foreign markets to protect the new higher price.Thus US official holdings in 1939 on the eve of World War II totalled 15,679 tonnes. They would only increase. With Nazi invasions, European nations sent all the gold they could across the Atlantic, either for safekeeping or to buy essential supplies; 1949 saw the high watermark of US gold holdings – 22,000 tonnes, as much as half of all the gold ever mined.In July 1944, with it clear that the Allies were going to win the war, representatives from the 44 Allied nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference to design a new system of money for the new world order.International accounts would be settled in dollars, and those dollars were convertible to gold at $35/oz. Countries had to maintain exchange rates within 1% of the US dollar. In effect, the US was on a gold standard, and the rest of the world was on a dollar standard.The system relied on the integrity of the US dollar to work, and that integrity was in question, even before the end of the war. The June 1945 Federal Reserve Act reduced required gold reserves for notes outstanding from 40% to 25%, and against deposits from 35% to 25%. Between 1944 and 1954, because of increased supply, the dollar lost a third of its purchasing power, though the $35 Bretton Woods price remained.“Six major European countries,along with the UK, co-ordinated sales to suppress the gold price”US government spending was soaring, and it began running balance of payments deficits – made worse by the costs of foreign aid, America's new welfare systems and maintaining a military presence in Europe and Asia. Gold began leaving the US. By 1965 reserves had fallen by 9,500 tonnes, down 40% from the 1949 peak.Successive US administrations tried to stop the outflow, without success. Dwight D. Eisenhower banned Americans from buying gold overseas, Kennedy imposed the “equalisation tax” on foreign investments, and Lyndon B. Johnson discouraged Americans from travelling altogether. “We may need to forgo the pleasures of Europe for a while,” he said.Fears that the dollar would devalue following the election (won by Kennedy) sent the gold price in London to $40/oz. The Bank of England, in collusion with the Federal Reserve, began increasing gold sales to keep the price down.Thus did the London gold pool begin, with the addition of six major European nations the following year (Belgium, France, the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and Switzerland), which co-ordinated sales to suppress, or “stabilise”, to use their word, the gold price and defuse unwanted, upward market pressure.But the pool struggled against growing demand. In 1965, an ounce of gold was still $35, but the purchasing power of the dollar had decreased by 57% from 1945, while gold reserves had also fallen sharply. The culprit was the costs of the US government, in particular the Vietnam War and president Johnson's enormous welfare spending.If you are buying gold to protect yourself in these uncertain times - and you should if you do not already own some - as always I recommend The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Bretton Woods under pressureWith inflation rising at home and international confidence in the dollar waning, these programmes were not just costly – they undermined Bretton Woods. Non-American nations felt aggrieved that they had to produce $100 worth of goods and services to get a $100 bill, when the US could just print one. French finance minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing called it “America's exorbitant privilege”.President de Gaulle, meanwhile, had had enough. He ignored the pool to turn all French dollars and sterling balances into gold. The French even sent battleships to New York to collect their gold. De Gaulle became the target of several assassination attempts – coincidence, I'm sure. There were rather more US dollars in the world than there was gold to back them, he felt, and he was right.By 1967, US foreign liabilities were $36bn, but it only had $12bn in gold reserves – a third of what was needed to back the dollar. West Germany, Spain and Switzerland began demanding gold for their dollars. Even the British, with sterling going through one of its quadrennial collapses, asked the Americans to prepare $3bn worth of Fort Knox gold for withdrawal. Private gold demand was overwhelming.“The floor of the Bank of England's weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the bullion”In November 1967, the British government devalued the pound by 14%, from $2.80 to $2.40, in order to “achieve a substantial surplus on the balance of payments consistent with economic growth and full employment”.In that month, the London market saw greater bullion demand than it would typically see in nine: as much as 100 tonnes per day. To stem demand they banned forward buying, leverage and the purchase of gold with credit. The pool still lost 1,400 tonnes that year, more than a whole year's mined supply.Selling pressure on the US dollar only increased when the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam launched the first of a series of surprise attacks on US armed forces in South Vietnam in January 1968.Desperate to prop up the system, US military aircraft flew tonne after tonne of gold to RAF Lakenheath from where it was trucked in military convoys to the back entrance of the Bank of England: at one point the floor of the Bank of England's weighing room collapsed under the weight of all the gold.You really should subscribe to this amazing publication.Shoring up the systemIn the four days between 11 March and 14 March 1968, some 780 tonnes were sold to market. The effort to protect the price was deemed hopeless. On 15 March, UK chancellor Roy Jenkins declared a bank holiday, and the gold market was closed for a fortnight, “at the request of the United States”.Zurich also closed. Paris stayed open with gold trading at a 25% premium. All in all, the final 15 months saw over 3,000 tonnes sold to market to protect that $35 price. The pool had lost more than an eighth of its reserves.Two days later, in the rushed-through Washington Agreement, governors of the central banks in the gold pool declared there would be one fixed gold marketfor official government transactions at $35/oz and another, free-market, price for private transactions. Not for the last time, central bankers were living in a world of their own.Gold is one thing. Gold standards are another. They tend not to last, particularly bogus ones such as this one, under which citizens themselves did not handle gold. Keynes called them barbarous – ironic, perhaps, given that he was one of the architects of this one.In August 1971, president Nixon took the US off the gold standard, a “temporary” measure that remains more than 50 years later. For the first time in history, gold – Switzerland aside – played no part in the global monetary system.Of course it was the fault of the speculators. It always is. “I have directed the secretary of the Treasury to take the action necessary to defend the dollar against the speculators,” Nixon said, deflecting responsibility, and “to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold”.High time for a US gold auditThe US keeps its gold in four places: at Fort Knox, Kentucky (roughly 56% of its 8,133 tonnes); at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (8%); and the remaining 36% at the mints in Denver and West Point. There has not been a proper public audit of this gold since 1953. There have been internal audits, especially between 1974 and 1986, but these were not transparent.There are many people, among them gold experts, who do not believe the gold is there. The US spent it trying to suppress the gold price in the 1960s, theysay. But in this new age of American transparency, both Trump and Musk have repeatedly pledged that this gold will be audited.There is talk of it being done on a livestream. Trump has even suggested the gold has been stolen. “We're actually going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there,” he said, “because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tonnes of gold.”They've been making such light of it, one has to assume they know the gold is there. Musk was laughing about the conspiracies on podcasts, and he even posted a picture of a Fort Knox starter kit: a brick and some gold spray. I can't see how they would be joking if there were any serious doubts.Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, has said quite categorically that the gold is there. The last audit was in September 2024, he said in a recent Bloomberg interview, before looking down the camera and assuring the US people that “all the gold is present and accounted for”. But this would only have been an internal audit, and it would not have been a full audit.According to the US Mint, “the only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits”. No other gold has been transferred to or from the depository “for many years”. How long is many years, though? As far back as the 1960s?It's quite astonishing just how secretive the whole thing is. They opened the vaults for a congressional delegation and certain members of the press to view the gold in 1974. There were rumours swirling about then too. “We've never done this before and we'll probably never do it again,” said the then director of the US Mint Mary Brooks.“The gold commonly confiscated under Roosevelt contained some copper, and is not pure enough for sale”Then in 2017, during Trump's first administration, Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell were invited to view the gold. “The gold was there,” Mnuchin said. He is “sure” nobody's moved it. There are “serious security protocols in place”. But there are more than 4,000 tonnes in Fort Knox. A tonne would be about the size of a medium to large suitcase. Did he see all 4,000 of them?The other big issue is the purity of the gold. What is there might not all be of good delivery quality, meaning it would not be readily accepted in international bullion markets. If much of the gold is the bullion Roosevelt confiscated in the 1930s, it will be in the form of “coinmelt”: melted down coins.The commonly confiscated coins, such as the $20 double eagle, were only 90% pure and mixed with copper to make them harder. When melted down, they were not always properly refined to modern standards, while the bars they were melted into weighed 320-330 ounces, not the 400 oz bars of good delivery standard today. In practice, this means Fort Knox gold would not be accepted without additional processing.But, until a proper audit takes place, this is all speculation, albeit reasoned speculation. We don't know the full facts. The reasons given for not conducting a full audit are flimsy: we don't need to, it would be too much of an undertaking. Please!If the US gold turns out not to be there, then the gold price goes up – potentially a lot. If it is there, it's business as usual.For now, I'd say the markets are behaving as though it is business as usual. They are climbing, and every dip is being bought, largely, it seems, by central banks (especially in Asia), who are diversifying their holdings and de-dollarising. But this audit cannot come quickly enough.Large volumes of physical gold - over 1,000 tonnes by some counts - have recently been transferred from London to New York. One theory is that was the gold was transferred in anticipation of tariffs. Another is that it was the US buying ahead of its audit. We will soon find out.Finally, I would just like to debunk one theory doing the rounds. US gold is currently marked to market at $42/oz. After the audit, those 8,133 tonnes – assuming they are there and of good delivery quality – could be marked to market at current prices, meaning a significant uplift in the value of holdings.The theory doing the rounds is that Treasury ecretary Bessent will use some of the upwards revaluation to monetise the balance sheet – not unlike how Roosevelt did in 1933 – to create funds for, among other things, the strategic bitcoin reserve. But Bessent has quite clearly stated that is not his intention.This article first appeared in Moneyweek Magazine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe
While we like to think our financial decisions are based on logic, the truth is, they are largely driven by emotion. So when John Maynard Keynes looked for methods to measure economic fluctuations, animal spirits were a key ingredient. Karthik Sastry is a macroeconomist and assistant professor at Princeton University. In this podcast, he says personal instincts and primal urges are known to cause cycles of boom and bust, and one way to gauge those emotions is through economic narratives. Sastry is coauthor with Joel Flynn of How Animal Spirits Affect the Economy published in Finance and Development magazine. Transcript: https://bit.ly/43HkuoB Read the article at IMF.org/fandd
Nick Keynes - a British music and creative entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Tileyard - joins us on this episode of Celeb Savant. Nick tells us how his career started as the bassist for the '90s pop band Ultra, we discuss all the behind-the-scenes aspects of the industry - including the Tileyard journey - the highs and lows, and more. Website - www.tileyard.co.uk Instagram - @tileyardlondon Facebook - @tileyardlondon Twitter - @tileyardlondon TikTok - @tileyardlondon YouTube - @tileyardlondon
In the long run, Keynes famously quipped, we are all dead. But Swedish entrepreneur Kristian Ronn reverses Keynes to argue that in the short term we, as a species, might also be death. In his new book Darwinian Trap, Ronn argues that we're hardwired to prioritize immediate benefits over long-term consequences, creating existential risks like nuclear war and uncontrolled AI development. Ronn suggests we need better system design with proper incentives to overcome these tendencies. He proposes controlling critical parts of technology supply chains (like AI chips) to ensure responsible use, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Despite acknowledging all the obvious challenges of these kind of UN style regulatory initiatives, Ronn remains hopeful that rational thinking and well-designed systems can help humanity transcend its evolutionary limitations.Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Kristian Ronn:* The "Darwinian Trap" refers to how humans and systems are hardwired for short-term thinking due to evolutionary forces, creating both personal and existential risks.* "Offensive realism" in international politics drives nations to compete for resources and develop increasingly dangerous weapons, creating existential threats through arms races.* AI poses significant existential risks, particularly as a technology multiplier that could enable more destructive weapons and engineered pandemics.* System design with proper incentives is crucial for overcoming our evolutionary short-term thinking—we need to "change the rules of the game" rather than blame human nature.* Strategic control of technology supply chains (like AI chips) could potentially create frameworks for responsible AI development, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties.Kristian Rönn is the CEO and co-founder of Normative, a software tool for sustainability accounting. He has a background in mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Before he started Normative, he worked at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute on issues related to global catastrophic risks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
Here's the original video from where this audio came. Here's a list of links to John reading every chapter (released so far) in his 2021 book Contending Perspectives. I have edited both the video and audio to eliminate mistakes, coughs, interruptions, and etc. Sections in this chapter These timestamps are exact for the audio. For the video, you'll need to add around seven seconds in order to get to the precise spot. (This is because of the opening credits, which are over around seven seconds of silence.) 1:04 - Section: The Great Depression and Keynes' General Theory 4:08 - Section: Uncertainty, animal spirits, and demand 21:12 - Section: Investment and the business cycle 26:26 - Section: Financial markets and money 35:17 - Section: Method 41:14 - Section: Views of human nature and justice 43:05 - Section: Standards of behavior - primary and secondary 50:30 - Section: Criticisms 51:33 - Section: Final rejoinder 53:12 - Section: Further reading
Here's the from where this audio came. Here's a list of links to (released so far) in his 2021 book Contending Perspectives. I have edited both the video and audio to eliminate mistakes, coughs, interruptions, and etc. Sections in this chapter These timestamps are exact for the audio. For the video, you'll need to add around seven seconds in order to get to the precise spot. (This is because of the opening credits, which are over around seven seconds of silence.) 1:04 - Section: The Great Depression and Keynes' General Theory 4:08 - Section: Uncertainty, animal spirits, and demand 21:12 - Section: Investment and the business cycle 26:26 - Section: Financial markets and money 35:17 - Section: Method 41:14 - Section: Views of human nature and justice 43:05 - Section: Standards of behavior - primary and secondary 50:30 - Section: Criticisms 51:33 - Section: Final rejoinder 53:12 - Section: Further reading
Today we’re tackling our second non-negotiable pillar of establishing a Civilian Labor Corps, and the timing couldn’t be more critical. You may have picked up on chatter in the wind about the impending job apocalypse at the hands of artificial intelligence (AI). I’m here to tell you that this is real. It is coming faster and more furiously than you realize, and we are wholly unprepared. This episode breaks down the speed and totality of what’s coming in the AI revolution and speaks to how prominent economists from history through today would manage the impending employment crisis. Chapters Prologue: 00:00:43 Introduction: Storm Clouds. 00:03:52 Chapter One: The Coming AI Job Apocalypse. 00:06:52 Chapter Two: Full Employment. 00:20:55 Chapter Three: Breaking from Neoliberal Thinking. 00:28:34 Bring It Home, Max. 00:37:26 Post Show Musings: 00:42:23 Outro: 01:10:58 Watch YouTube Video: Unpacking the Ceasefire Agreement: Shades of the Iran Hostage Deal. https://youtu.be/Bnfzl1xWumc Resources Goldman Sachs: What to expect from AI in 2025: hybrid workers, robotics, expert models Levy Institute: Working Paper No. 542 Keynes’s Approach to Full Employment: Aggregate or Targeted Demand? Fisher Phillips: U.S. House Delivers Sweeping AI Report: 10 Biggest Takeaways for Employers 118th Congress: Bipartisan House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Congressional Budget Office: Artificial Intelligence and Its Potential Effects on the Economy and the Federal Budget Congressional Research Service: The Macroeconomic Effects of Artificial Intelligence Convin: Is AI a Threat to the BPO Industry? AI in BPO Industry Explained UNFTR Episode Resources Housing First: Non-Negotiable #1. The U.S. Economy: Have we reached a boiling point? Has “Creative Destruction” Reached Silicon Valley? The Capitalism Trap. Modern Monetary Theory. Can we afford it? Yes. Yes, we can. F*ck Milton Friedman. The Chicago school of economics. Book Love Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo: Good Economics for Hard Times Kurt Vonnegut: Player Piano -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, TikTok and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Check out the UNFTR Pod Love playlist on Spotify: spoti.fi/3yzIlUP. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibility. Unf*cking the Republic is produced by 99 and engineered by Manny Faces Media (mannyfacesmedia.com). Original music is by Tom McGovern (tommcgovern.com). The show is hosted by Max and distributed by 99. Podcast art description: Image of the US Constitution ripped in the middle revealing white text on a blue background that says, "Unf*cking the Republic."Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/unftrSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
After spending 25 years as a columnist for the New York Times, Paul Krugman is finally retiring from that position—25 years too late, if one wishes to be honest.Original article: Paul Krugman Rides into the Sunset
durée : 00:59:24 - Entendez-vous l'éco ? - par : Aliette Hovine, Bruno Baradat - Piero Sraffa (1898-1983) est un économiste obligé de fuir le régime fasciste de Mussolini en 1927. Ayant trouvé refuge à Cambridge auprès de Keynes, il se consacra à l'édition des œuvres complètes de Ricardo et à l'écriture de son ouvrage majeur "Production de marchandises par des marchandises". - réalisation : Françoise Le Floch - invités : Jean-Pierre Potier Professeur émérite de sciences économiques à l'université Lumière-Lyon 2 et membre du laboratoire Triangle; Richard Aréna Professeur émérite de sciences économiques à Université Côte d'Azur et chercheur au Gredeg
In this episode, we welcome Brittany Alexander, Director of Client Strategy and Growth at Keynes Digital, a full-service programmatic company specializing in connected TV. Brittany shares insights on how Keynes Digital helps brands reach new customers and drive measurable results through their unique audience-first approach. She discusses their data-centric solutions, the importance of transparency in programmatic campaigns, and how they cater to various client goals. Brittany also delves into their client acquisition strategies, the role of their website in lead generation, and offers valuable advice for marketers in the digital advertising space. This episode is packed with insights for anyone interested in leveraging connected TV for brand growth.
John Maynard Keynes is the best-known economist from the 20th Century, that not being a good thing. At least he was more famous for his success in promoting his views than for his lack of success as an investor. His failures were an extension of his lack of economic understanding.Original article: Keynes Was Not Much Better at Investing than He Was at Understanding Economics
John Maynard Keynes is the best-known economist from the 20th Century, that not being a good thing. At least he was more famous for his success in promoting his views than for his lack of success as an investor. His failures were an extension of his lack of economic understanding.Original article: Keynes Was Not Much Better at Investing than He Was at Understanding Economics
One of the myths of Keynesian theory is that through monetary injections and government purchases, an economy can spend itself into prosperity. While such a scenario is economically impossible, most mainstream economists still believe it.Original article: The Keynesian Multiplier Fairy Tale
One of the myths of Keynesian theory is that through monetary injections and government purchases, an economy can spend itself into prosperity. While such a scenario is economically impossible, most mainstream economists still believe it.Original article: The Keynesian Multiplier Fairy Tale
O "Ulrich Responde" é uma série de vídeos onde respondo perguntas enviadas por membros do canal e seguidores, abordando temas de economia, finanças e investimentos. Neste episódio, falamos sobre assuntos como a dolarização, sanções comerciais, inflação, mercados internacionais e o impacto das políticas dos Brics. Oferecemos uma análise profunda, trazendo informações para quem quer entender melhor a economia e tomar decisões financeiras mais informadas. 00:00 - Hoje, no Ulrich Responde 01:12 - Dolarização: Qual o valor mínimo para começar? 02:26 - A nova moeda dos Brics pode ter relevância? 04:44 - Atualização da crise econômica da Turquia 06:46 - Impacto de uma vitória de Trump na economia brasileira 10:52 - Mercado sem Banco Central: é possível? 12:18 - Como o Índice Big Mac mensura o valor relativo das moedas? 13:34 - Sanções e protecionismo: qual o impacto? 17:27 - Compra de Bitcoin sem corretora, como funciona? 18:53 - Endividamento em LFTs: impacto nas contas públicas 20:05 - A moeda Brics ameaça a hegemonia do dólar? 22:06 - Definição de depressão segundo Keynes: o que está certo? 23:52 - Investimentos em bancos digitais são seguros? 25:05 - Dolarização na Argentina versus o Plano Real 26:57 - Crescimento do M2 pode prever a inflação? 28:55 - Aumento da oferta monetária e inflação real
L'or enchaîne les records et affiche une hausse de 32% depuis le début de l'année. C'est évidemment nettement plus que le rendement d'un compte d'épargne. On vous en dit plus sur l'évolution du métal jaune. Plus l'année avance et plus l'or semble être le placement de l'année. C'est vrai que le métal jaune, cette relique barbare comme l'appelait Keynes, le plus grand économiste de tous les temps. Ce métal jaune n'en finit pas d'enchaîner les records. Plus de 37 records pour l'année 2024, c'est énorme. Il faut remonter à l'année 1979 pour voir le métal jaune enchaîner davantage de records. En dépassant, cette semaine, le seuil des 2700 $ l'once. L'or affiche une progression de 32% depuis le début de cette année. Alors c'est évidemment impressionnant, surtout si on compare à l'évolution de ce métal avec celui de la Bourse. À titre d'exemple, l'indice S&P 500 qui représente le mieux la bourse américaine, n'a réalisé qu'une hausse, si je puis dire, de 25%. C'est superbe bien entendu, mais moins bien que le parcours de l'or. Côté actions européennes via l'indice Euro Stoxx 600, un indice très représentatif des actions européennes, il ne réalise qu'une hausse de 10% depuis le début de l'année. Autrement dit, pour le moment, le métal jaune est quelque part champion toute catégorie. Et quand vous êtes le champion, chacun se pose la question de la durée. Et pour l'instant, les analystes qui suivent l'or restent assez optimistes et pensent pour la plupart que le métal jaune va encore continuer à grimper et pourrait même atteindre les 3000 $ l'once. Qu'est-ce qui est à l'origine de la très bonne forme de l'or ? Il y a plusieurs explications… Mots-Clés : intérêt, dividende, taux d'intérêt, baisse, Europe, Etats-Unis, poil de la bête, statut, valeur refuge, incertitudes, monde, bruit des bottes, Ukraine, Proche-Orient, stress, invasion, Taïwan, Chine, tensions géopolitiques, amateurs d'or, carte, dédollarisation, sanctions financières, Russie, pays, pays émergents, dette américaine, dollar américain, banques centrales, avoirs, achats massifs, piquant, histoire, décision, insensé, étude, cabinet conseil, budget, recherche, gisements, transition énergétique, cuivre, antenne, esprit, court terme, plaisir immédiat, bonheur, Bergman, bonne santé, mauvaise mémoire. --- La chronique économique d'Amid Faljaoui, tous les jours à 8h30 et à 17h30. Merci pour votre écoute Pour écouter Classic 21 à tout moment i: https://www.rtbf.be/radio/liveradio/classic21 ou sur l'app Radioplayer Belgique Retrouvez tous les épisodes de La chronique économique sur notre plateforme Auvio.be :https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/802 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Découvrez nos autres podcasts : Le journal du Rock : https://audmns.com/VCRYfsPComic Street (BD) https://audmns.com/oIcpwibLa chronique économique : https://audmns.com/NXWNCrAHey Teacher : https://audmns.com/CIeSInQHistoires sombres du rock : https://audmns.com/ebcGgvkCollection 21 : https://audmns.com/AUdgDqHMystères et Rock'n Roll : https://audmns.com/pCrZihuLa mauvaise oreille de Freddy Tougaux : https://audmns.com/PlXQOEJRock&Sciences : https://audmns.com/lQLdKWRCook as You Are: https://audmns.com/MrmqALPNobody Knows : https://audmns.com/pnuJUlDPlein Ecran : https://audmns.com/gEmXiKzRadio Caroline : https://audmns.com/WccemSkAinsi que nos séries :Rock Icons : https://audmns.com/pcmKXZHRock'n Roll Heroes: https://audmns.com/bXtHJucFever (Erotique) : https://audmns.com/MEWEOLpEt découvrez nos animateurs dans cette série Close to You : https://audmns.com/QfFankx
When people speak of “old school economics,” they generally mean the application of economic thinking that involves what we might call “common sense.” That would include permitting a price system to work, protecting private property, and so on. But there is more.Original article: What is Old School Economics?
When people speak of “old school economics,” they generally mean the application of economic thinking that involves what we might call “common sense.” That would include permitting a price system to work, protecting private property, and so on. But there is more.Original article: What is Old School Economics?
Send us a textThe month of October 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of F. A. Hayek winning the Nobel Prize. Winning such a prize is obviously a big deal, but someone wins one every year, so what's the big deal about this guy? Well. Hayek's contributions to the field of economics are significant because they spoke to more than simply economics. Spontaneous order, price signals as information, and the pretense of knowledge all might come to mind, but they might not. (Maybe you're new to this! If so, helloooo there!) These concepts branch into philosophy, social structure, and the nature of the human mind. Stick with us to learn the depths and beauty of Hayekian thought, in the first of this series! Want to explore more?Profile in Liberty: Friedrich A. Hayek, at Econlib.Don Boudreaux on Reading Hayek, an EconTalk podcast.Elaine Sternberg, The Power and Pervasiveness of Spontaneous Order, at Econlib.Nicholas Wapshott on Keynes and Hayek, an EconTalk podcast.Hayek and Spontaneous Orders, at the Online Library of Liberty.Never miss another AdamSmithWorks update.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about ongoing progress in artificial intelligence. They discuss the twin concerns about the failure of alignment and the failure to make progress, why smart people don't perceive the risk of superintelligent AI, the governance risk, path dependence and "knotty problems," the idea of a solved world, Keynes's predictions about human productivity, the uncanny valley of utopia, the replacement of human labor and other activities, meaning and purpose, digital isolation and plugging into something like the Matrix, pure hedonism, the asymmetry between pleasure and pain, increasingly subtle distinctions in experience, artificial purpose, altering human values at the level of the brain, ethical changes in the absence of extreme suffering, our cosmic endowment, longtermism, problems with consequentialism, the ethical conundrum of dealing with small probabilities of large outcomes, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe. Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That's why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life's most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.
Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/385-ai-utopia Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about ongoing progress in artificial intelligence. They discuss the twin concerns about the failure of alignment and the failure to make progress, why smart people don’t perceive the risk of superintelligent AI, the governance risk, path dependence and "knotty problems," the idea of a solved world, Keynes’s predictions about human productivity, the uncanny valley of utopia, the replacement of human labor and other activities, meaning and purpose, digital isolation and plugging into something like the Matrix, pure hedonism, the asymmetry between pleasure and pain, increasingly subtle distinctions in experience, artificial purpose, altering human values at the level of the brain, ethical changes in the absence of extreme suffering, our cosmic endowment, longtermism, problems with consequentialism, the ethical conundrum of dealing with small probabilities of large outcomes, and other topics. Nick Bostrom is a professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute. He is the author of more than 200 publications, including Anthropic Bias (2002), Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), Human Enhancement (2009), and Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), a New York Times bestseller which sparked the global conversation about the future of AI. His work has framed much of the current thinking around humanity’s future (such as the concept of existential risk, the simulation argument, the vulnerable world hypothesis, astronomical waste, and the unilateralist’s curse). He has been on Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list twice, and was the youngest person to rank among the top 15 in Prospect’s World Thinkers list. He has an academic background in theoretical physics, AI, computational neuroscience, and philosophy. His most recent book is Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World. Website: https://nickbostrom.com/ Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.
Have you ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of the great economists? Do you want to breathe the same air they breathed? Do you want to be inspired by the ghosts of Economics past? Well now's your chance. Cambridge is rich with economic history and in this podcast special, recorded on the hoof, your friendly neighbourhood economists, Pete and Gav, take you on a 4 mile journey around Cambridge. Starting at Keynes' family home and ending at Jesus College, you will find out why certain landmarks are important within the world of economics. It should take you 90 minutes to walk and on the journey, you can pay homage to the likes of Robinson, Marshall, Deaton and Malthus. Technical support as always comes from 'I think they are usable' Nic.
This is a talk at the Black Spark Cultural Center in Melbourne, Australia. I feel that a lot of attention is being put on what I would describe as the symptoms of climate change, but few people are focused on the underlying root cause. We don't want to do that because it makes us too uncomfortable. We refuse to embrace the reality that consumerism (driven by greed and envy) which is rooted in our spiritual emptiness, is to blame. We don't want to accept it because that would really challenge us to consider what we collectively hold to be the goal of life. Only a spiritual perspective will empower us to embrace the fundamental changes needed to how we all live. Some of the quotes I used in the talk: “I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that.” - Gus Speth – American environmental lawyer and advocate, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme "We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture, people must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs." - Paul Mazur, Director - Lehman Brothers The last century saw “the rise of an idea that has come to dominate our society. It is the belief that satisfaction of individual feelings and desires is our highest priority.” - Adam Curtis, BBC documentarian and writer. EF Schumacher (Economist, Author) speaking of a proposal from perhaps the most influential economist of the last century, Lord Keynes, that prosperity, delivered by economic growth, brings all good. And the great engine to deliver economic growth was to cultivate greed and envy in people. Keynes – “the day might not be all that far off when everybody would be rich. We shall then, he said, “once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful”. “But beware!” he continued. “The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.” “The modem economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction.” - EF Schumacher “If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence.” - EF Schumacher The business model of big social media companies "is to create a society that is addicted, outraged, polarized, performative and disinformed. That's just the fundamentals of how it works." - Tristan Harris, Big Tech critic. “They have literally rewired our brains so that we are detached from reality and immersed in tribalism.” – Tim Kendall, former director
Mainstream economists speak of GDP as though it is the economy itself, however, GDP is not a good measure of economic reality. Instead, it presents a distorted picture of genuine economic activity and leads to mistaken conclusions about the economy.Original article: Is GDP an Accurate Measure of Reality?
Keynesians are known for using obscure and jumbled jargon to explain their fallacious ideas. The hope being that, the more confusing the language, the greater the perceived scholarship. Good economics can and should be clearly logically explained.Original article: Conceptual Clarity in Dismantling Economic Jargon
Keynesians are known for using obscure and jumbled jargon to explain their fallacious ideas. The hope being that, the more confusing the language, the greater the perceived scholarship. Good economics can and should be clearly logically explained.Original article: Conceptual Clarity in Dismantling Economic Jargon
Mainstream economists speak of GDP as though it is the economy itself, however, GDP is not a good measure of economic reality. Instead, it presents a distorted picture of genuine economic activity and leads to mistaken conclusions about the economy.Original article: Is GDP an Accurate Measure of Reality?
Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma!Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School. We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll hear from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and some surprising guests as they teach us a little bit more economics, and offer a lot of life advice. But first, we have to wrap up our (somewhat) complete economic history of the world. We'll catch up on the last fifty years or so of human achievement and ask ourselves, has economics made life better for us all? This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma!Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School. We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll hear from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and some surprising guests as they teach us a little bit more economics, and offer a lot of life advice. But first, we have to wrap up our (somewhat) complete economic history of the world. We'll catch up on the last fifty years or so of human achievement and ask ourselves, has economics made life better for us all? This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Always free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
The roots of the Great Depression have been debated for decades, but what if the real culprit was bad government policy? In this episode, Ben dives into the economic chaos of the 1930s, examining the theories of Keynes, Friedman, and the Austrian economists. From government overreach to monetary mismanagement, discover how different interpretations of the Depression still influence economic decisions today. Could these historical lessons be the key to avoiding future financial disasters? Today's Sponsor: Birch Gold - Text "BEN" to 989898, or go to https://birchgold.com/ben, for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit. Qualifying purchases will get an exclusive GOLDEN Truth Bomb.
Dr. Yeva Nersisyan is a professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College whose research focus includes Modern Monetary Theory, Post-Keynesianism, and the Institutionalist traditions. She has published widely on the subject of banking and financial instability, which is why we invited her on to talk about how the economy *actually* works. MMT theorists argue that Neo-classical economists have a deeply limited understanding of the economy, as demonstrated by the Fed's recent inability to control inflation by adjusting interest rates - which is basically the only lever available to it. We discuss how it seems that no one who is sitting at the top of the economic pyramid seems to understand how to shift the course of the economy, how providing jobs is the key to stability, the emergence of modern economic policy in the post-war years, and much more. Sign up for our Patreon and get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB AND rock some Demystify Gear to spread the word: https://demystifysci.myspreadshop.com/ (00:00:00) Go! (00:06:41) What are the basic economic levers? (00:13:14) Regulation comes either way (00:20:29) Keynes says (00:26:15) Money supply first (00:34:26) What is money? (00:43:29) FDIC - has it been tested? (00:56:00) Industry & money (01:07:08) Jobs needed v. jobs wanted (01:13:20) Patreon Ask (01:13:27) Revised MMT (01:28:50) Government brain drain (01:40:10) Extreme povery at home (01:53:00) Economic policy starts post war (02:04:26) Inflation v. employment (02:19:40) Financialization v. humanization (02:30:04) Today's democrazy (02:40:03) Infrastructure vs. ATMs #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast, #ModernMonetaryTheory, #EconomicsExplained, #PostKeynesian, #FinancialStability, #JobsFirst, #EconomicPolicy, #MoneySupply, #BankingInsights, #InflationDebate, #GovernmentSpending, #EconomicLevers, #FiscalPolicy, #MonetaryTheory, #EmploymentFocus, #EconomicInequality Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671
"The Treaty includes no provisions for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, nothing to make the defeated Central Empires into good neighbours, nothing to stabilise the new States of Europe." This damning critique of one of history's best-known peace treaties by a little-known UK Treasury official keeps shaping popular understandings of the accord's legacy. John Maynard Keynes published The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) during the Paris Peace Conference, painting its chief outcome, the Treaty of Versailles, as not just flawed, but a harbinger of yet more conflict. The Carthaginian peace terms imposed on Germany, Keynes argued, augured revenge. But is this the full story? Were the treaty's consequences as dire as Keynes suggested, or has the economist's indictment, seemingly prophetic in retrospective terms, overshadowed key dynamics that played out during negotiations, but are now forgotten? To delve into this complex history, we are joined by two distinguished guests: historian Margaret MacMillan, the author of Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001), and veteran French diplomat and former guest on the podcast Gérard Araud, who is very familiar with the intricacies of such international negotiations and the author of Nous Étions Seuls (2023), a history of French diplomacy between both world wars. The episode explores the treaty's immediate and longer-term consequences, how it aimed to reshape Europe, and why it remains one of the most misunderstood agreements in modern history. Did the treaty plant the seeds of World War II, or has its popular critique left out some important context? As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by email at undecencypod@gmail.com. Consider supporting the show through Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod) to get access to the full episode, where we dive deeper into the intricate details of Versailles and its repercussions. Bibliography: The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by John Maynard Keynes. Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001), by Margaret MacMillan. Nous étions seuls: une histoire diplomatique de la France 1919-1939 (2023), by Gérard Araud.
Sean sits down with Los Angeles-based Antifada political economy correspondent, Jason Smith of the Brooklyn Rail, to discuss demographic decline, a hot button issue relatively untouched by the Marxist left.Why has fertility gone up in the past? Why has it gone down in the developed world? What do Marx, Adam Smith and Keynes have to say about this phenomenon? Why has the potential for population decline made the capitalists so crazy?For the complete episode and much more bonus content become a patron today at www.patreon.com/theantifadaCheck out Jason's article in Brooklyn Rail: https://brooklynrail.org/2024/07/field-notes/After-the-Wave-WinterReferenced article: https://newleftreview.org/issues/i137/articles/wally-seccombe-marxism-and-demographySong: Dystopia - Population Birth Control
(2:00) Trump Trials & the Jerry Springer ElectionWeaponization? How about the "FACE Act" elderly people given what's effectively life sentences on an issue that Trump is running away from — pro lifeLifelong Republican's Hegelian Dialectic. Two is the magic number of parties — no more, no lessSerial killer's property littered with 10,000 human remains — how many humans have been killed by the bi-partisan "pandemic" and jabs? Fauci questioned on masks & the magic 6 foot distance. If Congress ever gets serious what would/could they do that no one is suggesting?(42:38) The Anti-Christ MAGA OccultistsJulie Green — another laughable "thus saith the Lord" from this blasphemous grifter. You won't believe what she said or how HUGE her followingEric Trump & Julie Green — Trump's being abused by the "justice" system as if he were black. (What did Trump do to reform the system when President?)Mike Flynn, and Julie Green "channel" their "god"ReAwaken Tour — promoting paganism with a very thin veneer of "Christian"(55:12) Trump's Role in the Civil WarLaura Loomer and Tim Pool, sycophant suck-ups, give mainstream media the soundbites they want in order to justify their lawfare against conservativesTrump says "house arrest" (in Mar-a-Lago?) would be the "breaking point" for his supporters who want warThe race war — long pushed by schools and CRT, is that the way Civil War would break?(1:08:16) "Vulture Capitalists" Flock to Trump Post-VerdictA look at the background of the guy who bragged about his $300k donation to TrumpHe donated to Hillary and STILL believes in RussiaGateThe UNI-PARTY — Was Trump always on the side of NATO, ramping up for Ukraine war while pretending he wanted to reduce NATO or exit altogether?(1:19:31) "For He's a Jolly Good Felon" — the Alex Soros strategy for dealing with Trump as other billionaires pony up the money as Trump betting odds go way up (1:31:59) Alex Jones "Repels Ambush"? The Truth About Alex's Bankruptcy and Where I Think He's Headed Everything appears to be going as planned. Meanwhile, one encore "final performance" after another (1:52:48) New PCR Lie for a New Pandemic — Bring Me the Sample, I'll Find the Pandemic 40 cycles, 1.1 TRILLION magnification? That's so 2020. Now there's something even better. A medical martial law variation on Stalin's "bring me the man, I'll find the crime" (2:00:10) Fauci Distances Himself from "Social Distancing" More Congressional hearings to hear Fauci say what we always knew. When will Congress DO SOMETHING — here's what they could/should do (2:08:10) Gain-of-Function is Being Used as Gain-of-FEAR — also distraction and misdirectionTime for Rand Paul to tell the WHOLE truth — NOT the "Wu-Flu" nonsenseFauci commits perjury — so did James Clapper. NO ONE DID ANYTHINGQuestion — "The WHO's pandemic treaty wasn't adopted, but countries have adopted their own version of it. Have you touched on this yet?" — it's worse than thatScottish Inquiry told by hospital worker that hospitals were half full during "pandemic". WATCH FLASHBACK: Brazilian hospital workers show EMPTY hospitalIt's not only mainstream media pushing lies and fear about "bird flu"…Bulk Testing of Milk to Begin THIS MONTHWhy were they never worried about "evolving" strains with ordinary flu but panicking now?(2:37:46) States move to support Gold & Silver — and, what about Gold Prohibition?Louisiana's 6th bill this year to support gold and silver and they're not the only stateDid FDR confiscate all gold? Could it be done today? What does marijuana tell us about States vs Federal government unconstitutional prohibitions?Inflation the deliberate plan to destroy the middle class — as envisioned by Lenin, Keynes, and others(2:54:43) Pride Month and the ChristianFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT
(2:00) Trump Trials & the Jerry Springer ElectionWeaponization? How about the "FACE Act" elderly people given what's effectively life sentences on an issue that Trump is running away from — pro lifeLifelong Republican's Hegelian Dialectic. Two is the magic number of parties — no more, no lessSerial killer's property littered with 10,000 human remains — how many humans have been killed by the bi-partisan "pandemic" and jabs? Fauci questioned on masks & the magic 6 foot distance. If Congress ever gets serious what would/could they do that no one is suggesting?(42:38) The Anti-Christ MAGA OccultistsJulie Green — another laughable "thus saith the Lord" from this blasphemous grifter. You won't believe what she said or how HUGE her followingEric Trump & Julie Green — Trump's being abused by the "justice" system as if he were black. (What did Trump do to reform the system when President?)Mike Flynn, and Julie Green "channel" their "god"ReAwaken Tour — promoting paganism with a very thin veneer of "Christian"(55:12) Trump's Role in the Civil WarLaura Loomer and Tim Pool, sycophant suck-ups, give mainstream media the soundbites they want in order to justify their lawfare against conservativesTrump says "house arrest" (in Mar-a-Lago?) would be the "breaking point" for his supporters who want warThe race war — long pushed by schools and CRT, is that the way Civil War would break?(1:08:16) "Vulture Capitalists" Flock to Trump Post-VerdictA look at the background of the guy who bragged about his $300k donation to TrumpHe donated to Hillary and STILL believes in RussiaGateThe UNI-PARTY — Was Trump always on the side of NATO, ramping up for Ukraine war while pretending he wanted to reduce NATO or exit altogether?(1:19:31) "For He's a Jolly Good Felon" — the Alex Soros strategy for dealing with Trump as other billionaires pony up the money as Trump betting odds go way up (1:31:59) Alex Jones "Repels Ambush"? The Truth About Alex's Bankruptcy and Where I Think He's HeadedEverything appears to be going as planned. Meanwhile, one encore "final performance" after another (1:52:48) New PCR Lie for a New Pandemic — Bring Me the Sample, I'll Find the Pandemic40 cycles, 1.1 TRILLION magnification? That's so 2020. Now there's something even better. A medical martial law variation on Stalin's "bring me the man, I'll find the crime" (2:00:10) Fauci Distances Himself from "Social Distancing" More Congressional hearings to hear Fauci say what we always knew. When will Congress DO SOMETHING — here's what they could/should do (2:08:10) Gain-of-Function is Being Used as Gain-of-FEAR — also distraction and misdirectionTime for Rand Paul to tell the WHOLE truth — NOT the "Wu-Flu" nonsenseFauci commits perjury — so did James Clapper. NO ONE DID ANYTHINGQuestion — "The WHO's pandemic treaty wasn't adopted, but countries have adopted their own version of it. Have you touched on this yet?" — it's worse than thatScottish Inquiry told by hospital worker that hospitals were half full during "pandemic". WATCH FLASHBACK: Brazilian hospital workers show EMPTY hospitalIt's not only mainstream media pushing lies and fear about "bird flu"…Bulk Testing of Milk to Begin THIS MONTHWhy were they never worried about "evolving" strains with ordinary flu but panicking now?(2:37:46) States move to support Gold & Silver — and, what about Gold Prohibition?Louisiana's 6th bill this year to support gold and silver and they're not the only stateDid FDR confiscate all gold? Could it be done today? What does marijuana tell us about States vs Federal government unconstitutional prohibitions?Inflation the deliberate plan to destroy the middle class — as envisioned by Lenin, Keynes, and others(2:54:43) Pride Month and the ChristianFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @DavidKnightShow@protonmail.comCash App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHT
George Selgin is a senior fellow and director emeritus of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute. George is also a frequent guest of the podcast, and he rejoins Macro Musings to talk about some of the recent developments in the monetary and fiscal policy space. Specifically, David and George discuss recent updates regarding Fed master accounts, the problematic aspects of the Fed's balance sheet, why a second Trump term would threaten central bank independence, and much more. Transcript for this week's episode. George's Twitter: @GeorgeSelgin George's Cato profile David Beckworth's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth Follow us on Twitter: @Macro_Musings Check out our new AI chatbot: the Macro Musebot! Join the new Macro Musings Discord server! Join the Macro Musings mailing list! Check out our Macro Musings merch! Related Links: Caitlin Long's tweet regarding the Fed's special treatment for approving master accounts *Public comments on the Proposed Guidelines for Evaluating Requests for Accounts and Services* by George Selgin *Custodia Bank Inc v. Federal Reserve Board of Governors* Court documents from the Wyoming District Court *Annual Report on Open Market Operations (2023)* by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York *Trump Allies Draw Up Plans to Blunt Fed's Independence* by Andrew Restuccia, Nick Timiraos, and Alex Leary *Trump Advisers Discuss Penalties for Nations That Move Away From the Dollar* by Saleha Mohsin, Jennfier Jacobs, and Nancy Cook *Hayek versus Keynes on How the Price Level Ought to Behave* by George Selgin *The Menace of Fiscal QE* by George Selgin *George Selgin on False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery* by Macro Musings Timestamps: (00:01:36) – Intro (00:06:26) – Updates on Fed Master Accounts and the Custodia Case (00:17:57) – Problematic Aspects of the Fed's Balance Sheet (00:22:50) – The Importance of the Overnight Unsecured Interbank Lending Market (00:34:26) – Responding to the Jared Bernstein Incident (00:46:33) – Donald Trump, Central Bank Independence, and Dollar Dominance (00:56:54) – Outro
PREVIEW: Keynesianism: From a conversation later tonight with author Nicholas Wapshott re the debate in the pages of Newsweek in the 1960s between those who believe Keynes theory of spending as an answer to recession (Paul Samuelson) vs those who believe spending causes inflation which contributes to underperformance(Milton Friedman). Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market. by Nicholas Wapshott . https://www.amazon.com/Samuelson-Friedman-Battle-Over-Market-ebook/dp/B08589Z7M9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Nicholas+Wapshott+%2B+samuelson&qid=1627690920&s=digital-text&sr=1-1 From the author of Keynes Hayek, the next great duel in the history of economics. In 1966 two columnists joined Newsweek magazine. Their assignment: debate the world of business and economics. Paul Samuelson was a towering figure in Keynesian economics, which supported the management of the economy along lines prescribed by John Maynard Keynes's General Theory. Milton Friedman, little known at that time outside of conservative academic circles, championed “monetarism” and insisted the Federal Reserve maintain tight control over the amount of money circulating in the economy. 1925 Calvin Coolidge (not a Keynesian) throws out the first ball of the season.