Podcast appearances and mentions of Paul A Volcker

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

More than any other single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global capital markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by a committee, for almost a century, the Fed's philosophy and operational approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors. In the first series of The Chair, Tim Gwynn Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's foundational Chairs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, and Paul Volcker. In this second series, he covers the people who chaired the Fed through the post-1990 period of financialisation, globalisation, and – perhaps today – deglobalisation. The first episode of the second series explores Alan Greenspan, the chairman who followed Paul Volcker and ran the Fed from 1987 until 2006. Once bestowed with “Maestro” status, Greenspan – who turns 100 in March 2026 – has seen his reputation deflate in the wake of the post-2008 financial crisis. To discuss the fallen Maestro, Tim is joined by Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (Bloomsbury, 2016). “Greenspan was the man who knew,” says Mallaby. “He was the man who knew that bubbles were extremely destructive, and yet he was not the man who acted against those bubbles. So, whilst he was great on inflation and on stabilising the price of eggs, he was not good on asset-price inflation or stabilising the price of nest eggs”. A former journalist at The Economist and the Washington Post, Mallaby is the prize-winning author of The World's Banker – a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn – and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He is now the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How much does venture capital actually have to do with finance? It turns out, not that much. Rather, venture capital has more to do with psychology, network theory, and organizational dynamics. Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's written numerous books, including The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite. He and Greg discuss how venture capital can be a form of finance without much finance, why governance plays such an important role in successful venture capital, and why other places have found it difficult to replicate the Silicon Valley model. *unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*Episode Quotes:Embeddedness is essential for startup success 45:09: Most of the good GPs I wrote about in my book either had an engineering degree or some other skill which would add value to the portfolio company, maybe be an expert in go-to-market strategies. Secondly, they know something about business and finance; perhaps they have a business degree. Thirdly, they may have started a startup or been an early employee in a startup. So that experience from the inside of being an entrepreneur, and you don't need maybe all three of those things, but you probably might need two. That's the obvious thing. The less obvious thing is that You need to be what I call embedded. You need to be in a network which is going to be generating startup founders, and you need to have standing in that network. You need to have thought leadership such that the founders that emerge from this network are going to want to come to you for money because they're also going to want you as their advisor, and that embeddedness is super important.What VCs are looking for04:00: Credibility, storytelling, embeddedness in the network, a sense of vision, a sense of passion, and commitment from the founding team. These are what the Venture Capitalists are looking for.Is there any chance we could create a more factory-like system for identifying good investments and good founders and investing in them?41:42: I think fundamentally the things that AI will not cannibalize are things where human-to-human contact is super important, and that is true of venture investing because it is about a venture capitalist, a human being, meeting a startup entrepreneur. They have to agree that they're going to be partners together and that this is going to be something you can't exit very easily, and you're probably going to be meshed together if it goes well.Behavioral dynamics23:28: Behavioral dynamics are super interesting when you think about the question of whether solo venture capitalists—whether that's a good model—became fashionable in the last three, four, or five years. I think partly a function of the bull market leading up to 2021 because it was relatively easy to raise capital. If you had some decent claim to be embedded in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, you could go out as an individual and raise some money, and why not do it by yourself? But I think that when you're trying to make slippery judgments on early-stage ventures, which have no quantitative guidelines, as I began by saying, all you have is the ability to test your human judgment on a smart partner who will push back against you and say if they disagree. So I think the dynamics within venture companies like that Monday morning meeting when you decide what to invest in, you've got six or seven partners around the table. That's super important.Show Links:Recommended Resources:Ronald CoaseRegional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee SaxenianSequoia CapitalKleiner PerkinsGuest Profile:Professional Profile for Council on Foreign Relations His Work:The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New FutureMore Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of five books, including most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. He joined Olga Serhiyevich, head of investor relations, for this conversation. Takeaways: - Sebastian wrote a book about hedge funds prior to The Power Law and he contrasts VCs and hedge fund managers by saying that VCs are much more extraverted. VCs and others around the startup world are eager and willing to make introductions and actually follow through where others say they will make an intro and don't follow through. - Venture is a fun and exciting business to be in because you're dealing with bold visions of the future, highly talented and optimistic founders, and you get to see the progress and outcome of each startup that is trying to do something novel and ambitious. - Sebastian says that bubbles are inevitable in venture capital because of the nature of the business. He says there's no “off switch” or equivalent of shorting a company. There are also so many connections among venture capitalists that no one is willing to say anything negative about anyone else's investments. - He predicts a significant expansion of startup funding outside of Silicon Valley post-pandemic. Being able to deals over Zoom significantly expands the scope of where a VC can invest. - He is bullish on Europe especially because it has a consumer market that is even bigger than the US and the entrepreneurial mentality is growing among prospective startup founders in Europe. - Sebastian says that AI is the biggest development on earth since humans first developed the capacity for abstract thought. Some compare it to the printing press and he says it will be way bigger than that.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Sebastian is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He is the author of five books, including bestseller More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite and most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. In this podcast we discuss how Venture Capital (VC) work, Arthur Rock (father of VC), re-thinking Greenspan, and much more.   Follow us here for more amazing insights: https://macrohive.com/home-prime/ https://twitter.com/Macro_Hive https://www.linkedin.com/company/macro-hive    

Sebastian Mallaby joined the OODAcast for a discussion about the Power Law in venture capital and the rise of the global hedge fund and private equity industries. Sebastian's book “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future” is one of the most insightful books on the venture capital industry I've read to date and was included in my Top 10 Security, Technology & Business books of 2022. In this conversation, we discuss the differences between different investment companies like venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds and discuss the financial and geopolitical mechanics and decision-making approaches that allow for success in each variation. Official Bio: Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He is the author of five books, most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. (Long Bio) Sebastian's Books: The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan Sebastian on Twitter Book Recommendation:The Creativity Code

Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He is the author of five books, most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. His other books include The Man Who Knew (2016), More Money Than God (2010), and The World's Banker (2004).

Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council and a columnist at the Washington Post, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the likely consequences of the recent U.S. ban on the export of advanced semiconductor chips and technology to China.    Mentioned on the Podcast   Sebastian Mallaby, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future   For an episode transcript and show notes, visit us at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/us-china-economic-cold-war-sebastian-mallaby  

How did Venture Capital evolve? When did it start? Get the answers right here in the book The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby.⭐ In this episode, we talk about:• Storytelling Methods and a Writers Work Process• What is Venture Capital – From the Writers Perspective• How Did Silicon Valley Evolve into the Center of the Innovation World?• The 3 Most Crucial Moments in the Development of Venture Capital• The Future of the European Tech Eco-System• And much, much more⭐ EPISODE Links:Today's speaker is Sebastian Mallaby. Youtube

In this episode, you will learn:Silicon Valley's open and sharing culture and the role VCs had in its makingThe mindset of a VCThe role VCs played in making companies like Apple what they are todayVCs who've stood out to Sebastian while researching for the bookBill Gurley and his investment in Uber + how he understood that network businesses are lucrativeWhat is the solution for growth investors coming in and spoiling the market?Why taking risks as a VC shouldn't equate to writing checks with minimum due diligenceThe importance of network embeddedness + preparedness for a VC3 things to do to remain at the top as a VCAboutSebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is an experienced journalist and public speaker and contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He is also the author of five books, most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.

Sam Strasser founded Treasure Financial, a cash management platform that helps businesses transform idle cash into revenue. Many companies, even famous, large companies, make up to 80% of their revenue not from selling products or services but from taking money out of their treasury and investing it. Still other companies, though, don't have enough money for a month's worth of runway. Sam explains how small companies can use what cash they have the way big businesses do. Risk, Sam explains, is part of any monetary transaction, and the key is embracing it, or at least mitigating the risks. Here Sam discusses what those myriad risks are.  Join Brendan and Sam to hear the greatest lesson Sam says he learned thus far, the most fun thing about building any company, and why he wishes he'd opened his business in the UK. Quotes: “The treasury department itself is really responsible for managing risk, and managing the broad scale for the financial resources for the company.” (2:37-2:44 | Sam) “GE was notorious for a lot of the things they've done.” (6:23-6:26 | Sam) “Every company should be able to maintain at least three months of their runway in a cash reserve of some kind. During the pandemic close to 600,000 companies went out of business and the majority of those had one month of runway.”(9:36-9:56 | Sam) “You really want to understand how much risk you can accrue before it starts affecting certain possibilities.” (15:35-15:42 | Sam) “You're never really spending money when you're swiping cards. You're swiping for debt. It's just a series of obligations and risks in a giant chain.” (17:43-17:53 | Sam) “I have no idea why anybody glorifies becoming a founder, it's one of the most difficult and painstaking things you can do.” (39:48-39:56 | Sam) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926  Connect with Sam Strasser:Treasure Website: https://treasure.tech/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/treasure-ai/ Check out Sam Strasser's recommended books: Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government by Paul A. Volcker https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=Keeping+at+it   No Rules Rule: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=The+No+Rules+Rule   Nudge by Richard A. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein https://www.indiebound.org/search/book?keys=Nudge Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Journalist and author Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, chats with Trey Elling about THE POWER LAW: VENTURE CAPITAL AND THE MAKING OF THE NEW FUTURE. Topics include: A definition of "power law" (0:35) An explanation of venture capital (VC) (2:05) The "Traitorous Eight" and their influence on the beginnings of Silicon Valley and VC (3:00) VC's investment in Atari factoring in "wild-man risk" (6:59) VC's responsibility in accelerating DNA-editing technology in the 1970s (12:02) Apple is an example of a successful venture network (14:41) The counterintuitive concept that weak ties generating a better circulation of info than strong times (18:34) What Don Valentine's achievements with Cisco in the `1980s unlocked going forward (21:38) Mosaic Communications (aka Netscape) serving as another major step in the Power Law's evolution (26:11) How Yahoo's insistence that its search engine remained free altered the way VCs approached internet technology investments (29:44) VCs' responsibility with the tech bubble bursting in 2000 (32:59) Google playing the investment game so well that created another massive shift with VC (36:08) The cause of Peter Thiel's disdain for VCs in the last 1990s and early 2000s (41:37) Why Thiel is so good at the VC game (44:52) VC's significant role in China's financial advances (49:08) Whether Venture Capital has fueled the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies (54:27) If VCs are making the world a better place, more often than not (55:33)

As the outlook for inflation, interest rates, the possibility of a recession, are in flux, this Special Briefing looks at what it all meant for state and local finance. Jerome H. Powell, Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, delivers brief welcoming remarks in appreciation of Paul A. Volcker (1927-2019), former Federal Reserve Chair and founding Chairman of the Volcker Alliance. This Special Briefing features a panel of experts, including Mark Zandi, chief economist, Moody's Analytics; Matt Gress, budget director, Arizona; Natalie Cohen, founder, National Municipal Research; and Les Richmond, vice president and actuary, Build America Mutual Assurance. Notable Quotes: "Paul Volcker knew that in order to tame inflation and heal the economy, he had to stay the course,” Jerome H. Powell said. “He demonstrated resolve and integrity by refusing to be swayed by political expediency." “The most likely scenario for the U.S. economy over the next twelve to twenty-four months is for it to evolve into a self-sustaining economic expansion,” Mark Zandi said. He predicted inflation will fall close to the Fed's target of about 2 percent by the end of 2023, from more than 8 percent in March. “In higher inflation environment, the stage is set for underperforming assets versus what actuaries expected,” Build America Mutual's Richmond said. “When that happens unfunded liabilities grow, and budgetary requirements that are needed to pay for them will grow as well.” Be sure to subscribe to Special Briefing to stay up to date on the world of public finance. Learn more about the Volcker Alliance at: volckeralliance.org Learn more about Penn IUR at: penniur.upenn.edu Connect with us @VolckerAlliance and @PennIUR on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn Special Briefing is published by the Volcker Alliance, as part of its Public Finance initiatives, and Penn IUR. The views expressed on this podcast are those of the panelists and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Volcker Alliance or Penn IUR.

In this episode, our Principal, Peter Kisadha, talks to Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. Mallaby is a Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about his recently published book, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, and the important lessons African VCs can learn from it. He is an experienced journalist and public speaker; Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He is the author of five books, most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. Invest In The Future is a live fireside chat series by Future Africa to learn from prolific founders & investors who have invested in and built some of the world's most impactful technology companies. Future Africa is an early-stage fund that connects investors to mission-driven startups looking to turn Africa's most difficult challenges into global business opportunities. Learn more about Future Africa at www.future.africa The content of this podcast should not be regarded as investment advice.

Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and New York Times best selling author. His most recent book, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, chronicles the history of the industry, and his key takeaways serve as the perfect conclusion to our mini-series. Our conversation starts with his career as a writer and how he approaches writing books. We then dive into the origins of the venture industry, foundations of early-stage investing, and critical success factors. We dissect different ownership structures, the importance of mentorship, competition, the current pace of capital deployment, and venture capital abroad. We close discussion the industry's gender gap, challenges to future success, and thoughts on Sebastian's next project.   Learn More  Follow Ted on Twitter at @tseides or LinkedIn  Subscribe to the mailing list  Access Transcript with Premium Membership 

As we all await for the Prime Minister to announce the date for the 2022 Federal Election, the Australian Electoral Commission began preparing for it the day after the last election in 2019. What is involved and what is the cost of running an election across the nation? The AEC's spokesperson, Evan Ekin-Smyth explains. And the French head to the polls this weekend in the first round of Presidential elections. In the last few weeks, polling shows a close contest with purchasing power as a number one issue, but there are other factors at play with a result that not only affects France but the EU as well. Lionel Page, Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland, discusses. And venture capital: Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, charts the history and the impact of this once risky venture.

As we all await for the Prime Minister to announce the date for the 2022 Federal Election, the Australian Electoral Commission began preparing for it the day after the last election in 2019. What is involved and what is the cost of running an election across the nation? The AEC's spokesperson, Evan Ekin-Smyth explains. And the French head to the polls this weekend in the first round of Presidential elections. In the last few weeks, polling shows a close contest with purchasing power as a number one issue, but there are other factors at play with a result that not only affects France but the EU as well. Lionel Page, Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland, discusses. And venture capital: Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, charts the history and the impact of this once risky venture.

Sebastian Mallaby, CFR's Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss how Silicon Valley's venture capitalists are shaping the future of innovation and the global economy.   Enter the CFR book giveaway before February 16, 2022, for the chance to win one of ten free copies of The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby. You can read the terms and conditions of the offer here.   Books Mentioned on the Podcast   Sebastian Mallaby, More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite (2010)   Sebastian Mallaby, The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan (2016)   Sebastian Mallaby, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future (2022)   Sebastian Mallaby, The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (2004)

Sebastian Mallaby has gained better access to venture capital partnerships in Silicon Valley than any previous writer. Notoriously secretive venture firms, including the famously successful Sequoia Capital, gave him dozens of interviews as well as internal records and memos. Mallaby uncovers what he's learned in his new book, The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future.  Mallaby is also the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby is also a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, where he previously served as a staff columnist and editorial board member. His books include More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, a New York Times bestseller, and  The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, winner of the 2016 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and the 2017 George S. Eccles Prize in Economic Writing. Transcript  Watch on YouTube *Register for my Ask Me Anything Zoom Call on February 1st! Click Here to Signup Get exclusive access to Masterworks by clicking HERE Subscribe to my Momentum Monday Newsletter Connect with us! Whatgotyouthere Sponsors Masterworks NuSkool Snacks Collagen Protein Bars https://nuskoolsnacks.com/

Hello everyone.I'm very excited to share my conversation with Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of several books including More Money Than Good, The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, as well as an upcoming book about the history of venture capital (The Power Law). I'm a big fan of More Money Than Good and tweeted about the gems in its footnotes. This conversation was an absolute treat and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.You can access it here: Spotify, Apple, Google, RSS, anchor.I'm still learning about editing the audio files and dealing with all the logistics. Happy about any feedback

I'm very excited to share my conversation with Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of several books including More Money Than Good, The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, as well as an upcoming book about the history of venture capital (The Power Law). I'm a big fan of More Money Than God and tweeted about the gems in its footnotes. This conversation was an absolute treat and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. Disclaimer: this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities mentioned or discussed. Seek your financial, tax, legal, accounting, or other advisor's advice before making any investment decisions. Do you own work. I am are not your fiduciary or advisor. Conversation highlights: 2:00: Sebastian's journey to the book and topic (hedge funds, also Alan Greenspan) 5:15: How to gain access and build trust. “The key was to do an unreasonable amount of preparation work.” “You win people's respect by doing a ton of homework. It shows that you're serious and you're not wasting people's time by asking the obvious questions.” 7:44: How to decide what questions to ask? “What you really want to know from them is specifically what their thought process was around a particular important or interesting trade. How did they make the call? How did they develop conviction? How did they hold onto the position during the inevitable hiccups and adversity? So it's that reconstruction of the case study.” 11:00: Where to look for information? “The answer is you've got to look everywhere.” 12:20: Finding memos in which Greenspan “described the creation of the Federal Reserve as one of the historic disasters in U.S. history.” 15:00: George Soros who joked "I can only remember the future." Learning the division of labor in the Soros team and the Thai Bhat trade. 20:00: “The culture within an investment company matters almost as much as the analysis that the company does of the market or of the trade.” 21:00: The Korean bank trade. 27:00: Different cultures and investment styles, contrasting Soros, Druckenmiller and Robertson. 31:30: Culture at Tiger and the Tiger cubs. 34:00: Julian Robertson outgrowing his original strategy and the loss of “supercharged incentives.” 39:30: Can investors evolve and adapt? 42:00: Mindset and personality. 47:45: Understanding Paul Tudor Jones. “Genius does not always understand itself.” Vic Braden 49:00: Jones tried to replicate his system with a quant. 52:00: The Lehman Brothers 2008 trade. 56:50: Jones's process and his ‘market scripts.' “Sometimes causation in human actions works in a weird way.” 59:45: Reflecting on the industry and book from today's perspective, a decade later. 1:03: Rise of quantitative trading. 1:08: Sebastian's upcoming book, The Power Law.

The dollar is the world’s primary reserve currency, accounting for $6.7 trillion in foreign reserves. This has given the United States what some have called “an exorbitant privilege,” allowing it to borrow easily and to levy painful sanctions. But could it lose this status? Featured Guests: Roger Ferguson (President and Chief Executive Officer, TIAA) Sebastian Mallaby (Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics) For an episode transcript and show notes, visit us at cfr.org/podcasts/dollar-privilege

Sebastian Mallaby’s decades of experience covering economics make him one of the top financial reporters in the world. He worked as a reporter at The Economist for 13 years before joining the Washington Post in 1999 and was a contributing editor at the Financial Times. Mallaby’s work has also appeared in The Atlantic. At the Post, Mallaby’s topics of interest include “central banks, financial markets, the implications of the rise of newly emerging powers, and the intersection of economics and international relations.” Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. He is the author of several books, including “More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite” and “The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan,” for which he won the 2016 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Mallaby is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He graduated from Oxford University in 1986 with a degree in modern history. Moderator Blaine McCormick is an award-winning management professor at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University, where he serves as chair of the Department of Management. . . Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers. Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

Dr. Soss retired from Credit Suisse in 2019, capping a 35-year association with the Bank. For the five years leading up to his retirement, Dr. Soss was Credit Suisse Group AG's Vice Chairman, Investment Strategy and Research.Before that, for many years he was the Bank's Global Chief Economist, supervising teams in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to provide guidance to the Bank's customers and client's capital committing activities regarding economic developments and financial market conditions.Prior to joining Credit Suisse in 1984, Dr. Neal M. Soss was with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As a Vice President, his responsibilities included bank supervision and foreign relations. During a two-year leave from the NY Fed, he went to Washington to serve as Special Assistant to the Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Paul A. Volcker.Dr. Soss' research has been widely published in professional journals, and he has been a frequent commentator on economic and financial matters in newspapers, radio and television.

Themenschwerpunkt: Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) Auf den Ende 2019 verstorbenen Paul A. Volcker geht die Aussage zurück, dass die Finanzbranche in den letzten Jahrzehnten lediglich eine sinnvolle Innovation zustande gebracht habe, nämlich den Geldautomaten. Vor einigen Jahren ergänzte der ehemalige Chef der US-amerikanischen Notenbank seine Aussage um den Indexfond. Dieser ist mittlerweile auf das Engste mit den sich seit Jahren auch unter Einkommensinvestoren zunehmender Beliebtheit erfreuenden ETFs verwoben. Folgende Aspekte dieser Finanzinnovation möchten wir daher in der aktuellen Podcast-Folge erörtert: Was sind ETFs und wie hoch ist ihr Marktanteil? Wie lassen sich ETFs gegen andere Sammelanlagen abgrenzen? Sind ETFs ausschließlich passiv gemanagte Indexanlagen? Welchen Vorteile weisen ETFs in der Regel auf? Welche Nachteile können Investitionen in ETFs nach sich ziehen? Was ist bei Strategie-ETFs zu beachten? In welchem Umfang nutzen wir selbst ETFs? Unsere Hochdividendenwerte des Monats: Der iShares EM Dividend UCITS ETF (EUNY) sowie die Pennsylvania Power and Light Corporation (PPL) und damit eine Indexanlage auf Dividendenaktien aus Schwellenländern sowie ein US-amerikanischer Versorger. Unser Sponsor: Der Onlinebroker CapTrader aus Düsseldorf bietet Privatanlegern den Zugang zu mehr als einer Millionen Wertpapiere an über 120 Börsenplätzen. Und das zu äußerst niedrigen Gebühren, vor allem an den für Einkommensinvestoren interessanten angelsächsischen Börsen. Kosten für die Verbuchung von Dividenden fallen ebenso wenig an wie laufende Depotgebühren.

Sebastian Mallaby is the author of More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An experienced journalist and public speaker, Mallaby is also a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, where he previously served as a staff columnist and editorial board member. He is the author of The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, winner of the 2016 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and the 2017 George S. Eccles Prize in Economic Writing. His writing has also appeared in the Atlantic and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. Mallaby's interests cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues, including central banks, financial markets, the implications of the rise of newly emerging powers, and the intersection of economics and international relations. His previous book, More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, was described by New York Times columnist David Brooks as “superb”; it was the recipient of the 2011 Loeb Prize and a New York Times bestseller. His earlier works are The World's Banker, a portrait of the World Bank under James Wolfensohn that was named as an “Editor's Choice” by the New York Times; and After Apartheid, which was named by the New York Times as a “Notable Book.” An essay in the Financial Times said of The World's Banker, “Mallaby's book may well be the most hilarious depiction of a big organization and its controversial boss since Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker.” Before joining the Washington Post in 1999, Mallaby spent thirteen years with the Economist. While at the Economist, he worked in London, where he wrote about foreign policy and international finance; in Africa, where he covered Nelson Mandela's release and the collapse of apartheid; and in Japan, where he covered the breakdown of the country's political and economic consensus. Between 1997 and 1999, Mallaby was the Economist's Washington bureau chief and wrote the magazine's weekly Lexington column on American politics and foreign policy. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist: once for editorials on Darfur and once for a series on economic inequality. In 2015, he helped to found a startup, InFacts.org, a web publication making the fact-based case for Britain to remain in the European Union. Mallaby was educated at Oxford, graduating in 1986 with a first class degree in modern history. After eighteen years in Washington, DC, he moved to London in 2014, where he lives with his wife, Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of the Economist. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/incubatorhedgefund/message

Join Jim Falk for a virtual conversation with London-based journalist Sebastian Mallaby to hear how Great Britain is faring as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through that island nation. We want to know this expert’s assessment of the performance of the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks and what are their remaining options. We will be taking questions from our members participating in this bicontinental Zoomcast program. Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mallaby is a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and the author of “The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan.” He covered foreign policy and international finance from London for The Economist and served as their Washington bureau chief for two years.

Robert Samuelson is an economics columnist for the Washington Post and spent several decades working at Newsweek, where he wrote on various economic topics. Robert is the author of several books, including *The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement* and *The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence*. He joins the show today to talk about the latter and its implications for today. David and Robert go in-depth about the Great Inflation, as they discuss the disagreement within macroeconomics during the 60s and 70s, the history and significance of the period, and how Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker sought to end the inflation.   Tributes to Paul Volcker:   *Remembering Paul Volcker, The Man Who Tamed Inflation* by Scott Sumner https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/473963-remembering-paul-volcker-the-man-who-tamed-inflation   *Paul Volcker’s Legacy* by Scott Sumner https://www.econlib.org/paul-volckers-legacy/   *How Paul Volcker Beat Inflation and Saved an Independent Fed* by Roger Lowenstein https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-paul-volcker-beat-inflation-and-saved-an-independent-fed/2019/12/10/7e58d7ae-1b64-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html   *Paul Volcker Was Inflation’s Worst Enemy* by John Taylor https://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-volcker-was-inflations-worst-enemy-11575937617   *Paul A. Volcker, Fed Chairman Who Waged War on Inflation, Is Dead at 92* by Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert D. Hershey Jr. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/paul-a-volcker-dead.html   Transcript for the episode: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/12112019/robert-samuelson-paul-volcker-and-great-inflation   Robert’s Washington Post profile & bio: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/robert-j-samuelson/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6e300b47761d   Related Links:   *The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence* by Robert J. Samuelson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/160295/the-great-inflation-and-its-aftermath-by-robert-j-samuelson/9780812980042/   *The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement* by Robert J. Samuelson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/160294/the-good-life-and-its-discontents-by-robert-samuelson/9780679781523/   David’s blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David’s Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

Worldwide Alumni Celebration is the annual celebration of London Business School's incredible network of 44,000 international alumni, connecting our community of diverse minds around the globe. Our 2019 event in London focused on the consequences of Brexit for the British economy and business leaders. Hélène Rey, Lord Raj Bagri Professor of Economics at London Business School, led a panel discussion with our guest speakers: · Dale Murray CBE, Partner at Founders Intelligence · The Rt Hon Rory Stewart OBE MP, Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border · Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Check out the charts on the impact of Brexit on UK business here: bit.ly/BrexitCharts Discover more articles, podcasts and films exploring what’s happening inside the global economy at www.london.edu/globalminds or follow #GlobalMinds on social media. Follow us on social media: twitter.com/LBS www.linkedin.com/school/london-business-school/ www.facebook.com/LondonBusinessSchool/

We are ten years out from the fall of Lehman Brothers, and the worst financial crises in the lifetime of most of us. But what are we actually marking, and more importantly, what have we really learned? So much of the debate, to this very day, as to what caused the crash, and the bursting of the housing bubble is so caught up in political rhetoric, confirmation bias, and rear end covering, that it's still hard to tell. But certainly after 10 years we know more than we did then, and perhaps it’s time to ask some real questions and to try and put it into some kind of better perspective. To do this, I’m helped by Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a long time journalist, public speaker, and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. His recent article in the Washington Post was “The Dangerous Myth We Still Believe About the Lehman Bros. Bust.” My conversation with Sebastian Mallaby:

On Oct. 19, 1987, the stock market fell 22.6 percent, the largest single-day loss in Wall Street history. Though the day became known as “Black Monday,” many of the details of what happened have been lost to history. New York Times financial reporter Diana Henriques (@dianabhenriques) examines what led up to Black Monday and what lessons can be learned from it in “A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day In Wall Street History.” She joins Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson to talk about the book. Book Excerpt: ‘A First-Class Catastrophe’ By Diana Henriques He was a towering six foot seven, his round, balding head perpetually wreathed in cigar smoke. Paul A. Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve System, was formidable even when he was cheerful. On Wednesday afternoon, March 26, 1980, he was furious. Volcker, in office for barely seven months, had been pulled out of a meeting by a frantic message from Harry Jacobs, the chairman of Bache Halsey Stuart Shields, the second-largest brokerage firm on Wall Street. The Fed had almost no authority over brokerage firms, but Jacobs said he thought “it was in the national interest” that he alert Volcker to a crisis in the silver market—a market over which the Fed also had virtually no authority. Jacobs’s news was alarming. Silver prices were plummeting, and two of the firm’s biggest customers, a pair of billionaire brothers in Texas named William Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt, had told him the previous evening that they could not cover a $100 million debit in their Bache accounts, which they had used to amass millions of ounces of actual silver and paper claims on millions more. If silver prices fell further and the Hunts did indeed default on their debt to the firm, the silver they had pledged as collateral was no longer worth enough to cover their obligations. Bache was confronting a ruinous loss, possibly a threat to its financial survival. Jacobs suspected the Hunts also owed money to other major banks and Wall Street firms and may well have pledged more of their silver hoard as collateral. Volcker immediately wanted to know which banks had made loans to the Hunts. He didn’t regulate Wall Street brokers or silver speculators, but he emphatically did regulate much of the nation’s banking system. There, at least, his authority to act was clear. Indeed, Volcker had been responding to fire alarms in the banking system for weeks, as banks and savings and loans struggled with rising interest rates—themselves a consequence of Volcker’s attack on the raging inflation that had sapped the economy for nearly a decade. Confidence in America’s banks was as fragile as blown glass, and the last thing Volcker needed was a “bolt from the blue” like this. Yet, here was the head of Wall Street’s number-two firm warning him that some big banks were financing what sounded like wildly speculative silver trading by a couple of Texas plutocrats. Within minutes, Volcker had reached out to Harold Williams, the urbane and seasoned chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the primary U.S. government regulator of Bache and its fellow brokerage firms. Williams was at a conference in Colonial Williamsburg; he ducked into a side room, spoke with Volcker about Bache, and then phoned to tell his staffers to check immediately on the rest of Wall Street’s exposure to the silver speculators. Williams then hurried back to Washington. A senior Treasury Department official and the comptroller of the currency (another bank regulator) were also alerted to the potential crisis. Both headed for the Fed’s headquarters on Constitution Avenue. Together, perhaps they could cover all the financial corners of this unfamiliar crisis. To do that, the group needed a regulator with some authority over the silver markets. Volcker called the office of James M. Stone, who had been tapped less than a year earlier by President Jimmy Carter to be the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a young federal agency that regulated the market where most of this silver speculation had gone on. At age thirty-two, Jim Stone—a cousin of the notable filmmaker Oliver Stone—had already studied at the London School of Economics and earned a doctorate in economics from Harvard. His doctoral thesis had been published as a prescient book predicting how computers would revolutionize Wall Street trading, first by doing the paperwork but ultimately by sweeping away the traditional stock exchanges entirely. Stone was a slight, brilliant, and determined young man, but his view that regulation played a positive role in the markets made him deeply unpopular in the industry he regulated and put him at odds with his more laissez-faire CFTC colleagues. One grumpy board member at a leading Chicago commodity exchange privately dismissed him as a “little twerp.” Almost everyone in political circles (except Volcker, apparently) knew that young Dr. Stone had become so isolated at the CFTC that he could barely get support for approving the minutes of the last meeting. When Volcker got Stone on the phone, his question was similar to the one he had asked Harold Williams at the SEC: how big a stake did the Hunt brothers have in his market? “I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential,” Stone said. The politely delivered answer stopped Volcker cold; he was momentarily speechless. Then he let loose. Volcker conceded later that he “did not react very well” to Stone’s refusal to share the vital information, even after the CFTC chairman explained that a law passed in 1978 barred his agency from revealing customer trading positions, even to other regulators. Stone simply did not have the authority to comply with the Fed chairman’s request. Stone, like Volcker, instantly saw that the silver crisis was a danger to the financial system because of the hidden web of loans that linked the banks and the brokerage firms to the Hunts and to one another. He promptly headed for Volcker’s office. Sometime later, the SEC’s Harold Williams arrived. Aides shuttled in and out, working the telephones, checking silver prices, and pressing bankers and brokerage finance officers for straight answers. By 6 p.m., as twilight filled the deep, high windows of Volcker’s office, the ad hoc group had finally established that at least a half-dozen major Wall Street firms, including Merrill Lynch and Paine Webber, had set up trading accounts for the Hunts and that a number of major banks had been lending money to those firms, or directly to the Hunts, since at least the previous summer, transactions secured by a growing pile of rapidly depreciating silver. Eight months earlier, on August 1, 1979, silver was trading below $10 an ounce. Prices rose through Labor Day, past Thanksgiving, and into the Christmas holidays. At $20 an ounce, silver had broken out of its traditional ratio to gold. At $30 an ounce, the sky-high price prompted newlyweds to sell their sterling flatware before burglars could steal it. Printers and film manufacturers, which used silver as a raw material, started laying off workers and feared bankruptcy. Through it all, the Hunts kept buying, largely with borrowed money. Then, on January 17, 1980, silver prices paused at $50 an ounce and started to slide. At that point, the Hunts’ hoard was worth $6.6 billion. After that date, prices dropped sharply; they had fallen to $10.80 on Tuesday, March 25, the day before Harry Jacobs at Bache called Volcker. At that price, the Hunts owed far more than their silver would fetch in the cash market, and their lenders were pressing for more collateral of some kind. It was on that Tuesday evening that the brothers told Jacobs they were unable to pay anything more. The next day, they shared the same unwelcome news with their other brokers. Crisis had arrived, and panic might quickly follow if a big bank or brokerage firm failed as a result of the Hunts’ default. That’s where Paul Volcker stepped into the story. After their Wednesday war room conference, held together more by personality and mutual respect than by any clear lines of authority, Volcker and his fellow regulators sweated out Thursday’s trading day. Stone, in defiance of the CFTC’s legislative restrictions, had finally given his fellow regulators an estimate of how much money the Hunts owed in his market: $800 million. That figure, which turned out to be an understatement, was so staggering it prompted the shocked bank regulators immediately to order examiners to visit various vaults to be sure that the Hunt brothers hadn’t pledged the same silver to multiple lenders. By Thursday, the rest of Wall Street had gotten wind of the silver crisis, and the stock market had a wild day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by as much 3.5 percent before stabilizing, as traders reacted to rumors that the Hunts and some of their creditors were dumping stocks to raise desperately needed cash. Of course, it is true that every share of stock that is sold is also bought—by someone, at some price. When far more people want to sell than to buy, prices have to drop sharply before buyers will bid for even a few shares. The term heavy selling, then, means that shares can be sold only at increasingly lower prices—not that everyone is selling and no one is buying. With that caveat, “heavy selling” is what happened as the stock market reacted to fears of a default by the Hunt brothers. One Wall Street veteran said that Thursday’s trading reminded him of the frenzied response to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. A Treasury official called the leadership at the New York Stock Exchange several times that day to assess how it was faring in the storm. The fear in Washington and on Wall Street was that the Hunts’ failure to pay their creditors would mean that those creditors would default on their own debts, spreading the contagion. Infusions of cash by the owners of the most vulnerable silver trading houses prevented an immediate disaster, but t

In Episode 9 of Hidden Forces, host Demetri Kofinas explores the history of the Federal Reserve under the chairmanship of Alan Greenspan with biographer Sebastian Mallaby. Sebastian is a writer, commentator, and chronicler of financial and economic history. He is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. His interests cover a wide variety of domestic and international issues, including central banks (the federal reserve), financial markets, and the intersection of economics and international relations. Some of his books include More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite, The World’s Banker, and The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan, Winner of the 2016 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Alan Greenspan is one of the most consequential and yet, least understood figures in American history. He was a libertarian turned technocrat. He was a self-described “side-man” who, nevertheless, managed to place himself front and center during one of the most crucial periods in the remaking of American finance. His early days in politics were spent as an active supporter of the Republican Barry Goldwater. In his later years, he became a fixture in the Ford administration. Later, he took on the role as an advisor to Ronald Reagan. Alan Greenspan’s role in public policy long predates his almost 20-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve System. His chairmanship lasted from the crisis of 1987 all the way through to the peak of the American housing market in 2006. How responsible was he for the prosperity of the 1990s? How much is he to blame for the catastrophic, financial meltdown of 2008? Most importantly, what can the story of Alan Greenspan teach us about the limits and dangers of human intervention, foresight, and power? Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Biographer Sebastian Mallaby discusses the life and times of Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and one of the most influential figures in the history of modern finance. Mr. Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. For more information about Mr. Mallaby and his award-winning Greenspan biography, visit CFR.org. Your host, Matt Miller, is policy and communications advisor for Capital Group. An author and former Washington Post columnist, Matt was co-host of the public radio program Left, Right & Center. Do you have any topics for Capital Ideas? Please contact our editorial team at CapitalIdeas@capgroup.com.

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Sebastian Mallaby, a Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. One of his latest book is “More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite.” This commentary aired on Bloomberg Radio.

This seminar was given by Sebastian Mallaby, Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the new book "The Man Who Knew: The Life & Times of Alan Greenspan". It was given on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 as part of M-RCBG's Business & Government Seminar Series.