Finance Basic To Advance Level Knowledge

My latest Macro Musing podcast is with Josh Zumbrum. Josh is a national economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He joined me to talk about the angst facing the economics profession in this current environment. We also talked about the future of economic journalism, economic facts, and what really drives inflation. It was fascinating conversation throughout. You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming. Related Links Josh Zumbrum's web page at the Wall Street Journal Josh Zumbrum's twitter account

  My latest Macro Musings podcast is with James Bullard. James is the President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank and an accomplished economic scholar. He joined me for a great conversation on macroeconomics that covered everything from the determinants of inflation to the Fed's balance to the future path of monetary policy. We also discussed Jame's work on imperfect credit markets and how it provides a another justification for NGDP level targeting.  This was a fascinating conversation throughout and the transcripts for the show are here . You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming. Related Links James Bullard's page at the St. Louis Federal Reserve

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He joined me to discuss his new book, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream . In it, Tyler argues that the restlessness and willingness to take risks have been key traits throughout American history has been waning. In the last few decades, American society has become more risk-averse and this has led to less innovation and dynamism in the economy.  Tyler notes that this risk aversion has bled over into macroeconomic policy and may be a contributor to the slow recovery following the 2008 crisis. This was a fun and fascinating conversation throughout. You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming.

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Jeffrey Frankel. Jeff is a professor and economist at Harvard University and directs the program on international finance and macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jeff joined me to talk about the future of globalization, the dollar, the Plaza Accord, and more. It was a fascinating conversation throughout.  You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming.

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Jason Furman. Jason is currently a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Previously, Jason spent eight years serving on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, including the chair position from 2013-2017. Jason also worked on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. Jason joined me to talk about his time at the CEA. Among other things, we talk about fiscal policy, the fiscal multiplier, monetary policy offset, and the platinum coin. This was a super fun talk throughout.  You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming . Related Links Jason Furman's Twitter Account Jason Furman's Webpage

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Larry White. Larry is a professor of economics at George Mason University where he specializes in monetary economics and monetary history. Larry joined me to talk about India's demonetization's efforts and Austrian macroeconomics. This was fun and fascinating conversation throughout.You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud , iTunes , or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more episodes are coming. Related Links Larry White's Homepage

My latest Macro Musing podcast is with Tim Duy. Tim is a professor of economics at the University of Oregon, a columnist for Bloomberg, and a former economist at the U.S. Department of Treasury.  Tim is also a widely read Fed-watcher and he joined me to talk about Fed watching and the future of U.S. monetary policy. If you want to get into Fed watching this podcast is just for you. Tim shares his approach and what defines a successful Fed watcher.  We also discussed some of Tim's recent comments about the normalization of Fed monetary policy. The FOMC plans to return to normal monetary policy by first raising it interest rate target and then by reducing the size of its balance sheet. Tim thinks this is a bad idea, as he has written in several Bloomberg articles . He would like to see a simultaneous raising of interest rates and shrinking of the Fed balance sheet as the Fed returns to normalcy. We discuss why he favors this approach. This was a fascinating conver...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Hester Peirce . Hestor is a Senior Research Fellow and director of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center. She previously served on Senator Richard Shelby’s staff on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. In that position, she worked on financial regulatory reform following the financial crisis of 2008 as well as oversight of the regulatory implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act. Hester also served at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a staff attorney and as counsel to Commissioner Paul S. Atkins.  Hester was also nominated by President Obama to be an SEC Commisioner. Hester joined me to discuss a new book she co-edited with Ben Klutsey titled “ Reframing Financial Regulation: Enhancing Stability and Protecting Consumers ” This book covers a lot of topics on how to better regulate the financial system.  We spent most of our time talking about how to improve the stability of the...

My latest Macro Musings Podcast is with JP Koning. JP is an economist who works in the Canadian financial industry and is a walking encyclopedia on the institutional details of central banks and money. He runs a fantastic blog called Moneyness --a must read for anyone serious about understanding money and its history. JP joined me to talk about some of the more interesting institutional arrangements for central banks and money today. We began our conversation by talking about central banks of Switzerland, Japan, South Africa, Belgium, and Greece. They are unique in that they have stocks that are traded on the stock market . As JP notes, however, these stocks function more like a perpetual bond than an actual stock. Another fascinating central bank story is that the Bank of England in that it used to allow personal checking. It no longer does this, but it demonstrates that the current restrictions on access to central bank balance sheets has not always been in place....

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute. We discussed his time doing financial regulation and Fed policy as a senior staffer on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. We also spent some time discussing his new paper on applying behavioral economics to Fed policy. This was a fascinating conversation throughout. You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud, iTunes, or your favorite podcast app. You can also listen via the embedded player above. And remember to subscribe since more shows are coming. Related Links Mark Calabria's Home Page Mark Calabria's Twitter Account Mark Calabria's New Paper

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Roger Farmer. Roger is a Professor of Economics at UCLA. He joined me to discuss his latest book, Prosperity for All: How to Prevent Financial Crises .  This was a very fascinating conversation. Roger makes the case that modern macroeconomics as it is formally practiced has gone down the wrong path with the New Keynesian paradigm. He considers it a degenerative research agenda for several reasons. First, it is premised on the natural rate hypothesis (NRH) which he sees as incorrect. He uses the analogy of a child hitting a rocking horse to describe the NRH. The child hitting the horse will cause it to rock, but eventually it will come to rest. Likewise an economy buffeted by shocks will cause fluctuations but eventually the economy will return to its full employment level. Roger sees this view as fundamentally wrong Roger contends a more accurate analogy would be a rudderless boat blown by various winds to new locations and stayi...

My latest podcast is with Rudiger Bachmann. Rudi is an associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame and a research affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Rudi has published widely on macroeconomic issues in top journals and is an active member of the German Economic Association. He also blogs and write popular press articles for the German media. Rudi joined me on the show to discuss German macroeconomics as well as some of his own research.  Our conversation begins by noting that German macroeconomics appears to be very different than Anglo-American macroeconomics. Rudi notes that is partly a misperception problem, but there is indeed something different. What is different is how macroeconomics is currently practiced in Germany: it reflects the ordoliberalism view that stresses a rules-based approach to policy. This approach to macroeconomics makes lawyers rather than economists top advisers to policy in Germany and it reflects the lasti...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Narayana Kocherlakota. Narayana is a professor of economics at the University of Rochester. He has published widely in economics, including in the areas of money and the payment system, business cycles, financial economics, public finance, and dynamic contracts. He also writes regularly for Bloomberg View .  Formerly, Narayana was the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve bank , where he served between 2009 and 2015.  He joined me to talk about his time at the Fed and his current views on Fed policy. This was a fascinating conversation throughout and a must-listen episode for all Fed watchers. The first part of our conversation covered what it was like being a regional Fed president. This included, among other things, how he stayed informed, how he managed the Minneapolis Fed, and how he prepared for FOMC meetings. We then moved onto the the FOMC and the dynamics of the meeting itself. The preparation, th...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Izabella Kaminska. Izabella is part of  Financial Times Alphaville , where she has been since 2008. She has written extensively on monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial technology, and is key force behind the Financial Times Festival of Finance . As a longtime follower of her work, it was a real treat to have her on the show. We started our conversation by talking about blockchain technology and its implications for the payment system. Izabella is not optimistic about blockchain's future and wonders whether it will fulfill the expectations and hopes many observers have set out for it.  Next, we move on to the topic of universal banking. This is the idea that a central bank would open its balance sheet to anyone, including households and non-financial businesses. Doing so would solve the bank run problem and reduce the probability of a financial crisis. There are already movements in that direction with int...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Claudio Borio. Claudio is the director of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and has been at the BIS in various roles since 1987. Previously, he was an economist with the OECD. Claudio is the author of numerous publications in the fields of monetary policy, banking, finance and issues related to financial stability. He is a leading voice on macroprudential regulation as well on international monetary stability issues. Claudio joined me to talk about these and other issues. We began our conversation by considering what it is like to work at the BIS, the banks for central banks. We then segue to a discussion on the period leading up to the Great  Recession, a time when the BIS was one of the few institutions warning about the credit and housing boom. How did they get it right when so many central banks got it wrong? One answer is the BIS perspective on macroeconomics goes beyond the...

  My latest Macro Musing podcast is with Andrew Levin. Andy is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and previously served two decades as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board, including two years as a special adviser to Chairman Ben Bernanke and Vice Chair Janet Yellen. Andy, in short, has a deep understanding of the history and workings of the Board of Governors and the FOMC . During his time as a special adviser he helped spearhead the advent of the FOMC press conference, the Summary of Economic Projections, and the now infamous dot plot graph. He also was involved with the FOMC's official adoption of its 2 percent inflation target. Andy discusses these developments with me and how he would like to see them further refined.  We also discussed what happened in 2008. The economy was contracting and yet for much of the year the Fed was signalling it was worried about inflation and wanted to raise rates. Specifically, beginning around April 2008 the mar...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Morgan Ricks. Morgan is a law professor at Vanderbilt University where he specializes in financial regulation. Between 2009 and 2010, he was a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department where  he dealt with financial stability initiatives and capital markets policies related to the financial crisis. Before joining the Treasury Department, Morgan was a risk-arbitrage trader at Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund. He previously served as a vice president in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch & Co., where he specialized in strategic and capital-raising transactions for financial services companies. Morgan is also the author of a new book “ The Money Problem: Rethinking Financial Regulation ”. He joined me to discuss his new book and its implications for policy. His book is timely and adds some needed perspective to understanding the Great Recession. I happened to review his book for Nati...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Hugh Rockoff. Hugh is a professor of economics at Rutgers University and has done extensive work on U.S. economic history. He is the coauthor of the popular textbook “ History of the American Economy ” and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic History and Explorations in Economic History.   Hugh joined me for a fascinating conversation on U.S. monetary history. First, we discuss the idea of an optimal currency area (OCA) and consider how long it took the United States to become one. Hugh makes the case  that it took about 150 years for the United States to become an OCA. As he notes, this does not bode well for the Eurozone.  Second, we talked about the first two central banks of the United States, the 'free-banking' period, the monetary developments during the Civil War, and the flawed National banking system that emerged after the war. Third, we covered one of the more under...

My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Doug Irwin. Doug is a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former staff member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors. Doug also served as an economist at the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Doug is one of the leading experts on trade economics and has published widely on the topic, in both journals and books. His books include Free Trade Under Fire , Against the Tide, an Intellectual History of Free Trade, and Peddling Protectionism: Smooth-Hawley and the Great Depression . Doug is currently working on The Battle Over U.S. Trade Policy a Historical Look at U.S. Trade Policy Since the Founding of the Country and has also researched the role the interwar gold standard played during the Great Depression.  Doug joined me for a fascinating conversation on trade. We began the show by reviewing the main arguments for free trade and why it s...

  My latest Macro Musings podcast is with Nick Rowe. Nick is a professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, a member of the CD Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council, and part of the Centre for Monetary and Financial Economics at Carleton University. Nick is well-known for his writing on monetary economics at the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog.  Nick joins the show for a discussion of monetary economics. We talk about what makes macroeconomics fundamentally different than microeconomics. Nick argues that for short-run macroeconomics the key distinction is money, the one asset on every market. He notes that if you want to disrupt every market all you need to do is disrupt the demand for or supply of money. The potential for monetary disequilibrium, he argues, is at the heart of short-run macroeconomics. We also discuss the difference between money created by banks (inside money) and money created by central banks (outside money). More importantly,...