Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff

Glenn is an absolutely brilliant economist and a public intellectual extraordinaire. In addition, Glenn is the pioneer of podcasting by academic economists. Glenn's remarkable podcast -- The Glenn Show -- debuted in 2008.

In this episode of Economics Matters -- the Podcast, I ask Glenn to talk about the Glenn Show, including the topics and guests he's had during the show's now almost two-decade run. But as you'll he...

Martin Wolf is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded Commander of the British Empire in 2000 "for services to financial journalism". This is Martin's third appearance on Economics Matters -- the Podcast. Martin's 2023 book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, warned that liberal democracy was in recession, with authoritarianism on the rise. Two years later his dark vision has ...

Are we about to have another financial meltdown or at least a major crash? Is this the time to get liquid and stay poised to buy low rather than lose high? Please let one of the world's top financial guru's, John Rutledge, provide his deeply informed sense of the current financial system.

John focuses on times the economy is out of wack -- far from equilibrium is his language.  He is Chief Investment Strategist and a member...

President Trump's interest is largely self interest. According to The NY Times, he has personally pocketed $1.4 billion over the past 12 months. While not stuffing his pockets and those of his family, he has transformed our "shining city upon a hill" into a quasi-fascist state, sold out our allies, upended the rule of law, deployed a private army that murders American citizens in broad daylight, orchestrated political...

Paulo Nogueira Batista is one of Brazil’s most prominent, influential, and instrumental economists. Paulo was vice president of the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS in Shanghai, from 2015 to 2017, and Executive Director at the IMF for Brazil and 10 other countries in Washington, from 2007 through 2015. 

Paulo, as you'll hear/see, and as his bio clearly documents, is a sober, sophisticated, accomplished global inte...

Ciff Winston is back on Economics Matters. He's also just out with an impressive new book -- Market Corrections NotGovernment Interventions: A Path to Improve the US Economy. 

The book is a devastating critique of government policy failures -- policies that the private sector had to ultimately overcome or sidestep. Cliff joins us precisely one year after our podcast on Biden's infrastructure bill, which was passed with great...

Innovation is the hot sauce of economic progress. Trevor Chandler is one of the hottest inventors on the planet. Whether it's inventing Covid detection masks, AI-driven portable disease-detection machines, or robotic AI-guided robotic sensors, Trevor is a whirlwind of discovery and practical implementation.

Join me in this fascinating and highly entertaining interview with Trevor Chandler. You'll meet his robots, learn abou...

John Llewellyn, Lehman's Former Chief Economist, Head of Independent-Economics, and Leading Global Analyst,Talks Today's and Tomorrow's Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

John, as you'll quickly learn from this terrific podcast, has seen more and knows more about the global economy, regional economies, and geopolitics than virtually all of the world's top finance and economics ministers as well as treasury secretaries. John founded Indepe...

Dan is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years each in private practice, and at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he moved to NYU in 1995. In 2023, he received ...

With the leading ten AI companies comprising one third of the value of the S&P and none showing a profit plus the threat they pose to our jobs, let alone humanity, we best keep careful track of the industry. My former graduate student, Seth Benzell, is one of our nation's top AI experts. Seth discusses AI's so-called scaling law, the problem of too little data to fit the industry's parameters mystically being cured ...

Orlando Patterson is simply mesmerizing. We all take "freedom" for granted. But Orlando has studied what it is and isn't -- now and across the millenia. The result of this immensely deep as well as deeply fascinating scholarship is a sober take on what we take for granted -- that freedom is clear cut, fundamental, universal, and here to stay. Orlando sets us straight, not based on opinion but based on decades of profo...

I'm not a big fan of investment advisors. Economics teaches us that not everyone can beat the market. Yet, there are tens of thousands advisors out there who will tell you that they and they alone have the secret sauce. Actually, economics teaches us that no one can beat the market unless they have inside information. But economics also tells us how to keep the market from beating you -- by taking risk, but limiting your downsi...

Steve Laffey is a true American rages-to-riches success story. But Steve took the biblical saying, "to those who have much is owed," fully to heart. After a highly successful career in banking, Steve returned to run for mayor in his birthplace -- Cranston, Rhode Island, taking it from bankruptcy to solvency and growth. His remarkable story is conveyed in this Wikipedia entry. This is Steve's 4th appearance on Economic...

I've been a huge fan of Holman Jenkins for years. His columns are deeply insightful and fun -- skewering the left and the right in equal measure. I found our conversation remarkably calming. Holman is a true student of history, so when he says this too will pass, it's particularly reassuring. Many columnists come and go. But Holman has been writing for and guiding the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal for a third of...

President Trump's on again, off again tariff mania is, well, choose your adjective. From one day to the next, imported products, be they pharmaceuticals, kitchen cabinets, lumber, or foreign movies, are being tariffed at massive rates.

Brazilian products are facing 50 percent tariffs because Brazil isn't treating recently convicted former Brazilian President, Bolsonaro, to the President's liking, and other countries are now locked ...

Andrew Fesiak rejoins me on Economics Matters. He addresses these questions and more: 

• Is Russia winning?
• Is Ukraine Short on Manpower?
• Is Trump selling out Ukraine and NATO by deed, if not word?
• Can Ukraine even up the sides with its new Flamingo cruise missile?
• What did the US refusal to join other NATO members in shooting down the Russian drone incursion in Poland tell us?
• Is Ukraine now exporting drones?
• Is Russia testing NA...

Back in May, Moody's joined the other two major U.S. debt-rating companies, S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Group, in downgrading US government debt. No surprise. Federal debt was close to 30 percent of GDP a quarter Century back. Today it's close to 100 percent and projected to exceed 150 percent by mid Century. No one is better positioned to discuss our nation's fiscal condition than David Levey.

David spent almost 19 years serv...

Peter Coy has been writing about economics for decades -- for the Associated Press, BusinessWeek, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. Peter is currently a freelance columnist. His terrific substack is petercoy.substack.com.

I consider Peter our nation's top economics journalist. Unlike almost all other economics commentators, Peter does his homework. He reads academic economists' writings extensively. He reads them carefully...

Ignazio Visco is a superb economist and central banker. He should be everyone's choice for the next President of the European Central Bank. Italy has a bad economic rap among those with a cursory knowledge of its fiscal condition and financial system. In fact, it's ranked as the most fiscally sustainable of all major EU countries and has one of the world's safest banking systems. The former is thanks to relatively small...