Political Scientist Brendan Doherty has a new book that dives into the ways that presidents have raised money for themselves, their parties, and other elected officials over the past six decades. Doherty is an expert on campaign fundraising, especially by presidents, and Fundraiser in Chief: Presidents and the Politics of Campaign Cash (UP of Kansas, 2023) continues the research he has been doing in this area within political science. The overarching thesis of Doherty’s work in Fundraiser in Chi...
Nov 13, 2023•51 min•Ep. 685
Firms and entrepreneurs were key drivers of the globalisation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This thesis investigates commodity networks, foreign banking and business networks, as three manifestations of the first global economy, in Egypt. The country was integrated into the world economy by exporting cotton, importing foreign capital, and hosting a large foreign community. The thesis shows that the Egyptian cotton network was sophisticated as market participants were spat...
Nov 08, 2023•32 min•Ep. 85
What do the histories of currency and monetary policy tell us about societies at large, political structures, and cultures? Ekaterina Pravilova and Rebecca Spang tackle these questions, respectively, in two important books that examine the history of the Russian ruble from the time of Catherine the Great through the Soviet period, and the history of money during the time of time of the French Revolution. Their conversation delves not only into the past, but into the economic theories and assumpt...
Nov 08, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 86
In 2021 cryptocurrency went mainstream. Giant investment funds were buying it, celebrities like Tom Brady endorsed it, and TV ads hailed it as the future of money. Hardly anyone knew how it worked—but why bother with the particulars when everyone was making a fortune from Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or some other bizarrely named “digital asset”? As he observed this frenzy, investigative reporter Zeke Faux had a nagging question: Was it all just a confidence game of epic proportions? What started as cur...
Nov 04, 2023•52 min
Luke Froeb joins the podcast to talk about his career in economics, what it's like to be the chief economist at the FTC and DOJ antitrust division, how these agencies make decisions about merger cases, the history of the Chicago School consumer welfare standard and the types of analytical tools and modeling that underlies the approach, along with the rise of the New Brandeisians and their failures thus far. Jon Hartley is an economics researcher with interests in international macroeconomics, fi...
Nov 04, 2023•1 hr•Ep. 25
Recent scholarship in organisation studies has begun to address how organisations perceive and use their history. However, how organisations preserve and access their history, and how this affects how they are able to use their history is less researched. This thesis investigates how Barclays Group Archives (BGA) contribute to Barclays PLC delivering its strategic objectives. It asks, how does BGA, as a specific unit of the organisation, facilitate the delivery of Barclays PLC's strategic object...
Oct 17, 2023•42 min•Ep. 142
"Within our mandate, the [European Central Bank] is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough". With those three words delivered in London on 26 July 2012, Mario Draghi - the ECB's president from 2011-2019 - stopped a contagious collapse of Europe's common currency after just one decade. Jana Randow and Alessandro Speciale write in Mario Draghi: The True Story of the Man Who Saved the Euro (Rizzoli, 2019): “So simple a phrase, delivered at the right ti...
Oct 14, 2023•56 min•Ep. 20
Jon Hartley interviewed Rob Arnott, founder and chairman of Research Affiliates, at the Economic Club of Miami on December 3, 2022. Topics discussed include the recent rise of inflation, macroeconomics, capital market returns, value versus growth stocks, factor timing, and index investing among many other topics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance
Oct 11, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 8
Mark Calabria (Former FHFA Director and Cato Senior Advisor) joins the podcast to discuss his tenure as director of the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency), his legacy of creating a capital rule for the GSEs which remains in place, financial regulation in wake of the global financial crisis, as well as fiscal and monetary policy amid the recent surge in inflation following the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premi...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 6
Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket. Wherever you look, money is being re-placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new kinds of money-like things: phone credit, shares, gift vouchers, game tokens, customer data--the list goes on. But what does it mean when online platforms become the new banks? What new types of control and discrimination emerge when money is tied to specific apps or actions, politics or identities? Tokens opens up this new and expanding world. Expl...
Oct 08, 2023•49 min•Ep. 140
Milton Friedman student and University of Chicago-trained monetary economist Warren Coats (Johns Hopkins fellow, former IMF economist and central bank advisor to over 20 countries) speaks about his beginnings as an economist as PhD student of Milton Friedman's at the University of Chicago, his 30 year career at the IMF leading central bank technical assistance developing currencies and monetary policy in countries ranging from post-USSR Eastern Europe, post-conflict Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 3
A riveting exposé of medical debt collection in America -- and the profound financial and physical costs eroding patient trust in medicine For the crime of falling sick without wealth, Americans today face lawsuits, wage garnishment, home foreclosure, and even jail time. Yet who really profits from aggressive medical debt collection? And how does this predatory system affect patients and doctors responsible for their care? Your Money Or Your Life: Debt Collection in American Medicine (Oxford UP,...
Sep 17, 2023•35 min•Ep. 164
Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities....
Sep 12, 2023•34 min•Ep. 109
How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s going on underground and on the sea bed. It turns out what goes on down there is a significant source of US power – which has been documented by Henry Farrell in his co-authored book (with Abraham Newman), Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt, 2023). Listen to him describe it all with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Benn...
Aug 12, 2023•52 min•Ep. 73
The practice of international development continues to change as more is understood about what works. A shift from a deficit or problem-solving approach to a strengths-based approach is a significant reframing for international development. A strengths-based approach aims to reveal assets, strengths or what is working within an individual, group, community or organization, then uses these strengths as a way to achieve change and preferred futures. Reframing Aid: A Strengths-Based Approach for In...
Aug 10, 2023•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 139
Why does the financial sector matter? In How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance (Bristol UP, 2023), Philip Roscoe, a Professor of Management at the University of St Andrews, explores the history of the London Stock Exchange as part of a broader examination of the role of finance in the modern world. Richly detailed, including personal reflections as well as interviews and historical analysis, the book covers the technologies, personalities, and key events that hav...
Aug 07, 2023•40 min•Ep. 404
The rise of the global financial industry is treated by many economists as a critical component of the rise of neoliberalism. What few address is the role of the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo and the 1979 Oil Shock in making modern financialization possible. Ryan C. Smith's book The Real Oil Shock: How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) demonstrates how the dramatic transfer of wealth from the industrialized, capitalist world to OPEC’s members triggered by the Oil Embarg...
Aug 06, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 81
In Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (Melville House, 2023), Mike Rothschild delves into the history of the conspiracy industry around the Rothschild family—from the "pamphlet wars" of Paris in the 1840s to the dankest pits of the internet today. Journalist and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, who isn't related to the family, sorts out myth from reality to find the truth about these conspiracy theories and their spreaders. Who were the Rothschilds...
Aug 06, 2023•49 min•Ep. 423
Nicholas Lemann is a staff writer at the New Yorker and a professor of journalism at Columbia. He is the author of four books, the most recent of which is Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream (FSG, 2019). Lemann spoke at the Institute about Transaction Man in 2019. Over the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage t...
Aug 02, 2023•50 min•Ep. 62
The World Economic Forum has become the bugbear of the right-wing in Canada, and beyond. Conspiracies swirl about how this shadowy, globalist cabal wants us to live in pods, eat bugs, and “own nothing, but be happy.” These may be mere conspiracy theory and faux populism, but there are many things wrong with the WEF. On this episode, we examine the shifting political discourse surrounding our global financial elites. How can the left operate in this ideologically confusing moment? First, we take ...
Jul 28, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 59
The twentieth century was the managerial century in the United States. An organizational transformation, from entrepreneurial to managerial capitalism, brought forth what became a dominant narrative: that administrative coordination by trained professional managers is essential to the efficient running of organizations both public and private. And yet if managerialism was the apotheosis of administrative efficiency, why did both its practice and the accompanying narrative lie in ruins by the end...
Jul 27, 2023•46 min•Ep. 80
Is Thomas Piketty the world’s most famous economic historian ? A superstar enemy of plutocratic capitalism who wrote a pathbreaking bestseller, Capital in the 21st Century? Or simply a debonair and generous French intellectual happy to talk redistributive justice? Join this 2020 conversation with John and Adaner Usmani (star of RTB’s episode 44: Racism as idea, Racism as Power Relation) to find out. Why did we invite him? John thinks nobody is better than Piketty at mapping and explaining the na...
Jul 20, 2023•50 min•Ep. 109
In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black employee without cause. Flitter had been searching for a way to investigate the deep-rooted racism in the American financial industry, and that one tip lit the sparkplug for a three-year journey through the shocking yet normalized corruption in our financial institutions. Examining local insurance agencies and corporate titans like JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo and reveals the practices that have kept the ra...
Jul 11, 2023•58 min•Ep. 299
Our Recall this Buck series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. We began by focusing on the rise of capitalism, the Bank of England, and how an explosion of liquidity changed everything. We were lucky to do so, just before the Pandemic struck, with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School, who recently published Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capital...
Jul 05, 2023•47 min•Ep. 108
Investors in stocks are faced with two major problems: How to find and interpret the most useful data from company accounts. How to whittle down the list of thousands of public companies into a smaller pool of candidates for further research. In Four Ways to Beat the Market: A Practical Guide to Stock-Screening Strategies to Help You Pick Winning Shares (Harriman House, 2023), experienced financial journalist Algy Hall provides the solution to both problems and helps investors in their quest to ...
Jun 28, 2023•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 51
In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country’s geopolitical preeminence, greatl...
Jun 21, 2023•55 min•Ep. 50
This is not a typical investment book. It is an experiential guide on cultivating the mindset and behavior necessary to weather inherently uncertain and unpredictable markets. It doesn't just tell you how to invest but how to think better about investing. Referencing studies on psychology, decision making, and investment behavior, Jennings provides a no-nonsense analysis of the financial markets and a road map to navigating its inevitable twists and turns. Jennings uses mental models to create ...
Jun 21, 2023•35 min•Ep. 27
By providing capital to back the ideas and efforts of others, venture capitalists can make absurd amounts of money. But there is another way of looking at it – venture capitalists take huge risks and produce great benefits. Many of the companies we rely on today began with a punt by a venture capitalist. Sebastian Mallaby discusses venture capitalists with Owen Bennett Jones. Mallaby is the author of The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future (Penguin, 2022) among other book...
Jun 20, 2023•39 min•Ep. 66
Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines (Duke UP, 2022) investigates the ways in which racial and class hierarchies shaped the monetary policy and banking systems in the Philippines. Combining historical research and normative arguments calling for unconditional decolonization, Allan E. S. Lumba advances a powerful account of how the logics and practices of racial capitalism advanced the United States’ ‘counter-decolonization’ efforts in the Phili...
Jun 15, 2023•42 min•Ep. 121
The eighteenth-century Bank of England was an institution that operated for the benefit of its shareholders--and yet came to be considered, as Adam Smith described it, "a great engine of state." In Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England (Princeton UP, 2023), Anne Murphy explores how this private organization became the guardian of the public credit upon which Britain's economic and geopolitical power was based. Drawing on the voluminous and detailed minute ...
Jun 08, 2023•51 min•Ep. 76
