Economics & Beyond with Rob Johnson (Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET))

Nancy MacLean, history professor at Duke University, talks about the ways in which neoliberal economic icon Milton Friedman collaborated with segregationists and with right-wing billionaires in the pursuit of his goal of privatizing public education.

Adam Tooze, director of Columbia University's European Institute, discusses his new book with Rob Johnson.

Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media and author of the book, What's the Future?, talks about how new technology can either be considered a scapegoat or a mirror and what this means for our future.

Author and peace activist Norman Solomon talks about the double standards in US foreign policy that have smoothed the path for Russia's inexcusable invasion of Ukraine. The role of the military-industrial-complex in the US is one of the main reasons we lack a single standard for the use of military force and human rights, says Solomon.

Geoff Mann, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University and co-author of the book, Climate Leviathan, discusses the authoritarian dangers ahead, as the world tried to cope with climate change, and how all institutions, including central banking, need to evolve so they address the problem adequately.

John Fullerton, the Founder of the Capital Institute, discusses the urgent need for a new paradigm in economic thinking, modeled on living systems instead of Newtonian physics, which he calls regenerative economics.

Simon Johnson, the co-author of the just-released book Power and Progress (co-authored with Daron Acemoglu), discusses the book, what new technologies hold in store for us, and how societies might better manage and govern them.

Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, talks about the many ways in which the US economic system has become rigged to favor the richest.

Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf discusses his just-released book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, which explores the reasons why Liberal democracy is threatened by authoritarianism and what needs to be done to resurrect democratic capitalism.

Link to the book

In a replay of INET Live's webinar, following the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last December, Richard Kozul-Wright of UNCTAD, Patrick Bond of the University of Johannesburg, and author Maude Barlow discuss the disproportionate impact climate change has on the developing world and the ways to best address it.

Prolific author and philosopher Ervin Laszlo discusses his most recent books, in which he outlines how the latest discoveries in science converge with spiritual insights and point to the ways in which society might evolve in ways that will help overcome contemporary crises.

INET at the Trento Economics Festival 2: A dialogue between Jayati Ghosh, Rohinton Medhora, Joseph E. Stiglitz, coordinated by Robert Johnson

The world won’t emerge from the pandemic until the pandemic is controlled everywhere, and this is a special concern because of the new mutations that are likely to arise where the disease is running its course. So too, the world won’t have a robust economic recovery until at least most of the world is on the course to prosperity. Global growth is far more muted now than then, and inward-looking policies in some of the nations where growth has been restored have resulted in an increase in their trade surplus, attenuating the global impact of their recovery.

INET at the Trento Economics Festival 1: A dialogue between Mark Carney and William Janeway, coordinated by Robert Johnson

Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity; systemic racism; health and economic crises from a global pandemic; mistrust of experts; the existential threat of climate change; deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise. These fundamental problems and others like them stem from a common crisis in values.

World Ocean Observatory founder Peter Neill talks about the dire emergency in which the world’s oceans currently find themselves in and what must be done to save them.

Economics Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton discusses his latest book, Economics in America, which takes an autobiographical approach to how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our time—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation’s uniquely disastrous health care system.

A Bank for International Settlements study says 60+ trillion dollars of off-the-books currency swaps could be a profound, systematic risk. Rob Johnson joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news.

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, a giant investment bank with a storied history, filed for bankruptcy. The shock was profound; world markets melted down.  

Over the next few days, one financial behemoth after another, including American International Group (AIG), Washington Mutual, and Wachovia collapsed. The crown jewels of Wall Street – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – slid toward the abyss. The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and other regulators were forced to step in, sometimes in conjunction with famous private investors, to rescue the system. The government in effect nationalized AIG and, after two cliffhanging votes in Congress, it directly injected capital into leading private banks. 

Ever since then, debates have raged about why the authorities – the Fed and the Treasury -- allowed Lehman to go broke, after earlier helping to salvage a series of other institutions. 

In this Podcast, INET President Robert Johnson and INET Research Director Thomas Ferguson review those dramatic events. They also draw disquieting parallels between the Lehman debacle and more recent episodes of financial deregulation, including recent controversies over crypto and private equity.  

Ajay Chhibber, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Economic Policy, George Washington University, and India's first Director General of Independent Evaluation with the status of Minister of State in 2013-14, discusses his co-authored book, Unshackling India, about what needs to happen for India's economy to take off.

The tradition of abandoning our elderly populations needs to end. Sarita Mohanty talks with Rob Johnson about her work at the SCAN Foundation, and the critical importance of combating "ageism" to strengthening our society. Learn more: https://www.thescanfoundation.org/

Steven Herrmann, Jungian psychoanalyst and author of the books, William James and C. G. Jung and of William Everson: The Shaman’s Call, among others, engages in a wide-ranging conversation about finding one's calling, the poet William Everson, and the importance of dreams.

Referenced during the podcast: Robinson Jeffers on Moral Beauty, the Interconnectedness of the Universe, and the Key to Peace of Mind by Maria Popova

Yale Law School Fellow Stephen Roach, discusses his just-released book, Accidental Conflict. Roach explores how much of the adversarial nationalist rhetoric in both China and the USA is dangerously misguided and more a reflection of each nation’s fears and vulnerabilities than a credible assessment of the risks they face.

"I was considering what I was going to do, [and] what I decided I could not do, was stay within the confines of mainstream academic economics." Rob Johnson talks with INET Co-Founder Bill Janeway about his exciting new project at Cambridge University.

Peter Barnes, the entrepreneur and author of the recently published book, Ours: The Case for Universal Property, talks about how new conceptions of property - a universal commons - could fundamentally transform capitalism to make it more ecologically and socially sustainable.

Activist and poet John Sinclair and Rob Johnson discuss the early days of the counterculture, Sinclair's role in MC5, and the transformation of music from art to commodity when the music industry’s commercial power blossomed in the early 1970s.

FT columnist and associate editor Rana Foroohar discusses how the disruptions and excessive complexity of digital markets are benefitting the powerful and why we need clear new values and ground rules for these markets as we enter the post-pandemic landscape.

Historians Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) and Erik Conway (Caltech) talk to Rob about their just-released book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.

Rohinton Medhora (INET's Board Chair, member of our Commission on Global Economic Transformation, and Distinguished Fellow at CIGI) discusses global social healing, India and the G20 with INET President Rob Johnson.

Professor Glenn Hubbard, professor of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School, talks about his just-released book, The Wall and the Bridge: Fear and Opportunity in Disruption’s Wake, and how society and policymakers can help those who are left behind in the wake of today's competitive world.

Tito Boeri, professor of economics at Bocconi University, Milan, and Scientific Director of the Trento Economics Festival (June 3-6), talks about the meaning behind this year's festival topic, The Return of the State. INET is organizing several panels at the festival this year featuring Mark Carney, Joe Stiglitz, Mike Spence, and Jayati Ghosh. 

INET at the Trento Economics Festival

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Kenneth Cukier, senior editor at The Economist and co-author of the book Framers, talks about how mental models, or frames, enable humanity to find the best way through a forest of looming problems.

Terrence McNally, the host of the podcast Free Forum: A World that just Might Work, interviews Rob about the current state of the world and what needs to happen for us to get out of the mess in which we find ourselves.

Alex Thaler, the CEO of the software platform Iconik, and Iconik advisor Adam Cummings discuss how the platform helps shareholders create personalized voting profiles for shareholder meetings, allowing them to increase their influence over companies and give management a clearer awareness of investor goals without abrupt and embarrassing conflict.

Iconik website: https://www.iconikapp.com/

Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Kishore Mahbubani, discusses his latest book, The Asian 21st Century, in which he relates US decline to the rise of plutocracy and Asia's renewed rise - after having fallen behind in the last 200 years - to its growing sense of dynamism, optimism, and diversity.

This is the 200th episode of the podcast Economics and Beyond with Rob Johnson.

World-renowned economist and inequality researcher Thomas Piketty in conversation with Rob Johnson, about Piketty’s just-released book, A Brief History of Equality.

Oxfam's Economic Justice Director, Nabil Ahmed, and Oxfam International's Inequality Policy & Advocacy Lead, Max Lawson, discuss their latest Global Inequality Report, which highlights the accelerating pace at which the world's billionaires have increased their wealth exponentially in recent years. They also discuss the ways in which governments can reverse this trend through taxation.

Anand Giridharadas, writer and author of the book, Winners Take All, discusses the multiple crises we are currently facing, how they could provide an impetus for real change, and how US and global elites are failing to live up to the challenge.

Can big data strengthen global inclusivity and trust? Information exchange has historically been the most powerful tool at humanity's disposal, so what makes data different? Dr. Long Chen (Luohan Academy) discusses his latest report "Understanding Big Data: Data Calculus In The Digital Era" which is available for download at https://www.luohanacademy.com/researc...

We are in the midst of another global transformation, but this time we might have the tools to get it right.

Cambridge University's American History professor Gary Gerstle discusses his most recent book, about how the neoliberal order came about, why it is faltering, and the indeterminacy of what comes next.

Isabella Weber, assistant professor of economics at UMass Amherst, discusses her new book on how China managed its transition from central planning to markets

Yuen Yuen Ang, political science professor at the University of Michigan and author of the book, China's Gilded Age, argues that the US and China have more in common than we usually think and that it makes more sense to see the conflict as a clash of two gilded ages instead of a clash of civilizations.

Lori Wallach, of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, and Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at UMass Amherst, discuss how first world countries are protecting pharma companies' exorbitant profits, at the expense of vaccinating people living in the Global South and thereby also endangering everyone in the world.

INET's Research Director Thomas Ferguson talks about the research he and his collaborators Paul Jorgensen and Jie Chen conducted of the 2020 election and some of overlooked factors that were at play in that election.

Patrick Bond, sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, discusses the urgent need for climate reparations for Africa, in light of the COP26 climate summit, and why market solutions will not work to address the problems Africa is currently facing. Part 2 of 2.

Patrick Lawrence, writer and executive editor of The Scrum, analyzes the roots of US foreign policy failures, how these are reflected in the current confrontation with Russia, which can be found the US establishment's weddedness to power and to an unwillingness to see the other's perspective.

Dan Breznitz, author of the book Innovation in Real Places, Strategies for Prosperity in an Unforgiving World, and professor of public policy at the University of Toronto, talks about how innovation ought to be guided if it is to be successful in addressing our most pressing problems.

Economic historian and INET board member Richard Vague, talks about his latest book, The Illustrated Business History of the United States, which reveals a number of misconceptions and myths about the development of the US economy

University of Bonn and Sciences Po economics professor Moritz Schularick talks to Rob about the soon-to-be-released book, Leveraged, which he edited based on papers from an INET-sponsored conference. The book takes a close look at what we have learned about the costs and causes of financial fragility since 2008.

Jeff Sachs talks with Rob Johnson about US-China relations, the tragedy of modern geopolitics, and how our current race to the bottom could be reversed.

Luke Burgis, the author of the just-released book "Wanting," talks about his book, how we come to desire what we desire, and how we can transform desire so as to make the world a better place.

Financial Times columnist and author Rana Foroohar talks about her new book Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World

Rob Johnson interviewed Columbia University historian Adam Tooze in early 2020 about his work on financial history and how it relates to the Green New Deal.

Destin Jenkins, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago, discusses his book on municipal debt and its role in fostering racial capitalism in American cities.

Max Lawson, head of Oxfam International's Inequality Policy program, discusses Oxfam's latest inequality report, "Inequality Kills," which highlights the extreme growth in wealth of the billionaire class during the pandemic and how this has had a direct effect on the health and survival of the world's bottom 50%.

Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book, Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Properties in America's Black Cities, discusses the on-going problem of how real estate dynamics continue to maintain racial injustice in cities across United States, and how we need a "reparative culture" to address the problem

Rob Johnson and Steven Herrmann, an author and Jungian analyst, discuss the concept of "spiritual democracy" as explored in Herrmann's work and the writings of American poets like Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson and how their vision might inform a renewal of American democracy.

The education of the next generation of economists too often ignores the real crisis we face today: climate change, inequality, and financial instability. Sam de Muijnck and Joris Tieleman seek to address this problem in their book, Economy Studies, which outlines a practical road map for effectively connecting pluralism of core academic material to real world events, values, and the great questions of our time.

Former Fed vice chair and Princeton University economics professor Alan Blinder takes a close look at what lessons still remain to be learned in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis.

What happened to the American dream? Rob talks with David Smick about his new film and the inspiration for the project.

Princeton economics professor Markus Brunnermeier discusses his recently released book, The Resilient Society, which argues that in crisis-prone situations societal resilience is a crucial component for averting outright disaster and outlines how we might achieve that resilience.

Frank McCourt discusses his work to reinspire hope in the American experiment, and to build the framework necessary for that better tomorrow.

Boston University economic professor Perry Mehrling discusses his recently released INET book, in collaboration with Cambridge University Press, "Money and Empire," which chronicles the life of Charles P. Kindleberger and how he helped shape the emerging global dollar system.

INET Book page: Money and Empire

Nobel laureate George Akerlof and Duke University economist Rachel Kranton talk about their book, Identity Economics and the insights that the concept continues to provide for economic analysis.

UNCTAD Director Richard Kozul-Wright and Kevin Gallagher, Global Development Policy professor at Boston University, discuss their book, The Case for a New Bretton Woods. Ever since the post-war economic order was dismantled beginning in the 1980s, a re-design of the global economic order has become increasingly urgent in light of the social and ecological crises that we face.

Patrick Bond, sociology professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, discusses the urgent need for climate reparations for Africa, in light of the COP26 climate summit, and why market solutions will not work to address the problems Africa is currently facing. Part 1 of 2.

Jim Chanos, the president and founder of Kynikos Associates and well-known investment manager talks to Rob about the post-pandemic financial system, which has become more steeped in a casino culture than it has been in a very long time, and whether China's financial situation serves as an example or as a warning.

MIT economic historian Peter Temin discusses parts of his forthcoming book, focusing on the history of mass incarceration of uneducated Blacks and how it has created a permanent class of poor Black Americans

Former health insurance executive turned whistleblower and investigative journalist Wendell Potter discusses the many ways in which the private health insurance system of the US is not serving anyone well except the insurance companies' owners

Former Deputy Chairman of India's Planning Commission, Montek Ahluwalia, and Nobel Laureate Michael Spence discuss Ahluwalia's book BackStage: The Story Behind India's High Growth Years, and explore the challenges for the developing world more generally.

Climate scientist Michael Mann discusses his new book, The New Climate War, in which he outlines the many ways in which powerful interests deflect, divide, and delay, to prevent real action that would avert the climate crisis

Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for The New Yorker, discusses her latest book, Under a White Sky, which explores how technological solutions don't always lead where we think they will, especially in the face of the climate crisis.

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The Toronto Star journalist Joanna Chiu discusses her book, China Unbound: A New World Disorder, which argues that we need to go beyond the typical over-simplifications of democratic West versus autocratic China if we hope to engage China in a way that seriously addresses issues such as human rights, climate change, and economic development.

Economics Nobel Laureate Michael Spence discusses the profound changes that are rippling through the global economy as we emerge from the COVID recession, where economic growth will have to rely more on productivity gains instead of the incorporation of excess labor capacity and what this would mean for countries around the world.

Luohan Academy event referenced in the episode: Opportunities and Challenges for an Aging Society | Frontier Dialogue #9

Columbia University's renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs talks about the lessons he has learned from consulting with governments around the world, about how global problems, such as the war in Ukraine, will only be solved via efforts to understand the other side, never through force.

Prosperity Now CEO Gary Cunningham talks to Rob, in a wide-ranging discussion, about the many ways in which the pandemic has affected racial justice and injustice and how we might overcome the divisions and polarizations that we currently confront.

Corporate responsibility needs to evolve if businesses are going to rebuild trust and provide real value for society.

Financial Times columnist and US editorial board chair Gillian Tett talks about her new book, Anthro-Vision, which makes the case for how anthropological intelligence can help us make better sense of the contemporary world.

Prolific author and philosopher Ervin Laszlo discusses his most recent books, in which he outlines how the latest discoveries in science converge with spiritual insights and point to the ways in which society might evolve in ways that will help overcome contemporary crises.

Stanislav Shmelev, the director of Environment Europe Foundation in Oxford, discusses the many dimensions we need to consider when preparing our cities, businesses, and economies to the demands of ecological sustainability.

Peter Goodman, New York Times correspondent and author of the just-published book, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, talks to Rob about how inequality is not inevitable, but has been engineered through the political process by selling us a false idea of what is possible. 

In a world that increasingly promotes distraction and isolation, the ability to pay attention to each other has become ever more important. Philosopher Christian Madsbjerg talks to Rob about his new book, Look, which outlines how we can recapture our ability to pay attention.

Political economist, author, and public speaker Ann Pettifor talks about her latest book, The Case for a Green New Deal, which not only lays out the urgency for such a deal, but also proposes a roadmap for both national and global financial reform to make it possible.

Rob Johnson talks with Tim Jackson about his new book, "Post Growth: Life after Capitalism," and how we might break free of the cycle of restrictive thinking which has plagued economics, and the world.

Gisele Huff, education policy specialist and president of the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity, along with john a. powell, director of UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute, talk about the motivations and process behind the soon-to-be-released report, "Convening on Automation, Opportunity, and Belonging: Vision and Foundations for a Better Society."

MIT economic historian Peter Temin discusses his new INET-CUP book, Never Together: The Economic History of a Segregated America, in which he shows how efforts to bridge the gap between races were always undermined, resulting in constant economic hardship for Black people.

Jim Nadler, CEO of the Kroll Bond Rating Agency, discusses the profound influence that bond ratings have on shaping social and economic outcomes, how they can contribute to environmental and social responsibility, and why a new approach to bond ratings is urgently necessary.

Tiger Gao, brilliant young host of the Princeton University podcast, Policy Punchline, interviews Rob Johnson about INET's aims, the function of economics in academia, and the relationship between Silicon Valley culture and the latest technologies, among other things.

Umass Lowell Economics professor William Lazonick, outlines the history of how government policy and economic conditions contributed to the rise and fall of a Black blue-collar middle class. Part 2 takes a closer look at the role of finance and stock buybacks and what can be done to reverse the trend towards growing inequality.

INET at the Trento Economics Festival 3: A dialogue between Michael Spence and Robert Johnson

The governance of technology is a new challenge. The Recovery Plans is encouraging the digital transformation of our economies. An acceleration of technological change is bound to deeply affect labor markets and income distribution. While labor-market adaptation is likely to stave off permanent high unemployment, it cannot be counted on to prevent a sharp rise in inequality.

Brendan Ballou, talks to Rob about his forthcoming book, Plunder, about the growing harmful role of private equity in the US. Ballou is a federal prosecutor and served as Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor talk to Rob about their recently released book, Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea. The wide-ranging conversation covers the importance of solidarity in addressing the current crises of economic inequality, climate change, and democracy, emphasizing the need for collective action and social movements to bring about change, as well as the role of education and the arts in fostering a sense of community and shared identity.

Arjun Jayadev, economics professor at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India, and Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, discusses the urgency of waiving intellectual property protections for vaccines, particularly in light of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic in India and other developing countries.

Mike Spence talks with Rob Johnson about his upcoming co-authored book "Permacrisis", India and the G20, and bringing the world together to address our shared challenges. Book: "Permacrisis: A Plan to Fix a Fractured World" https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/bo... Do you feel like we’re in a permacrisis? Chances are you feel some anxiety about the state of the world. Gordon Brown, Mohamed A. El-Erian, and Michael Spence certainly did. Three of the most internationally respected and experienced thinkers of our time, these friends found their pandemic Zooms increasingly focused on a cascade of crises: sputtering growth, surging inflation, poor policy responses, an escalating climate emergency, worsening inequality, increasing nationalism, and a decline in global co-operation.

Luohan Academy's Director Chen Long discusses the academy's latest report, on the benefits of creating a "digital circular economy," which would go a long way towards reaching net zero carbon emissions and addressing the climate crisis.

Report link: https://www.luohanacademy.com/insights/bc89734b94adf00c

If we're going to address environmental catastrophe, we need to support each other on a global scale. Rob Johnson checks in with Adair Turner about his work, and practical solutions to address the climate crisis.

Umass Lowell Economics professor William Lazonick, outlines the history of how government and economic conditions favored the rise of a Black blue-collar middle class from the 1960''s to the 1970's, and how shifts in policy and in the economy caused its unmaking from the 1980's onwards.

The COVID pandemic highlighted the deepening water crisis. "Do we understand that over half the population of the world doesn't have a place to wash their hands with soap and warm water?" says water warrior Maude Barlow.