Today on the Brief:
- Better news in the jobless claims this week
- A new bitcoin adoption cycle?
- A check in on Lebanon
Our main conversation is with Dr. George Selgin.
Dr. Selgin is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives as well as Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia.
In this eye-opening conversation, he and NLW go deep on the history, present and future of central banks, including:
- Why the Scottish and Canadian banking systems in the 19th century that central banks aren’t a prerequisite for stability
- Why the USA’s “free banking” system wasn’t free at all
- Why the instability in the late 19th century US banking system was caused by regulation, not the lack of a Fed
- Why the Fed’s first decades were a disaster
- Why the Fed gets more power when it underperforms
- The problems with the Fed’s response to 2008
- What lessons the Fed could have but didn’t learn between the Great Financial Crisis and COVID-19
Find our guest online
Website: Alt-M.org
Twitter: @GeorgeSelgin
