Ben Harris is vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and previously served in senior economic policy roles at the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers. Ben returns to the program to discuss why recent economic shocks have been less damaging than expected, the outlook for inflation and energy markets, whether AI can improve the U.S. fiscal outlook, why we should temper our AI optimism, how longer lifespans and higher interest rates could complicate the fiscal picture, and much more.

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Recorded on July 20th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:55 - Reasons We Were Wrong
00:11:58 - Stubborn Inflation
00:14:57 - Crude Is Not Really the Problem
00:20:12 - A Novel Sanctions Regime
00:30:35 - Temper Your AI Optimism
00:39:34 - Longer Lives, But Larger Debt
00:45:00 - AI and the Future of Interest Rates
00:49:24 - Policy Implications
00:56:26 - Outro

Bill Nelson is chief research officer and chief economist at the Bank Policy Institute and a former deputy director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board. In Bill's 11th appearance on the show, he discusses how central banks are rethinking their operating systems, the case for a smaller Fed balance sheet and more routine discount window borrowing, the revival of interbank markets, lessons from Silicon Valley Bank, and much more.

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Recorded on July 20th, 2026

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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:29 - Bill's Work with Central Banks Abroad
00:11:03 - Reducing the Fed's Balance Sheet
00:30:28 - Fed's Use of a Demand-Driven System
00:40:40 - Voluntary Reserve Target
00:54:31 - Outro

Gianluca Benigno is a professor of economics at the University of Lausanne. Previously, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an economist at the Bank of England. Gianluca returns to the program to discuss financial r-star, the changing landscape of central bank balance sheets, the unique challenges facing the Swiss National Bank, how stablecoins could affect Treasury markets and the demand for reserves, the return of nonlinear inflation, its implications for monetary policy, and much more.

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Recorded on June 22nd, 2026

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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:41 - R-Double-Star
00:04:10 - Central Bank Balance Sheets
00:09:22 - Swiss National Bank
00:32:05 - Working Paper on the Regulation of Stablecoins
00:45:41 - Inflation
00:53:19 - Outro

Barry Eichengreen is a is well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Blustein is a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal journalist who has authored several acclaimed books on global economic institutions. Brendan Greeley is a veteran journalist from the Financial Times and current PhD student at Princeton studying monetary history. They all return to the show for a special roundtable discussion where they discuss the history of dominant currencies, whether we will always end up with a single reserve currency, whether monetary sovereignty is earned or given, the question of exorbitant privilege, what there is to do about a second China Shock, the future of dollars in the digital age, and much more.

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Recorded on May 11th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:01 - On Each Author's Book

00:11:12 - Globally Dominant Currencies

00:25:37 - Single Reserve Currency

00:28:34 - Fed's Control Over Global Dollar System

00:38:39 - Exorbitant Privilege

00:46:30 - China Shock 2.0

00:49:23 - Future of the Global Dollar System

00:58:16 - Outro

David Wessel is a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings and is the director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. In David's first appearance on the show, he discusses stories of the Greenspan Fed, what is was like in Europe when the euro was adopted, the legacy of the Powell Fed, his thoughts on the great man theory, the outlook for the Kevin Warsh Fed, the ongoing challenge of Fed independence, and much more.

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Recorded on June 15th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:48 - David's Career

00:19:30 - Legacies of Fed Chairmans

00:31:51 - Kevin Warsh Fed

00:43:34 - Fed Independence

00:55:13 - Outro

Sam Lyman is the head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and formerly was a senior advisor and speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Bessent. In Sam's first appearance on the show, he discusses Secretary Bessent's secret skill, the competition in the digital payments space between the US and China, why the strategic Bitcoin reserve is important, what the future of Bitcoin holds, where things stand with the CLARITY Act, the Q Day conundrum, whether Satoshi Yakamoto is alive or dead, where Sam thinks the anti-AI sentiment is coming from, and much more.

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Recorded on May 21st, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:49 - Sam's Career

00:05:37 - Nation-States and Digital Payments

00:14:40 - Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

00:18:29 - Future of Bitcoin

00:24:27 - Bitcoin vs. Dollar-Based Stablecoins

00:38:32 - Update on the CLARITY Act

00:44:48 - Quantum Computing

00:49:34 - Satoshi Yakamoto

00:52:20 - Foreign Campaign Against AI

00:57:44 - Outro

Stephan Luck is a Financial Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In Stephan's first appearance on the show, he discusses how the 2008 Great Financial Crisis shaped his career, how he and his coauthors leverage LLMs to comb through massive amounts of historical data, what this data can teach us about responding to bank failures, what people get wrong when they try and make historical analogies to the GENIUS era, the lessons we can learn from the German hyperinflation, and much more.

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Recorded on June 1st, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:55 - Stephan's Career

00:11:21 - Bank Failures

00:28:19 - Policy Implications of Bank Failures

00:37:21 - National Banking System

00:46:30 - German Hyperinflation

00:57:06 - Outro

Barry Eichengreen is a well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. In Barry's first appearance on the show he discusses a career in untangling the world's monetary history, the origins of his new book Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto, the first uses on currencies in the 7th Century BC, the unexpected start of the dollar, how we landed on the central bank model, the dollar's rise to global reserve currency, which if any currencies as poised to take on the dollar, and much more.

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Recorded on May 27th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:17 - Barry's Books

00:10:14 - Money Beyond Borders

00:17:17 - Lydia and Greece

00:20:46 - Renaissance of Credits

00:23:36 - Spanish Silver

00:28:26 - The Emergence of Central Banks

00:38:11 - British Empire vs. Roman Empire

00:43:34 - Dollar as One of the Dominant Reserve Currencies

00:56:29 - Outro