Sebastian Mallaby is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Mallaby contributes to a variety of publications, including Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, where he spent two years as a contributing editor. He’s the author of many of my favorite business books of all time including The Power Law on the history of Venture Capital, More Money Than God on the history of Hedge Funds, and The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, which is one of my favorite biographies ever in any category.

Episode transcript

Timestamps

(0:00:00) Intro

(0:00:57) Business journalism

(0:04:11) Journalists as investors

(0:06:24) Most misunderstood part of the economy

(0:07:34) EMH

(0:11:49) Private v public markets

(0:17:27) Liquidity premium

(0:20:13) New asset management models

(0:26:12) Investor specialization

(0:37:42) Firm culture vs outlier talent

(0:41:00) Sequoia and FTX

(0:44:40) Meme stocks

(0:45:56) VC vs hedge funds

(0:50:38) Decision making at the Fed

(0:57:22) Evolution of the Fed

(1:01:34) Powell

(1:05:39) The Fed’s political independence

(1:07:13) History, Marx, Carlyle

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