The History, Present and Future of Central Banks, Feat. George Selgin

The Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives gives an eye-opening, 200-year history of today’s most powerful economic institution.

AccessTimeIconAug 6, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. UTC
Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 9:41 a.m. UTC
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The Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives gives an eye-opening, 200-year history of today’s most powerful economic institution.

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This episode is sponsored by Crypto.comBitstamp and Nexo.io.

Today on the Brief:

  • Better news in the jobless claims this week
  • A new bitcoin adoption cycle?
  • Checking 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 show that central banks aren’t a prerequisite for stability
  • Why the U.S. “free banking” system wasn’t free at all
  • Why the instability in the late 19th century U.S. banking system was caused by regulation, not the lack of a Federal Reserve
  • 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 learned (but didn’t) between the Great Financial Crisis and COVID-19 

Find our guest online:
Website: Alt-M.org
Twitter: @GeorgeSelgin

For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, iHeartRadio or RSS.

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