Why Studying Keynes Is More Important Than Ever

Joe Weisenthal (0:08)

Hello, Odd Lots listeners, it's Joe Weisenthal. I want to let you know about something cool that's coming up on Wednesday, July 15th. Odd Lots is holding our first ever live stream event. Tracy and I will be interviewing Carson Block, founder of Muddy Waters Research. We're gonna be talking to Carson live on bloomberg.com, the terminal, Twitter, et cetera. It's gonna be 8 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, July 15th. So be sure to follow at podcast to catch the live stream of the event.

So check it out. Thanks.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (1:02)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (1:04)

So Tracy, we're still in the middle of a crisis.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

Yes, we are. Three months on, still crisis mode.

Joe Weisenthal (1:11)

You know, like one of the things we've been doing throughout this whole crisis is we've been making sure that listeners know the date that we're recording this.

And I feel like it's especially important because A, as you mentioned, it's been going on a long time. B, you're in Hong Kong and Hong Kong just had one of its worst days of new cases ever. And you guys were like the exemplars that everyone or one of the best that we're all supposed to aspire to and it's not even over there.

Tracy Alloway (1:40)

Yeah, it's pretty worrying.

One of its worst days on record, as you just mentioned, and also Tokyo had a really bad day for infections as well. So the concern is that even in countries that have done reasonably well in containing the virus so far, there is a risk for a big resurgence.

Joe Weisenthal (1:58)

Right, so the date is at least in US time, it's morning where you are, but it's July 9th, 2020 And yes, several months after this began, we are still in the thick of it. You're in Hong Kong.

I'm in Texas where everyone is aware cases are very bad. This crisis is a long way from over and it doesn't seem like there's any obvious path out as of this moment.

Tracy Alloway (2:26)

That's an accurate, if depressing description, yes.

Joe Weisenthal (2:29)

And the thing, you know, obviously we've talked about this a lot.

It's a multi-crisis crisis because there's the health crisis. There's the political credibility crisis because even if leaders want to do something or have a plan to fight the virus itself, there's the question of whether they can actually sort of get the country behind it and then of course, there's the straight up economic crisis, mass unemployment, a major slowdown in activities.

Tracy Alloway (2:57)

Yeah, and of course, all three of those different crises seem to feed off each other and make each one worse. You get this really bad feedback loop, I'd argue, as the economy worsens, people get more upset with their politicians and politicians arguably get more distracted when it comes to dealing with the health crisis and then people get more upset. It's a very bad cycle.

Joe Weisenthal (3:20)

It's a real like stress test, I feel like, on the entire system all at once. We had a conversation a while back with Adam Tooze and sort of like the everything crisis. And I think, right, as you said, like maybe there was some appetite in the US for a fairly hard lockdown policies early on, but come the summer, it's really hard. So yeah, it's a bad situation.

Tracy Alloway (3:44)

Okay, so we've set the scene, which is pretty dire. What are we talking about today?

Joe Weisenthal (3:48)

So if you're listening to the podcast, we are actually, you can view this on YouTube. We are going to be talking today with Zach Carter. He is a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. But right now, he's also a bestselling author of a new book, The Price of Peace, Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.

And I feel like in the economic crisis that we're experiencing, I think a lot of people are talking about Keynesian economics. Arguably, even more than the great financial crisis, we're seeing a sort of greater willingness on policymakers to just spend, like a pure recognition that that has to be part of the playbook, much more aggressive fiscal policy.

But it's even more. And I think one of the things that we're going to talk about with Zach is that Keynes was dedicated his life to a lot more than just spending when the economy is bad, which is how many people think of Keynesianism, but is actually many more lessons and implications of his work than just what people know him for. I think the fact that we are in this everything crisis sort of makes this a very timely conversation.