Jeff spoke with John Ikenberry, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, on the liberal international order and its discontents. We spoke about the themes in Professor Ikenberry's most recent book is titled "A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order", including not only the crises (plural) of global order, but sources of resiliency.

Jeff Young spoke with Hal Scott, Emeritus Nomura Professor of International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School. Hal is an expert on bank and capital markets regulation, and testified on Feb 15, 2024 before the House Committee on Financial Services on the "lender of last resort" function. We discussed the recent US regional bank failures and their lessons; whether they can happen again; and how the Fed's monetary policy could possibly be affected by financial system issues.

In this podcast, Jeff Young speaks with Mr. Oki Matsumoto. Oki is the founder and Chairman of Monex Inc., which was the first online Japanese brokerage. In 2018 Monex acquired Coincheck, one of Japan’s biggest crypto brokerages, and it has also branched out into other ventures including Japan Catalyst, an investment advisory arm, to pursue investment returns through engagement with listed companies to stimulate Japanese capital markets. He has also served as an outside director for many listed companies, including MasterCard, and is a Vice Chair of Human Rights Watch, and he has served as Financial Counsel to the Prime Minister. We discussed Japanese Capitalism, crypto, and the outlook for Japanese markets in 2024. 

Jeff Young spoke with Francesco Giavazzi, Professor of Economics at Bocconi University, and regular visiting Professor at MIT. Dr. Giavazzi was most recently the Economics Advisor to Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi during his government, where he worked on structural reform, Italy's response to covid-19, and government efforts to combat inflation.

Jeff Young spoke with Masazumi Wakatabe, former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, and current Professor of Economics at Waseda University, Japan. Mr. Wakatabe was one of the key architects of the Bank of Japan's "Quantitative and Qualitative Easing" (QQE) policy, which has helped raised Japan's inflation rate to the Bank's target (whether that is "sustainable" remains to be seen). We spoke about inflation, wages, how and when the Bank might exit its QQE and "Yield Curve Control" policy, and how can Japanese restaurants offer JPY300 glasses of wine.

Jeff Young spoke with Emily Parker, Executive Director of Global Content at CoinDesk. Emily leads CoinDesk’s global expansion, anchors CoinDesk TV’s flagship show, “First Mover”, and analyzes crypto developments world-wide. She recently spent time in Japan, and wrote an article titled “Japan Embraces Web3 As Global Regulators Grow Wary of Crypto”

Jeff Young spoke with Yasu Ota, Senior Writer, Nikkei Newspaper and author of "Semiconductor Geopolitics Toward the Year 2030: Who Will Control This Strategic Asset". In this book, Mr. Ota's goal is to "look at world and international politics

Jeff Young spoke with Bill Dudley, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Vice Chair, Federal Open Market Committee, 2009-2018. We covered issues related to the inflation surge, the Fed's "flexible average inflation targeting" framework, crypto, a Fed "pivot", and what markets get wrong about the Fed

Jeff Young spoke with Hiroshi Nakaso, Chairman of the Institute, Daiwa Institute of Research, and former Deputy Governor, Bank of Japan, 2013-2018. We covered issues related to the surprising acceleration of inflation and monetary policy, the possibility of "deglobalization" in the context of the war in Ukraine, and the challenges and opportunities of "transition finance" for decarbonization in Japan and the Asian region.

Jeff Young spoke with Jim Cowie, DeepMacro co-founder and Chief Data Scientist. You know him for his work on atmospheric pollution and industrial production, social media and election forecasting, economic signals from mobile phone location data, and our ever-present global macro and market "Regime" indicator, but before helping to start DeepMacro, Jim had founded a company that specialized in the analysis of the global internet and its economic implications. Jim shared this thoughts, and discussed the views of the community that manages the global internet, on the cyber war in Ukraine.