IEA Podcast

In this IEA interview, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA, speaks to historian, veteran foreign correspondent and author Adam LeBor about the second edition of his book Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World. The conversation explores the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), perhaps the most important bank most people have never heard of. LeBor explains how the BIS was founded in 1930 by Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank and Montagu Norman of the Bank of England to handle German reparations after the First World War, and how its protection under an international treaty means Swiss law does not apply within its Basel headquarters.LeBor describes how, during the Second World War, the supposedly neutral BIS was run by an American banker, Thomas McKittrick, while it accepted looted Nazi gold and provided foreign exchange that allowed Germany to buy vital war materials such as Portuguese tungsten. He sets out how the bank served as a secret channel between the Allies and the Nazis, with McKittrick passing information to the American spymaster Allen Dulles, and why it survived calls from the US Treasury for its closure. The interview also covers the transfer of Czechoslovak gold to the Reichsbank, the presence of IG Farben chief Hermann Schmitz on the BIS board, the bank’s decades of groundwork for the euro and the European Central Bank, and why its warnings about unsustainable debt before the 2008 financial crisis went unheeded. The discussion closes with the BIS today, as a bank for central banks, a leading research institution and a meeting place for central bankers, and with the central bank digital currencies its research has made possible. LeBor sets out the risks he sees in CBDCs, from faster bank runs and the threat to civil liberties to the possibility that wholesale systems could let sanctioned states sidestep SWIFT, and argues that while the BIS has become far more open since the first edition, it should still reveal more about who attends its meetings and what they discuss.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA.This week, Kemi Badenoch’s speech to Conservative Party conference is up for discussion, from her pledge to exempt the family home from inheritance tax and raise the tax-free allowance on other assets to £1 million, to her plan to scrap the £100,000 cap on free childcare.Would a total exemption on the family home encourage wealthy people to pour their savings into ever bigger houses, and what can Spain’s wealth tax tell us about how people respond? With the country borrowing around £150 billion a year, is this really the most growth-friendly tax cut on offer, and why not relax childcare ratios instead? The discussion then turns to the latest riots in France, asking why calls for more public spending persist in a country where the state accounts for over half of GDP, and whether some riots are less about politics than spectacle. The discussion closes with Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act, from the former Future Generations Commissioner’s role in cancelling road projects to why vague but legally binding goals make it so hard to build anything in Britain.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Director General Lord Hannan of Kingsclere speaks to David Nott, President and CEO of Reason Foundation, about the philosophy behind Reason magazine and the case for individual liberty today. They discuss what distinguishes Reason's motto of "free minds and free markets", and why the magazine takes on difficult issues such as drug policy that other classical liberals often avoid.David explains his "pendulum" view of history, in which authoritarian periods give way to liberalising waves, and how Reason now reaches around 15 million views a month through short-form video. The conversation also covers the rule of law, the relationship between democracy and freedom, lessons from the pandemic, and how Covid sparked a wave of school choice reform in the United States, before closing with Lord Hannan's customary question: what would a libertarian do as emperor for a day?The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Maeve Halligan is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA.

This week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first speech to Labour Party conference is up for discussion, from his plans to change the triple lock to pay for a National Care Service, to his push for public ownership of water and energy, a new council housebuilding programme and electoral reform.

Has Burnham finally bitten the bullet on the triple lock, and can savings that only arrive by the end of the decade really pay for a care service costing billions from day one? Could anyone make a convincing case for a “new NHS” for social care, and would it mainly end up protecting inheritances at the expense of working taxpayers? The discussion then turns to Burnham’s version of post-war history, asking why the “golden age” of the 1950s and 60s saw Britain fall behind almost every other developed economy, and whether nationalisation would do anything about sewage in our rivers. The discussion closes with the Government’s housing plans, from the myth of empty homes to the claim that Right to Buy caused the housing shortage, and whether proportional representation would make politics any less divisive.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, IEA Director General Lord Hannan is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics.

This week, the proposal to replace the state pension with a system of compulsory private saving is up for discussion. Also on the agenda are the debate over the “strange death of libertarianism” and a House of Lords committee’s call to ban gambling advertising.

Could a funded pension system on the Australian or Chilean model ever survive the politics of “scrapping the state pension”? Reformers from Peter Lilley to Chile’s architects tried to reassure voters that existing entitlements were safe. The discussion then turns to Daniel McCarthy’s argument that libertarianism has run out of steam, weighing up whether free marketeers have really won the battles of the past, what has happened to the word “libertarian”, and why the fusionist alliance between free marketeers and conservatives is holding in Britain even as it breaks down in America. The discussion closes with the Lords’ case for banning gambling adverts despite the absence of any evidence of harm, and what the precautionary principle means for evidence-based policymaking.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Lord Hannan is joined by Christopher Snowdon, IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics, and Kristian Niemietz, IEA Head of Political Economy, for their regular economics and politics round-up. This episode covers the Bank of England’s decision to hold interest rates amid rising inflation, the case for and against scrapping inheritance tax and stamp duty, new government rules dictating what schools can serve for lunch, and the resurgence of Just Stop Oil protests against a backdrop of shifting public opinion on net zero.

On interest rates, the panel debate whether the Bank is right to hold steady given inflation driven largely by oil and petrol prices, and whether expectations of future rises are justified. They then turn to tax, weighing up the practical costs of inheritance tax collection against the principle of taxing unearned wealth, before broadly agreeing that stamp duty is one of the more damaging taxes to scrap first. On school food, they question the evidence behind new rules limiting pastry, breadcrumbs and processed meat, and argue the policy should be a matter for individual schools rather than national government. The conversation closes with a look at why Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protests have returned, and why net zero, once an unchallenged cross-party consensus, is now facing a growing electoral backlash as energy costs rise.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support to any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs briefing, IEA managing editor Daniel Freeman is joined by his colleague Dr Christopher Snowdon to discuss his new paper, The Capitalist Command Economy, out today. They examine how the Government increasingly directs private companies to meet political targets, on heat pumps, electric vehicles, and food reformulation, while leaving them nominally in private hands.

Snowdon explains how so-called “voluntary agreements” with industry are backed by the implicit threat of regulation, pointing to the ZEV mandate’s fines on car manufacturers and the food reformulation scheme’s sugar and calorie targets. He discusses the Government’s growing suspicion of the price mechanism, from energy bills to rent controls, and cites IEA polling showing the public wildly overestimates supermarket profit margins. The conversation also compares this system to Nazi Germany’s economic model and the FDR-era United States, before turning to post-Brexit farm subsidies and closing on why consumers, not politicians, ultimately decide what succeeds.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support to any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Maeve Halligan is joined by Managing Editor Daniel Freeman and Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon to discuss the new Chancellor’s first major speech as well as its emphasis on fiscal devolution, deregulation and “public control”. They unpack how and why nearly a million young people are now classed as not in education, employment or training, and examine new international test results showing England’s pupils holding steady while Scotland and Wales fall behind.

The conversation opens with an assessment of the Chancellor’s speech, questioning whether its talk of devolved spending pots and light-touch regulation marks a genuine shift from the previous Treasury approach or simply a change in presentation, and examining what the pledge for “public control” over industries such as water and buses would actually mean in practice given the state of the public finances. Daniel Freeman and Christopher Snowdon then turn to the findings of the ongoing review into youth unemployment, discussing why so many young people are being signed off with mental health conditions, how sickness benefit assessments have changed since the pandemic, and what reform might look like. The episode closes with a look at the 2025 PISA results, in which English pupils held their position against a backdrop of declining outcomes across most of the OECD, while Scottish and Welsh results fell sharply, and what that divergence suggests about curriculum reform and its link, or lack of one, to economic growth.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Managing Editor Daniel Freeman is joined by Julian Jessop, Economics Fellow at the IEA, to discuss his chapter in the new IEA book The Great Stagnation: Why Britain Stopped Growing. The conversation covers the impact of austerity and Brexit on Britain’s economic growth since the 2008 financial crisis, and asks how much either can really explain the slowdown.

On austerity, Julian argues that the “savage cuts” of the 2010s are largely a myth: headline public spending continued to grow in real terms through the decade, even as it fell as a share of national income. He makes the case that controlling the deficit after 2008 was necessary to avoid a bigger crisis, while acknowledging that capital spending, including on prisons, was cut further than it should have been. He also connects the tighter borrowing conditions the UK faces today, sometimes called the “idiot premium”, to concerns that the Government is not as serious about the public finances as the coalition was in the early 2010s.

On Brexit, Julian argues the overall economic data shows it was largely a non-event, with UK growth tracking similarly to France and Germany since 2016. He points instead to high energy costs as a better explanation for the UK’s underperformance, and sets out benefits from Brexit including new trade deals, lower tariffs, smarter regulation and reduced budget contributions to the EU. Asked to score austerity and Brexit out of ten for their role in Britain’s growth slowdown, Julian gives both a zero.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this week’s IEA Podcast, IEA Director General Lord Hannan is joined by Dr Kristian Niemietz, the IEA’s Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics. They discuss the sharp rise in UK borrowing costs, with ten-year gilt yields hitting their highest level since 2008, and ask when rising bond yields actually tip over into a sovereign debt crisis. The conversation covers the parallels with the 2022 mini-budget, why bond markets have become so attuned to political rhetoric, how bond markets actually work, and whether Britain and the wider world are heading for a fresh bout of inflation.

Niemietz and Snowdon also examine the causes of Britain’s economic stagnation, and challenge the argument, revived in a recent speech by Andy Burnham, that the slowdown can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher’s reforms in the 1980s. They set out why the 1980s and Major years were, by historical standards, a period of strong growth, and question what a modern “post Thatcherite” settlement actually looks like.

The discussion turns to Donald Trump’s deal securing a share of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the Netherlands’ decision to move its gold reserves from the US to the UK, and what these episodes suggest about the reliability of American alliances. They close by discussing the psychological impact of Trump’s foreign policy on the UK and its allies, the Democratic Party’s choice of presidential candidates, and whether the old guard of Reaganite conservatism looks more appealing by comparison.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.