Professor Deirdre McCloskey is one of the most interesting thinkers in economics today. In this interview, conducted at FreedomFest 2021 in Rapid City South Dakota, near Deadwood, we push past a number of frontiers and traverse an open range of topics. That’s McCloskey in a nutshell – ignore the artificial fences between academic specializations and let the conversation go where it goes. In this case it goes through such territories as: the astonishing rise in standards of living since the rise of capitalism; why capitalism shouldn’t be called capitalism; what it should be called; why Bourgeois values have enriched us (and in more ways than economically); what the difference is between virtues and values; what Christianity had to do (and didn’t have to do) with the rise of modern human betterment; why theoretical economics has been wrong to obsess over “Maximum Utility” (a sociopathic form of economic modeling); the cult of statistical significance and its addiction to the p-value, and an upcoming book on Christianity and economics. Enjoy!

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
9:40 – Why “virtues” rather than “values”?
14:09 – The meaning of Jesus being born in Bethlehem
18:54 – Eurocentric economics, why some minorities are successful
27:07 – Free speech and the rich young ruler
32:11 – A party of Liberty, politics for adults
40:16 – How art can affect politics
43:35 – Bettering Humanomics
47:48 – The new atheists
50:16 – God in Mammon
59:17 – The Bible on slavery

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Rick Graber is the CEO of the Bradley Foundation and Chairman of the Philanthropy Roundtable. He discusses a fascinating article he recently penned for RealClearMarkets and the Daily Signal (Woke Foundations, Beneficiaries of Capitalism, Undermine Free Market (dailysignal.com)) about how large financial institutions, both for-profit and non-profit, are turning their backs on the system which made their wealth possible in the first place.

Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro
1:17 – Catching up with corporate engagement
4:11 – Early days of board room activism
10:55 – Why foundations go leftist
13:55 – Philanthropy roundtable versus the feeder system
18:05 – New Yorker hit piece on the Bradley Foundation
22:02 – How to earn the Bradley Prize
25:11 – Alternatives to government programs, school choice
28:21 – Freedom in eastern Europe
32:38 – Importance of donor privacy

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George Gilder was Reagan’s favorite living source of quotes about the economy. He was also the most prescient visionary about the microchip, then the internet, and (now) blockchain. He explains why the global COVID shutdown in the name of “science” was unscientific, why artificial Intelligence will not replace the human mind, why blockchain is a truth system which will replace the Google model of the world, and why you should be attending the www.cosm.technology conference to understand what’s coming next. 

Recorded at the FreedomFest 2021 conference in Rapid City South Dakota. http://2021.freedomfest.com/

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
3:43 – The channel and the signal, replacing oil
7:13 – Socialized energy risks shortage
9:34 – The “system of the world”, Life After Google
12:50 – The forgotten “Asian flu”, Coronavirus and Galilee
22:18 – The new system of the world and learning curves
28:28 – Bitcoin and Monetarism, Milton Friedman in China
32:19 – Crypto Currencies and gold
38:58 – Tyranny and blockchain
47:22 – Mapping the human brain
52:08 – Faith precedes knowledge

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N.T. Wright may well be the most influential New Testament scholar of our generation, and is certainly the most influential evangelical in that category. He sat down with Jerry to discuss his fresh-off-the-press commentary on Galatians (https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/2560/galatians.aspx). Wright restores Paul’s writing to its original historical and political context, showing that Galatians addresses a time very much like our own, in which Christians were tempted to distort their theology and practice out of fear of persecution, and also a time when clashes over ethnic identity threatened to destroy both Church and society. Galatians, the epistle, points to the true solution. Galatians, the commentary, will help you understand how.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:06 – Wright’s new commentary on Galatians
5:31 – How Galatians can answer racial conflict
9:04 – Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free
13:53 – The role of the old law
16:43 – Are all distinctions done away with?
20:51 – Galatians and Abolitionism
25:20 – The autobiography of Paul, and the Jewish exemption
33:37 – The Messiah and his people
39:06 – How the Messiah bears the curse of Torah
49:30 – A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
51:57 – Applying Galatians to ethnic conflict
56:00 – A third race

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Rob Arnott is founder and Chairman of Research Affiliates, which is the advisor on more than 150 Billion (with a B) dollars’ worth of investment assets. He talks about politics (and the surrender of both parties to fiscal and monetary irresponsibility,) economics (especially monetary economics and inflation, the issue of our time) and investment (including where he is putting his own money.) To hear one of the most sophisticated pioneers in quantitative investment analysis speak candidly and intelligently for 55 minutes as he shares his latest thinking, listen here.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
2:00 – The base case of our economic future
6:17 – The future of the Republican party
12:16 – Investing for collapse, how politics affects markets
16:52 – The significance of qualifying for the S&P
24:25 – Trading value and growth
26:46 – Reports of Value’s death have been greatly exaggerated
30:05 – Emerging markets vs. US stock
36:51 – Zero returns on US investment
39:56 – How risky are emerging markets?
43:10 – Why big tech panders to the left
48:12 – Preparing for economic crisis in the US
52:32 - Environmental, Social, and Governance investing

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Dr. Skousen, the creator of the Gross Output measurement, explains how it measures the whole economy, not just the slice measured by GDP, and why the economy is driven by business, not consumption. Also, why GO is a better predictor than GDP. He also talks about FreedomFest, the most successful conference for intellectually curious people who are interested in expanding freedom.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:59 – Where does FreedomFest come from?
5:20 – The Anthem Film Festival
8:15 – Why FreedomFest goes to Las Vegas and South Dakota
11:23 – Bringing intellectual speakers to FreedomFest
15:15 – FreedomFest Debates
18:49 – Signing up for FreedomFest
19:31 – A festival for attendees, not donors.
20:23 – The Structure of Production
22:00 – The Economics of Profit and Loss
24:03 – Say’s law
29:00 – What Seattle’s success says about Say’s law.
33:35 – Consumer spending and gross output.
45:17 – Gross Output versus GDP
48:09 – Inaccuracies of consumer confidence
51:38 -  Predicting GO

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A Civic Sermon Delivered at Historic Trinity Cathedral

The Great Seal of the United States was commissioned by Congress in order to represent in visual form the foundational principles of the American Republic. In this presentation which I gave in the historic Trinity Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh for a group of CEOs hosted by the Young President’s Organization, we unpack the meaning of the various images which can be found on the back on any U.S. Dollar Bill.

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Steve Forbes, Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Magazine, Chairman of the Board of its parent company, and former presidential candidate, joined Jerry to talk about the rising risk of inflation. Steve is the only person to win US Steel’s Crystal Owl award for economic forecasting. He untethers his inner owl for us this week on the question of inflation. Neither a perma-hawk nor a perma-dove, and certainly no Chicken Little, Steve is currently concerned about the inflation outlook and the value of the dollar.

Listen to his commentaries here: The Steve Forbes Podcast, “What’s Ahead”

Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro
1:30 – The Fed doesn’t understand inflation
5:26 – What to learn from oil prices
7:40 – Inflation affects more than economics
10:16 – Inflation in Nazi Germany
13:50 – Small amounts of inflation can still do big damage
18:27 – Falling trust in the dollar abroad
21:11 – The pandemic and WWII
27:46 – Anti-Corporate Republicans and big tech
37:10 – Inflation as nationalization
43:28 – Self-governance versus big government

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Several years ago, I interviewed my friend Steve Forbes about his book Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It. In that interview he anticipated many of the problems that we see cropping up right now, so we’re pulling this interview out of the vault and publishing it for you here. We will also follow up shortly with a brand new interview with Steve to bring this discussion up to date and let him share what he’s seeing right now.

Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
1:09 – Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy –
and What We Can Do About It
4:15 – America after the 2008 Recession
7:30 – Can the US switch back to a gold standard?
13:22 – Asian currency crises were avoidable with better knowledge
20:44 – Different kinds of gold standard and the problem with the ones that didn’t work well
26:19 – Will we need a currency crisis to create the will to fix money?
28:15 – Nixon and Burns, why they ended gold standard, but didn’t need to
31:58 – WWI and the gold standard
36:09 – Gold price changes mean the dollar, not gold, instability
40:53 – Why the British gold standard didn’t work Churchill was overruled.
44:48 – How going off gold promoted income inequality.

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Nobel Prize winning economist and creator of experimental economics Vernon Smith joins this episode of Meeting of Minds with Jerry Bowyer. He talks about the necessity of faith, not just in religious matters but in science as well, and how the latest data in economics is reaffirming the insights of moral philosophy taught by Adam Smith over 200 years ago. Smith also talks about housing bubbles and how they happened.

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