Bretton Goods: Recent Episodes
Pradyumna Shyama Prasad
I spoke to Pramit Bhattacharya an independent data journalist about India's statistical system. We talked about
- How did Indian statisticians adapt their statistical methods to account for India's informal sector?
- How are India's GDP numbers constructed?
- Why it's so hard to outright manipulate GDP numbers
- The case for optimism
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I talked with Harry Law of the University of Cambridge and Google DeepMind about AI regulation
We talked about
- Me vs Harry on open source AI regulation
- Being humble when regulating AI
- Why a "Manhattan Project for X" is overrated
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I spoke with Derek Wong about the adaptive markets hypothesis, macro investing and investing in cryptocurrency markets
We talk about
- Why investors should consider the financial markets as a complex adaptive system
- How investing in China is very different from investing in the West
- How he invests in crypto without fundamental anchors
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I spoke to Adam Ozimek and Connor O'Brien from the Economic Innovation Group about the policy and politics of high skilled immigration in America. We talked about
- Why reforming high skilled immigration in the US is so difficult
- The lump of labour fallacy in immigration
- Reforming immigration through place-based visas
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I spoke with Devashish Dhar, the author of the excellent book India's Blind Spot which talks about India's urbanisation crisis and solutions to it. We talk about
- Why does India have a much lower reported rate of urbanisation than the rest of the world?
- Explaining the global bias against cities
- “Extremely high levels of traffic is caused by poor land policy”
- Why are there so many floods in Indian cities?
- How to climate-proof Indian cities
- “India’s biggest unfulfilled promise is local government”
and much more!
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I interviewed one of the most interesting thinkers today, Tyler Cowen.
We talked about
- Why there are such few Singaporean famous people
- What Singapore can do to get more weird
- Why he's sceptical of an AI-driven singularity
- What happens to kids in a post-GPT world
- What happens to public intellectuals in a post-GPT world
- Why he's optimistic on Kenyan economic growth
And so much more!
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I spoke to Rohit Krishnan the author of the blog Strange Loop Canon about why he is sceptical about the idea that AI will kill us all
We talked about
- Why he’s sceptical of AI regulation proposals
- Why AI “timelines” are not as meaningful as you think
- AI deployment is harder than you think!
- The value of incrementalism in AI policy
- Why he thinks instrumental convergence is unlikely to happen
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I spoke to Soham Sankaran who runs PopVax, an Indian mRNA vaccine company. Their goal is to build low-cost broadly-protective vaccines to protect against the entire sarbecovirus species. Read Soham's experience here as a complement
This episode includes
- How he started PopVax and (went bankrupt in the process)
- Why there hasn't been a successful Indian mRNA vaccine yet
- Why developing countries can't afford drugs for rare diseases
- What they're doing to fix it
- Their biggest constraints
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I talked to Dwarkesh Patel of the Lunar Society Podcast about many topics. We talked about:
- Why do AI researchers and rationalists disagree about existential risk?
- What would happen if Robert Moses ran San Francisco?
- Is localism overrated?
- What does Effective Altruism get right and wrong?
- Which politicians would he like to interview
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I spoke to Trevor Chow about existential risks from AI and techniques to align artificial intelligence with human goals. Specifically we talked about
- An introduction to existential risk from Artificial Intelligence
- Existing methods for alignment of AI models
- Why RLHF might fail in large language models
- Whether interpretability research might scale?
- New methods being developed to make larger models safer
- Regulatory frameworks for the future of AI
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I talked to Faris Abdurrachman about Indonesia and it's nickel boom. We talked specifically about
- Why Indonesia banned exports of raw nickel
- Who gets the value from nickel exports
- Indonesia's new sovereign wealth fund
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I spoke to Kartik Akileswaran who runs Growth Teams - an initiative which helps build state capacity for economic growth in developing countries. We talked about
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Why implementation is a binding constraint for economic policy
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How industrial policy helps reduce information constraints for investors
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Underrated growth reforms
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I spoke to Matt Korda who works at the Federation of American Scientists on nuclear weapon policy. We have an exciting discussion about the role of nuclear weapons, their growth and the dangerous arms races that are starting
Some highlights of the show:
- The advent of “exotic” nuclear weapon systems
- China’s nuclear strategy has changed dramatically!
- Why nuclear experts are most worried about South Asia
- The new game theory of a multipolar nuclear world
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I talked to Anupam Manur, a professor of economics about India's trade policy before 1991. We talked about:
- The scarcity mindset about foreign exchange reserves
- The controversial 1966 devaluation
- How did the pre-1991 import licensing system work?
- “The financial account was almost non existent”
- “Hindustan Motors and Toyota were set up at the same time but in 15 years Toyota sold 280 times the cars”
- “Productivity growth was almost absent before 1991”
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I spoke to Professor Richard Jones, about how science funding in the UK could improve. Some interesting questions we talked about are
- “Penny wise, pound foolish” in science funding
- Creating markets for technological advances
- How he’d invest a billion £ to accelerate scientific innovation?
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I talked to Tiago Santos, a diplomat, about his book Why Not Parliamentarism. Tiago and I explore some questions here
- What makes parliamentary democracies superior to presidential ones?
- The creeping presidentialisation of parliamentary democracies
- The optimal rate of constitutional amendments
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I talked to Amit Varma who runs one of my favourite podcasts - The Seen and the Unseen about politics, economics and public policy. We talked about
- Libertarianism within the Indian canon
- Cultivating your audience
- Being a public intellectual
- The differences between generations
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I spoke to Jason Crawford of The Roots of Progress about the new movement of Progress Studies. We talked about
- Building a culture of economic progress
- Why are developed countries more averse to progress?
- Is there a tradeoff between economic progress and existential risk?
- What is the main constraint for the movement today?
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I talked with Mayank Seksaria of Liberty Mutual Investments about investing on macroeconomic views. We talked about
- Translating macro views into investing allocations
- A bottom up view of the macroeconomy
- Evaluating macro talent
- Why does institutional research cost so much?
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I spoke to Mary Childs who is the author of the exceptional book The Bond King. We talked about
- How finance became an interesting profession
- How do you build institutions that succeed at investing?
- Can we automate the Fed?
- Financial history being undervalued
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I spoke to Steven Hamilton professor of Economics at George Washington University about Australian economic policy, and their upcoming elections. We talk about
- Why was Australian COVID policy so strict?
- Australia as a nation of prison guards
- Economic issues of the Australian election
- “Australia is a mine with a parliament”
- Dutch disease in Australia
- Swimming, intermittent fasting and other personal habits
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What is the labour market like? What are the largest barriers in the labour market? Nathan Young and I spoke to economist Bryan Caplan about his new book Labor Econ Versus The World. We also talk about
- Censorship and dictatorships
- Bets he is willing to take
- Malengo and international migration
- DALLE-2 and writing graphic novels
- The literature on education
- Why he is not an experimental economist
- The effect of AI on jobs
Bets Bryan is willing to take
- No important disruption to the politics of countries where Ukrainian refugees immigrate
- Poland will gain over 3x of the GDP Ukraine loses with regards to immigration
- Less than 20% chance of humanity ending by 2100
- Less than 60% chance that he will consider misaligned AI to be a problem in 20 years
- If >5% of people immigrate to a developed nation there will be no civil wars
- Upper bounds on religious fundamentalism in the EU
- What are the odds that mainstream psychiatry accepts his view of mental illness?
Papers referenced in the podcast * Mankiw, Romer and Weil * Where has all the Education gone? * Eric Hanusheck on test scores and GDP
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I spoke to David Manehim who works on reducing existential threats to humanity at the Technion. We talked about
- The biggest threats to humanity
- Preventing all future pandemics
- Is working on X-risk even tractable?
- How you can work on reducing existential risk
Very fun on an underrated topic!
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I spoke to the very very talented Trevor Chow about the history of long run growth. Topics include
- Wishlist of economic history topics
- Getting over vetocracy
- Qualities of the best economic blogs
- Why more economics graduates should join a VC firm!
- Meme theory of money
Highly highly recommended
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I spoke with Jamie Catherwood who writes and teaches financial history at Investor Amnesia. We had a lot of fun talking about
- The relevance of financial history
- Formation of bubbles
- Investing during a war
- Surprising stories behind the 1907 financial panic
- The influence of Twitter
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I talked to Puja Mehra, a journalist and author of the book The Lost Decade about India's economic history of the years 2008-2018. We talked about
The reasons for India's jobs crisis Should the Finance Ministry be split into two? The farming crisis Has India's Big Government really receded?
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I spoke to Michael Norris, a commentator on Chinese technology industries and research manager at AgencyChina. We talked about
Understanding the motivations of Chinese antitrust enforcement The 'low hanging fruit' of antitrust The false dilemma of hard tech and software Chinese tech companies he is bullish on English language news sources for China tech
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I talked to Jamie Powell who is a financial journalist at the Financial Times. We had lots of fun talking about:
- The economics of short selling
- Can bubbles be good for the economy?
- Issues with Web3
- The story around tesla
Highly recommended!
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I talked to Ben Reinhardt about new models for funding science and innovation. Ben's pieces on DARPA and his proposal for a private DARPA-like research funding organization are foundational pieces in the field and should be read by anyone who wants to understand them. We talked about:
- The Big Man Theory of History
- What makes good DARPA program managers?
- Why you need to be less responsible to innovate
- Does science have an introspection problem?
- Will the US maintain its leading position in science
Highly recommended!
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I spoke with Matt Clifford, the co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First a pre-idea investing firm. We talked about some very exciting topics! They are:
- Personality types of successful founders
- Founders with high agency
- The race between politics and technology
- The most underrated impactful historical event
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I talked to Duncan Weldon a former Britain economics correspondent for The Economist and the writer of the substack Value Added. We talked about his book Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through. Topics include
- How did the road to riches change through centuries?
- Why does Britain have no tech giants?
- How did Britain survive with high levels of debt in the past?
- Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain and not elsewhere?
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I talked to Sam Bowman, the Director of competition policy at the Law and Econ Center. He was previously Executive Director of the Adam Smith Institute and has been a constant advocate for saner housing policy. I talked to him about housing policy and adjacent topics:
- How housing affects everything!
- How do we incentivize NIMBYs into allowing more building?
- The most underrated economist
- Lessons from writing Works in Progress
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I talked to Michael Green who is Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager at Simplify ETFs. He previously was Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager at Logica and even before that he was portfolio manager at Thiel Capital. Mike is extremely smart and very fun to talk to. We had an interesting conversation about
- How do passive flows change the stock market?
- How can you trade these with options?
- Explaining the Gamestop rally in Jan 2021
- How do you price crypto?
- Why is his twitter handle profplum99?
- Why ambitious people should not enter finance
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I talked to Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics at George Mason University about the FDA's response on COVID along with a variety of other topics. We talked about
- What happens if the public wants an inefficient COVID response?
- What mistakes did zero-COVID countries make?
- What are bottlenecks to Indian growth?
- Why he thinks investing in life extension research gives a very high return?
- Who is the most underrated economist of the 20th century?
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I spoke to Joey Politano, who writes the popular newsletter Apricitas . We did a deep dive into monetary policy where Joey talked about Quantitative Easing, Yield Curve Control and stablecoins. Other topics include
- Measuring the stance of monetary policy
- Which country would benefit from using dogecoin as currency?
- What can economists learn from political science
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I talked to Tom Spencer a law student at City Law School and Chief Organizer of London New Liberals. Tom's interests lie on the edge of law and economics where he does work on housing policy and anti trust. We had a lively conversation on
- Solving the UK's housing crisis
- What lawyers and economists can learn from each other
- Brexit and its consequences
- The unwritten British constitution
- Abolishing the monarchy
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I talked to Michael Bishop, who worked at DARPA's Replication Markets project. We talked about
- Why was there a replication crisis in science?
- How do you design a market for predicting replication attempts?
- Is there alpha in replication market trading?
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I talked to Kevin Erdmann, a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center about his upcoming book Building From the Ground Up which is about myths surrounding the housing bubble and the Great Recession. We talked about
- The myth of a 'housing bubble'
- How American policymakers self induced a recession
- His research process
Preorder Keivn's new book here!
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I talked to Matt Darling, an Employment Policy Fellow at the Niskanen Institute
We talked about
- Cognitive tax of poverty
- Behavioural economics and the replication crisis
- What question does he wish people asked him?
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I talked to Rohit Krishnan, a venture capitalist and writer of the newsletter Strange Loop Canon. In my view he is among the most underrated writers in the public sphere today. I talked to him about a variety of topics. They are:
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The real meaning of ambition
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Why people misunderstand optionality
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Rohit’s favourite Indian cuisine
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Why you can’t replicate college with internet subcultures
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“VC’s biggest competition is hedge funds”.
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Biggest career mistakes people make
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Do consultants make good VCs?
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What is VC's biggest competition
I'm sure you'll love this!
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I talked to the very popular @EGirlMonetarism about the political economy of Argentinian populism. It was a very informative conversation. We talked about:
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The political economy of Latin American populism
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The most underrated economic concept
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How to fix the Argentine economy
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Samuel Hammond is the Director of Poverty and Welfare Policy at the Niskanen Center. We had an excellent conversation on
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How policies actually get passed
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“libertarian think tanks exist for rich people to feel like they're smart and smart people to feel like they’re rich”
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Nonprofits and the lack of market incentives
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His most controversial opinion on economics
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I talk to Joshua Miller, an extremely smart 16 year old on
- Nominal GDP Targeting
- What he disagrees with Milton Friedman the most on
- The theory behind market monetarism
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I talked to the very popular Noah Smith on a variety of topics. We talked about
- Is America too insular?
- Indian cultural exports to the US
- Is economic growth zero-sum at the country level?
- Where does he disagree with @jdcmedlock the most?
- What are the deep causes of partisanship in America?
- The moral coordination problem of going vegan
- The political economy of solving NIMBYism
- “America's national pastime is avoiding other Americans”
Do give a listen to this!
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I spoke to Michael Fritzell who writes the substack Asian Century Stocks about high-quality stock ideas around Asia. Michael is a CFA charterholder and has worked as an equity analyst in Asia for over a decade.
We talk about
- Common characteristics of successful CEOs
- Why Chinese real estate prices are due for a fall
- How do you read an annual report in Asia?
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I spoke to Pranay Kothasthane who is the Deputy Director of Takshashila Institution, a think tank based in Bengaluru.
We talk about
- India’s vaccine diplomacy
- Why Pranay’s an optimist on Indian growth
- What he learnt running a Hindi podcast
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Mark Lutter is the Founder and Executive Director of the Charter Cities Institute. CCI's aim is to build an ecosystem for charter cities
We talk about
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The basic concepts of charter cities
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What is the biggest misconception about charter cities?
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What personality type does it take to run a non profit?
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For this Indian Independence day I talked to Shruti Rajagopalan about the Indian economic reforms.
- How was Nehruvian socialism different from socialism under Indira Gandhi?
- Why didn't land reform work in India?
- Does Shruti believe in the Great Man theory of history?
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Karol is a financial sector specialist at the World Bank. I speak to him about
- Why doesn't America have 24/7 payment systems?
- Was shock therapy in Poland a mistake?
- Bangladesh’s growth miracle
- What do the World Bank’s critics get wrong?
A highly enjoyable episode!
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I talk to Srivatsan Prakash - the host of the Market Champions podcast - about his experience podcasting, investing and some thoughts about the stimulus
We talk about
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The most surprising thing about being on a podcast
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Is there a wrong way to invest
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Why ‘Austrian investing’ is the wrong way to invest
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The Biden stimulus isn’t going to lead to inflation
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Alfonso Peccatiello is the Head of Fixed Income Portfolio Management at ING Deutschland. I talked to him about
- Why is Italy in trouble economically?
- How should you size positions while trading?
- Why do so many European institutions buy negative yielding bonds?
Alfonso gives some very good career advice at the end of the interview!
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Hemantha is a student at Harvard, who is currently working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He has worked with the India CEA and the RBI. We talk about
- What makes certain government schemes successful?
- Does being a debater make you more adversarial?
- How would he change RCTs?
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Mike is starting at The Economist as Asia business and finance editor. We talk about
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What is the biggest flaw of journalists?
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How Hong Kong's land policy hurts its tech companies
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Why asset price "inflation" is nonsense
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Why Mike's not an MMTer but would like to see it tried anyways
BONUS: Mike reveals who he thinks will win the Euros!
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We talk about
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Do think tanks actually have an impact?
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Should we loosen accredited investor regulations?
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Should more companies invest in public policy roles?
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What would he do if he could remake American federal regulation?
You can read Eli's writing at https://elidourado.com/
You can read my writing at http://brettongoods.substack.com/
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We talk about
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How to become a good generalist
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Why did America do so much better than Europe on vaccines?
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What happened to the media industry?
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His writing process
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Picking a media diet
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Why nobody writes in Socratic dialogue?
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The pseudonymous economy
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Where should ambitious people go?
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I talked to Jeff Snider on why he thinks QE doesn't matter, the usage of repo in financial markets and the global dollar shortage.
It was an entertaining conversation, and Jeff is very knowledgeable on these matters.
Subscribe to my podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/5a29fQG0xEbPEdqSxQjMcQ
Read Jeff's writing here: https://alhambrapartners.com/author/jsnider/
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In this episode I interview Garett Jones on his book 10% Less Democracy. We talked about term limits, lobbying, the workings of the Senate and how do policies go from ideas to implementation.
Buy his book here: https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
Subscribe to my newsletter here: http://brettongoods.substack.com/
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