I posted on my Substack last month: ‘I Blog to Differ’, the first part of my interview with financial planner Drew Bensona former student of mine in the Masters Macro class I taught at San Jose State University in early 2009. I’ve been posting for the last 35 minutes today on Substack and decided, for the first time, to post the same here.
Here it is the last 35 minutes
Some highlights.
3:50: Lockdowns led to a less robust civil society.
5:35: Link between lockdowns and George Floyd riots.
6:25: How our daughter adjusted to San Francisco’s lockdown and our fear of getting caught visiting her.
8:10: Judge Steve Williams dies alone in hospital.
8:48: Why Bryan Caplan would be proud of Drew Benson.
10:10: The enormous costs of lockdowns for people in poor countries.
11:40: The global decline in extreme poverty and its brief reversal during lockdown.
2:30 PM: Risk of COVID by age.
3:00 PM: I referred to Heritage Foundation; I meant Hillsdale College.
3:40 PM: Multiple comorbidities.
5:30 PM: Fed behavior, 2008-09 and 2020-21.
7:00 PM: Fed mistake: Paying interest on reserves.
7:50 p.m.: Bernanke broke his promise at Friedman’s 80th birthday party.
21:25: Who predicted low inflation in 2009 and high inflation in 2021? Jeff Hummel.
10:15 PM: Take Jeff Hummel’s Masters in Monetary Theory class. Get the highest grade.
24:10: Commodity money.
24:30: How Hummel’s class helped me write the Wall Street Journal article in which I criticized the Diamond/Dybvig model.
25:59: Did WSJ ever call me back?
27:10: The number of WSJ articles equals my age.
29:10: Inflation: true and false.
30:00: What Alan Greenspan did in 1987 in response to a more than 22% drop in the Dow-Jones in one day. (The biggest fall in our history.)
31:30: The 1951 Treasury/Fed agreement is dead.