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Big Think interview with me
On YouTube, find it here. The taping was about an hour long but the video is six minutes long. The full talk started with a discussion of capitalism and morality but it ended up focusing on the financial crisis; since I don't watch myself who knows what made this cut?
Sometimes I try to be "chatty," but that's not really my temperament. This time I tried to flood the interviewer with as much content as possible.
Here is a Big Think forum, with Lawrence Summers, George Soros, Peter Thiel, and Robert Merton. There is more of Summers here. (Why does he talk slower now? What happened to the beloved fire hose? Did someone give him media training and teach him to be chatty?) Here is Thomas Cooley on whether we should change how economics is taught?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 25, 2008 at 05:39 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Could you the contradiction between growth rates forecast at slight negative in the developed world, 5% in China, etc; and the grim news about the collapsing world economy. Yes, investment is based on earlier rosy forecasts, and a sudden shock can matter more than absolute levels, but how can economies that are not contracting, or even growing, be described in such gloomy terms?
Posted by: anony-one at Nov 25, 2008 8:10:59 AM
The beard looks good!
Posted by: at Nov 25, 2008 8:37:18 AM
Great comments and ditto on the beard.
My only suggestion is that at the beginning you could have made a distinction between "selfishness" and "self interest." Feeding yourself and your family would fall in the self interested category while engaging in an activity that simultaneously met your needs but deprived others of fulfilling their needs would be selfish.
Posted by: David B at Nov 25, 2008 9:29:03 AM
Where is the interviewer? Weird affectation on their part to have the interviewee stare into the camera, unless the camera was camouflaged or tiny.
Good practice for the bloggingheads though. Clock's ticking. Can you guys have a bloggingheads once he quits his blog?
Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 25, 2008 9:48:16 AM
Good job. Now I'm going to have to watch all the other non-economists. Ugh.
Summers: They need to teach him not to talk with his hands.
So, I click on a "forum" and just see Summers. I was interested in Thiel. They edit you down to 6 minutes. What is wrong with these people?
see if this works for the forum:
http://www.bigthink.com/features/896
Interesting how Soros' big idea is to speculate on a completely new engine of growth for the world. Oh, did I say interesting, I meant INSANE! Are the geniuses it will take to develop the perpetual motion machine currently laid off from their real estate or retail job?
Of course he doesn't stop there, he moves on to population control and fixing global poverty along the way, as long as it doesn't impact global warming. Keep at it George! Stay positive.
What's sad is the 100% agreement (I realize it's beta) for Soros, whereas Thiel has 67% (3 votes? George, Larry and Bob?) and all he does is lay out a demonstrable fact, whereas Soros is redesigning the planet.
Compare what Thiel says to the agenda mongering:
http://www.bigthink.com/business-economics/13390
Incidentally, he agrees with me. People are taking invisible risks on houses to avoid investing in visible risk that would improve real standard of living.
Hey George, if markets didn't tend toward equilibrium, they would never correct the bubbles!
It's not that I think George is wrong. It's that what he has to offer is a minor tune-up for a good car, but thinks he needs to yank out the whole engine.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 25, 2008 10:24:35 AM
perhaps it is worth making the distinction between internationalization and globalization. internationalization is good, it's billy bob in texas doing business with mr wong in china. globalization is bad, it's a bunch of punk ass chumps manufacturing crises so that they have a pretext to introduce global government. global government would be in addition to, not a replacement of, national government, and thus would be a new level of bureaucracy and taxes. it is currently what we are headed to, and the financial crisis was planned by the fed and its cronies to offer the pretext to bring this about -- as we can see by all the calls for a global financial order and a new bretton woods.
Posted by: kid mercury at Nov 25, 2008 10:27:54 AM
Every morning, I wake up and I check Marginal Revolution and Overcoming Bias and Blogginheads.tv to see if there has been a bloggingheads interview posted between Robin Hanson and Tyler Cowen. And every morning, I become a little bit sadder, and feel that there is a little bit less good in the world. How come you must tease us so? Have you no heart?
Posted by: Andy McKenzie at Nov 25, 2008 1:58:09 PM
Great Interview! Forwarding it to everyone I know.
Posted by: Mark N. at Nov 25, 2008 3:07:00 PM
"Did greed cause the financial crisis?"
You answer something like: there were some people in the wall street who were extremely corrupted - they sold these mortgage products even though they knew they were not fundamentally worth the price.
Does the knowledge that an asset is not fairly priced make trading with that asset a corrupted thing to do? E.g. Selling stocks when they're high (not when you're high)? I have some problems with this argument..
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Posted by: cabal online alz at Jan 2, 2009 1:13:02 AM
it is a good experience
Posted by: frada at May 15, 2009 9:29:03 PM
you can learn a lot from it
Posted by: jim at May 15, 2009 9:30:41 PM
It is enlightening!
Posted by: tom at May 15, 2009 9:31:09 PM
