Conversations with Tyler15 Loka 2025

George Selgin on the New Deal, Regime Uncertainty, and What Really Ended the Great Depression

George Selgin has spent over four decades thinking about money, banking, and economic history, and Tyler has known him for nearly all of it. Selgin's new book False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 examines what the New Deal actually accomplished—and failed to accomplish—in confronting the Great Depression.

Tyler and George discuss the surprising lack of fiscal and monetary stimulus in the New Deal, whether revaluing gold was really the best path to economic reflation, how much Glass-Steagall and other individual parts of the New Deal mattered, Keynes' "very sound" advice to Roosevelt, why Hayek's analysis fell short, whether America would've done better with a more concentrated banking sector, how well the quantity theory of money holds up, his vision for a "night watchman" Fed, how many countries should dollarize, whether stablecoins should be allowed to pay interest, his stake in a fractional-reserve Andalusian donkey ownership scheme, why his Spanish vocabulary is particularly strong on plumbing, his ambivalence about the eurozone, what really got America out of the Great Depression, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded September 26th, 2025.

Other ways to connect

Follow us on X and Instagram
Follow Tyler on X
Follow George on X
Sign up for our newsletter
Join our Discord
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

Photo Credit: Richie Downs

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(288)

Sheilagh Ogilvie on Epidemics, Guilds, and the Persistence of Bad Institutions

Sheilagh Ogilvie has spent decades examining the institutional structures that shaped European economic history, challenging conventional wisdom about everything from guilds to marriage patterns. In h...

2 Huhti 202559min

Ezra Klein on the Abundance Agenda

What happens when a liberal thinker shifts his attention from polarization to economic abundance? Ezra Klein's new book with Derek Thompson, Abundance, argues for an agenda of increased housing, infr...

19 Maalis 20251h 8min

Carl Zimmer on the Hidden Life in the Air We Breathe

Carl Zimmer is one of the finest science communicators of our time, having spent decades writing about biology, evolution, and heredity. His latest (and 16th) book, Air-Borne: The Hidden History of t...

5 Maalis 202551min

Gregory Clark on Social Mobility, Migration, and Assortative Mating (Live at Mercatus)

How much of your life's trajectory was set in motion centuries ago? Gregory Clark has spent decades studying social mobility, and his findings suggest that where you land in society is far more predic...

19 Helmi 20251h 23min

Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think

Sign Up for the Boston Listener Meet Up For Ross Douthat, phenomena like UFO sightings and the simulation hypothesis don't challenge religious belief—they demonstrate how difficult it is to escape rel...

5 Helmi 20251h 13min

Joe Boyd on the Birth of Rock, World Music, and Being There for Everything

Sign Up for the Boston Listener Meet Up Joe Boyd was there when Dylan went electric, when Pink Floyd was born, and when Paul Simon brought Graceland to the world. But far from being just another music...

22 Tammi 20251h

Scott Sumner on Monetary Rules, Blooming Late, and the Death of Cinema

Scott Sumner didn't follow the typical path to economic influence. He nearly lost his teaching job before tenure, did his best research after most academics slow down, and found his largest audience t...

8 Tammi 20251h 8min

Conversations with Tyler 2024 Retrospective

Donate to Conversations with Tyler Give Crypto Other Ways to Give On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show and more, including ...

25 Joulu 202458min