Adam Tooze on our Financial Past and Future
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2020
⏱️ 66 minutes
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Summary
Adam Tooze is best known for his highly-regarded books on the economic history of Nazi Germany, the remaking of the global economic and political order starting in World War I, and his account of how the economic effects of the 2008 financial crisis rippled across the globe for a decade to follow. Recently, he's become an influential voice on Twitter documenting the pandemic-induced strain on the world's financial systems.
Adam joined Tyler to discuss the historically unusual decision to have a high-cost lockdown during a pandemic, why he believes in a swoosh-shaped recovery, portents of financial crises in China and the West, which emerging economies are currently most at risk, what Keynes got wrong about the Treaty of Versailles, why the Weimar Republic failed, whether Hitler was a Keynesian, the political and economic prospects of various EU members, his trick to writing a lot, how Twitter encourages him to read more, what he taught executives at BP, his advice for visiting Germany, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded April 16th, 2020
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.6 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:27.9 | Hello, everyone. Today I am speaking with Adam Tewes, the famous historian at Columbia University. |
| 0:34.9 | I have read all of Adam's books. I am a big fan. He is well-known for his treatments |
| 0:40.2 | of German history, the history of the financial crisis. And right now, he is covering the financial |
| 0:45.6 | stresses in our system on Twitter. I very much recommend that you follow him. |
| 0:50.2 | Adam Tewes, welcome. Thank you for speaking with us. |
| 0:53.4 | Thank you for having me on the show. |
| 0:55.4 | Let's go back to the Spanish flu of 1918-1919. Do you think that Western economies were |
| 1:01.6 | better equipped to deal with the pandemic in percentage terms at that time than they |
| 1:06.3 | are today? |
| 1:07.3 | It's an interesting question. It's an interesting way of putting the question. |
| 1:11.8 | What's been striking about the 2020 pandemic is that we have chosen an extraordinarily |
| 1:16.9 | high cost route. I mean, we have chosen a comprehensive lockdown as the default strategy |
| 1:23.2 | for dealing with this. As far as I am aware, no one attempted anything remotely like that |
| 1:29.0 | in response to Spanish flu at the local level, the way it is city by city, but there was |
| 1:33.0 | no comprehensive national lockdowns. In fact, if you study the economic history record, |
| 1:40.0 | the archive of that period, the policy decision-making, say the BIMO Republic, which I have spent |
| 1:45.4 | some time on, or the minutes of the Versailles Peace Conference, the flu-bally figures, I mean, |
... |
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