Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929

Conversations with Tyler

Education, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Andrew Ross Sorkin sees the crash of 1929 as a tale of excessive leverage and irrational speculation, but Tyler wonders: maybe those sky-high 1929 prices were actually justified given America's remarkable century ahead. Maybe the real problem was the "Negative Nellies" who panicked afterward rather than the speculators everyone blamed. For that matter, isn't 2008 looking less and less like a bubble with each passing year?

Tyler and Andrew debate whether those 1929 stock prices were justified, what Fed and policy choices might have prevented the Depression, whether Glass-Steagall was built on a flawed premises, what surprised Andrew most about the 1920s beyond the crash itself, how business leaders then would compare to today's CEOs, whether US banks should consolidate, how Andrew would reform US banking regulation, what to make of narrow banking proposals and stablecoins, whether retail investors should get access to private equity and venture capital, why sports gambling and new financial regulations won't make us much safer, how Andrew broke into the New York Times at age 18, how he manages his information diet, what he learned co-creating Billions, what he plans on learning about next, and more.

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

Recorded October 30th, 2025.

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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,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
0:13.5	Learn more at Mercatus.org.
0:15.7	For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,
0:20.4	visit Conversationswithtyler.com.
0:26.4	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting with
0:31.5	Andrew Ross Sorkin. He's an award-winning journalist for the New York Times and a co-anchor
0:36.8	at Squawk Box, CSNBC's signature
0:39.8	morning program. He's also founder and editor at large of Deal Book, published by the New York Times.
0:46.3	He's the best-selling author of Too Big DeFal, co-producer of a film adaptation of the same,
0:52.9	nominated for 11 Emmy Awards, and he is also co-creator of the
0:57.5	drama series Billions on Showtime, but most importantly, he has a new book out, 1929,
1:04.4	Inside the Greatest Crash in History, and How It Shattered in A. Andrew, welcome.
1:09.7	Thank you so much for having me.
1:11.0	It's a privilege.
1:12.2	The 1929 stock prices right before the crash, were they really a bubble?
1:17.5	Doesn't America have an amazing century to come?
1:20.7	And arguably, those prices were too low.
1:23.8	And the so-called speculators are the heroes of this story?
1:27.9	Oh, goodness.
1:29.5	What a place to start.
1:32.5	You know, yes and no.
	...

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