This is longtime Cato Daily podcast host, Caleb Brown.

I've hosted the Cater Daily podcast for nearly 18 years, but no more.

But I wanted to leave loyal listeners with some favorite episodes that I hope ring true and relevant to our current moment.

This is one of them.

Thank you for listening.

This is the Cato Daily podcast for Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. For libertarians,

Russell Roberts says it's an important time to think about first principles. Given the financial

crisis, a recession, and the government's response, he predicts a United States in which there is a lot more top-downing than bottom-upping in the economy. His new book,

The Price of Everything, A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity, explores what is seen and unseen

within our prosperity and the politics that surround economic reality. We spoke following a forum

for the book yesterday. Where are people being misled the most?

What insight is most missing from the current public talk about finance, the economy, and the government's proper role in it?

Well, one of the narratives that's emerged in the current mess is that this whole thing was

Wall Street's fall, was greed run amok, government didn't do its job regulating Wall Street.

And my worry is that we're going to try to create a new financial order from the top down,

which is going to be extremely difficult to do well without unintended consequences.

This problem was not caused by deregulation.

You can always argue we should have regulated more.

And it's always a possibility that some regulation could have been put in place

ex ante that might have saved us from this meltdown.

So I think there's always going to be this tendency to try to figure out what that might have been.

And we'll try to prevent the next crisis that was like this one, which we'll probably be able to do.

...