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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and life.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the spectator.

I am delighted to be joined today by Dr. Samuel Gregg, who is the author of a new book,

The Next American Economy, Nation, State and Markets in an Uncertain World. Samuel, I think

it's fair to say it's quite a timely book,

given the perilous state of the global economy. And I thought to start by asking you about

yesterday it emerged that inflation is not going down as quickly as the American government

hoped it would. And we seem to be in a situation where the Federal

Reserve is unable to bring down inflation. It's not having the impact that it wants to have

with its rate rises and so on. Are we in a crisis of capitalism more broadly? Well, thanks,

Freddie, for having me on the show. I have thought a lot about that

particular question in terms of whether we're facing some sort of fundamental crisis of capitalism.

And it was in the back of my mind, of course, when I wrote this book. And my short answer to that is,

yes, we do have a type of crisis that is not just characteristic, I think, of American

capitalism, but free market economies around the world. And part of the nature of the crisis, I think,

is this. We have relied for quite some time upon central banks running low interest rate policies.

This is something that goes back to the Greenspan era.

It's something that became more apparent as a consequence of the financial crisis. and even in the lead-up to the financial

crisis, this was already becoming a phenomenon.

...