Election R&D Dialogues: Special Guest John Chiang

Let's Find Common Ground

USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future

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5.0 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2020

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Chiang, former California State Treasurer and Fall 2020 Fellow at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, joins co-directors Bob Shrum and Mike Murphy to discuss his career in politics, the pandemic’s lasting economic impact on California, and its implications for the November election and beyond.

Chiang served as California’s 33rd State Treasurer until 2019. As the state’s banker, he oversaw trillions of dollars in annual transactions, managed a $75 billion investment portfolio, and was the nation’s largest issuer of municipal bonds.

As State Controller during the Great Recession, his cash management decisions were instrumental in keeping California’s credit rating from plunging into junk status, and his actions saved taxpayers millions of dollars. Chiang aggressively used his audit programs to identify more than $9.5 billion of fraud, waste and abuse in government programs, the most by any Controller in California’s history.

He serves on several boards and will be teaching a course in the fall titled, “From Financial Crisis to COVID-19: California Policy Responses to the Financial Fallout” with the USC Center for the Political Future.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Election R&D from the University of Southern California Center for the Political Future.
0:11.2	Our podcast brings together America's top politicians, journalists, academics, and strategists from across the political spectrum for discussions on hot-button issues where we respect
0:22.1	each other and we respect the truth. We hope you enjoy these conversations.
0:29.2	Hello everybody. I'm Mike Murphy and welcome to an election R&D dialogue. We're doing a clever
0:34.5	pun thing there with both research and, of course, Republican Democrat.
0:37.9	I'm here on behalf of the USC Center for the Political Future, of which I'm co-director.
0:43.2	With us is our director and my good friend, if professional opponent, Bob Schrum, and our special
0:48.4	guest here, somebody we're very, very, very lucky to have as an upcoming fellow,
0:53.2	former state, California state treasurer and state
0:56.1	controller, John Chung. So what we're going to do is talk a little bit about fiscal politics.
1:02.0	We're going to talk about the presidential race. We're going to talk about what it's like to be
1:05.5	an elected official in a megastate like California. And we're going to be taking your question.
1:10.3	Now, before we begin, I want to just put in a little plug because John is going to be doing a seminar
1:16.6	here at the USC Center for the political future, which is fascinating stuff and hugely relevant now.
1:21.6	The name of it is from financial crisis to COVID-19, California policy responses to the fiscal failout.
1:29.7	So if you dig state fiscal policy, and like me, you have a passion for accounting standards
1:35.3	and other important stuff that may feel like Arcania, but is actually the heartbeat of
1:41.0	how a state budget runs and what programs get funded and what doesn't
1:45.2	and what the political fight is over, you can get a real master class education for somebody
1:49.6	who's been there, which of course is our guest today, John Chunk. So with that, I'm going
1:54.3	to turn it over to my partner in USC Politics, Senator Director Bob Shrum.
2:00.2	Thanks, Mike. And thank you, John, for being here.
	...

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