This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution. I'm your host Tom Church and I'm joined by the

Libertarian Professor Richard Epstein. Richard is the Peter and Kirsten Bedford

Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution. He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at NYU and is a senior

lecture at the University of Chicago. And Richard, I'm here today to ask for your

advice on what currency I should put my life savings into when the US defaults on its debts early next month

You know, should we go euro should we go rem and b what I don't know I don't know where we should head now I well go ahead I asked Richard because right now the president and

Speaker McCarthy are in negotiations over the debt ceiling, right? We officially

did hit the debt ceiling earlier this year, but through extraordinary measures,

the Treasury Department is able to pay off some bills.

We're deferring costs for later, we'll pay them back, assuming we come to some sort of arrangement.

So first of all, Richard, talk me through where the negotiations are right now.

One, why have a debt ceiling and two, what do you think of President Biden's approach

or has asked that we just raise the debt ceiling no conditions

attached?

Well, I'm going to answer your first question first.

The answer is the uncertainty level is so high that you do under these conditions what you always

do engage in extensive diversification of your asset both across currencies

and stocks across different countries in the less.

What you do in effect is you could reduce the variance,

but you will never be able to make sure

that you're going to be as good after this happens

as before.

...