Simon Johnson on Banking, Technology, and Prosperity
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2023
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
What’s more intense than leading the IMF during a financial crisis? For Simon Johnson, it was co-authoring a book with fellow economist (and past guest) Daron Acemoglu. Written in six months, their book Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, argues that widespread prosperity is not the natural consequence of technological progress, but instead only happens when there is a conscious effort to bend the direction and gains from technological advances away from the elite.
Tyler and Simon discuss the ideas in the book and on Simon’s earlier work on finance and banking, including at what size a US bank is small enough to fail, the future of deposit insurance, when we’ll see a central bank digital currency, his top proposal for reforming the IMF, how quickly the Industrial Revolution led to widespread prosperity, whether AI will boost wages, how he changed his mind on the Middle Ages, the key difference in outlook between him and Daron, how he thinks institutions affect growth, how to fix northern England's economic climate, whether the UK should join NAFTA, improving science policy, the Simon Johnson production function, whether MBAs are overrated, the importance of communication, and more.
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Recorded March 21st, 2023
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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 mercatis.org. |
| 0:16.3 | For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:27.2 | Hello everyone and welcome back to ConversationsWithT Tyler. |
| 0:30.6 | Today I am chatting with Simon Johnson. |
| 0:33.1 | He's a British American economist, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. |
| 0:38.3 | He served as chief economist of the IMF. |
| 0:41.1 | He's worked on Russian reforms, and he's the author of numerous books. |
| 0:45.1 | But most prominently his new book, co-authored with Darren Asimoglu, called Power and Progress, |
| 0:51.3 | our thousand year struggle over technology and prosperity. |
| 0:54.9 | We'll be getting to that book, but since we're taping on March 21st, |
| 0:58.5 | I'd like to start with a few questions about banking and deposit insurance for Simon, |
| 1:03.0 | who is in a book in that area as well. Simon, hello. |
| 1:06.1 | Hi Tyler, great to see you. |
| 1:07.1 | And great to see you today. |
| 1:08.1 | These are good, these are good Tyler topics, I would say. |
| 1:10.9 | Yeah, so a very simple question. |
| 1:12.9 | At what size or level is a US bank small enough to fail? |
| 1:17.6 | I think we're in the process of exploring that Tyler because, well, I actually testified to the center of this 2015. |
| 1:23.9 | There was a big argument, you know, over many years about this. |
| 1:26.1 | I said, if you let banks go over $50 billion, you're going to have to pay attention to them |
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