SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Booms, Busts & Us

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Life has its ups and downs. Same for the economy. Today we ask, can the business cycle be tamed? Two stories of recession and techniques for moderating the ferocity of booms and busts. Plus, how bankruptcy is a secret weapon of the American economy. | Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. | At this Summer School, phones ARE allowed during class... Check out this week's PM TikTok! | Listen to past seasons of Summer School here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:03.0	Hello and welcome to Planet Money Summer School.
0:13.7	Our sun-filled and hopefully fun-filled journey into the heart of the economy.
0:18.9	I'm Stacey Vanick-Smith and this season is all about macroeconomics, which deals with
0:24.5	the economies of whole countries, and macroeconomics was born to answer one question.
0:31.8	How do we tame the business cycle?
0:35.6	Because make no mistake, the business cycle is a beast.
0:39.0	The ups and downs of the economy, the boom and bust cycle, it is ruthless.
0:43.0	It can wipe out thousands of businesses, millions of jobs, life savings, and inside of
0:48.7	a week.
0:50.0	And here to walk us into the belly of the business cycle is Special Guest Atif Mian,
0:55.4	a professor of economics at Princeton and author of House of Death, a book about the origins
1:00.8	and consequences of the 2008 housing crash.
1:04.2	Welcome Atif.
1:05.2	Thanks, that's great to be here.
1:06.6	So Atif your book deals with one of the most dramatic and definitely destructive recent
1:10.9	examples of a business cycle bust.
1:14.2	And in it, you make the point that this big macroeconomic thing, a recession.
1:19.8	It is made up of a lot of smaller human stories, individual decisions and consequences, a small
1:27.5	business going bankrupt or a home foreclosure, things like that.
1:31.6	I think economics is not supposed to be like a court and court drive subject like that.
1:36.6	It's really about human beings.
	...

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