"...central banks have cut interest rates at an unprecedented pace. A common view is that economic and demographic factors are forcing central bankers to move in this direction. This is a misunderstanding. Policymakers should not be let off the hook that easily...

...there is nothing natural about the fall in rates that we have seen in much of the developed world since the 1980s. The US, for one, has seen rate cuts with each crisis since the stock market crash of October 1987.

Between crises, rates have been raised a little, before being slashed again to new lows. This pattern appears to follow a political imperative of avoiding market downturns and recessions. That is anything but natural."

Full gated version here.

You can stream it here, or more easily, add the Charter Cities Institute to your podcast app. ​

A short clip for William Blair. Here. Also, same spiel, but with some fancier imaging. 

Webinar for the CFA Society Chicago! I good conversation overall. Wray is one of the top MMT scholars and Moore is plugged into the Trump administration. We put them together for a good contrast. Watch on youtube.
​

This is one of my absolute favorite podcasts, and I listen to a lot of them. One of the top-3 in the field of economics if you ask me (together with Macro Musings and Econtalk). Frank Conway is an excellent interviewer and podcast producer.
Get the episode in mp3 here, or stream it from your favorite podcast app.

NEOM is Saudi Arabia's new mega city project. You can find the article here.

"What made the Chinese SEZs successful was their more decentralised, bottom-up nature, according to Lotta Moberg, a macroeconomic analyst at William Blair and author of The Political Economy of Special Economic Zones: Concentrating Economic Development. “What you had in China were business interests and others who wanted to do business between China and Hong Kong,” she told me in an interview. “They managed to lobby the right people who would reach the upper echelons of the government to grant these kinds of concessions.”Shenzhen’s reforms were not driven by the central state, instead, it was a product of local interests and local lobbying. “The institutional foundations of the Chinese examples created different dynamics from what is likely to occur in Neom, which is largely directed by the government,” said Moberg. Shenzhen was a response to demand, whereas Neom is an attempt to solve the ruling family’s political problems."

Here are my comments, which I supplied for this article, where they have been translated into Vietnamese:
“Lotta Moberg, PhD, Analyst at William Blair & Co. LLC
Most SEZs are political projects. Vietnam has many reforms that it should pursue country wide. Instead, it is happening within confined areas in the form of zones. There are two ways to interpret the government’s choice to pursue SEZs:

1. There is not enough political support for broader reforms, so SEZs is the best among feasible solutions.
   • If this is the reason, the people protest against the zones suggest that it has not been successful. The government will need to show the people that they benefit from it. If not the job creation and supply chain effects are evident enough, they should consider setting up a scheme where the people get checks from the government’s proceed s from the zones.
2. The government may pursue SEZs to look like reformers when they are actually trying to avoid reforms.
   • This is a common rationale for SEZs. The protests against the zones suggest they may not be the right way to go. More-general reforms may evoke less opposition  while also being less economically distortionary than SEZs tend to be. The government is nevertheless pursuing SEZ because it makes them look like reformers and they can point to particular projects ad take credit for them. Meantime, they can maintain the level of protectionism in the rest of the country that prevails today.

Which one of these two reasons for the SEZ is correct in this case matters. In the first case, SEZs may be the best thing for the country. In the second, they should be opposed to the benefit of general reforms.“

Link to the podcast is here. You can subscribe to the Podcast series though Itunes or most of your favorite podcast apps.

​The Center for Innovative Governance Research is an innovative non-profit organization dedicated to promote better governance. It is run by Mark Lutter (twitter). 

Videos for the Startup-Societies Summit were posted on the organization's Facebook page. Here is one panel, discussing the Jones Act and other goodies. Here is a short talk by me, starting at 26 minutes. And here is another panel. Here is me chatting after the conference.