Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff

What happens when five completely unrelated thinkers, writing across five different decades, all point to the exact same moment in history as a coming crisis point...and that moment is now?
Samuel Huntington, Neil Howe, Ray Dalio, George Friedman, and Peter Turchin never collaborated. All of them landed on the 2020s. In this episode, Larry Kotlikoff sits down with Bruce Mehlman — founder of Mehlman Consulting, former Assis...

What does it actually take to solve a scientific puzzle that stumped researchers for fifty years — and why are the same AI tools that cracked it still getting basic financial math catastrophically wrong?

In 2024, Demis Hassabis won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for something that sounds almost too ambitious to be real: teaching artificial intelligence to predict the three-dimensional shape of any protein, a problem that had res...

What if everything you've been told about the new Iran deal — and what "winning" the war even meant — is built on a comparison that doesn't hold up, and a strategic outcome that's the opposite of what most commentators are claiming?

A 14-point memorandum is about to be signed in Switzerland, and the headlines are already calling it weaker than the 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal that Trump once tore apart. But according to&n...

What if the system designed to protect your health in retirement was actually engineered (from the inside) to profit from keeping you confused, underserved, and locked out of the care you've already paid for?

You've spent decades paying into Medicare. You've done everything right. And yet, as you approach the years when healthcare matters most, the system greeting you on the other side is riddled with hidden traps, gaming, and a...

Can Israel reverse its political and social trajectory as elections approach amid ongoing wars and rising international isolation?

Economics Matters co-host, Alex Kotlikoff, reunites with Israel's most influential and consequential economist, Eytan Sheshinski, to discuss Benjamin Netanyahu’s long tenure and the impact of his right-wing coalition. The discussion ranges over Israeli domestic policy, geopolitics, the Iran war, a...

Andrew Fesiak rejoins Economics Matters with reassuring news about the war in Ukraine. As I'm traveling in Europe until early June, my son and occasional co-host, Alex, interviews Andrew.  This is Andrew's 6th appearance on Economics Matters. He is, as ever, fully up-to-date on what's happening for real in Ukraine. Indeed, our military and everyone in the Administration, particularly the President, would do well to watch this ...

This will be of interest to anyone who seeks more money, less risk, and a better life. Wade Pfau is one of our country’s truly exceptional thought leaders when it comes to personal finance. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton as well as the CFA and RICP® designations. Wade is a professor of practice in the Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®) Program at The American College of Financial Services.

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Forget what Wall Street says, risky investing is an option, not a starting point when it comes to your financial plan. No investment is perfectly safe and Economics Matters does not provide investment or any other form of financial, tax, or insurance advice. What this blog and podcast do is discuss options. Because TIPS -- Treasury Inflation Protected Securities -- are U.S. Treasury bonds, but ones that are protected against inflat...

John Campbell has made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics and finance, solved a number of critical problems in both fields, and received all manner of fully deserved top awards in economics and finance.

Grab a copy of his outstanding new, co-authored book, Fixed. It will turn your stomach, but keep you safe from Wall Street's terrible financial predation.  

He is the Morton L. and Carole S. ...

World-Renowned, Fantastic Economist, and Former CEA Chair, Gregory Mankiw, Discusses his Career, the Iraq War, Trump Policy and Advisers, and His Top Research Hits

Greg may be the world's most influential economist as millions of students, in the US and abroad, have studied introductory economics and intermediate macroeconomics using his leading text books. He's also been a major US policy player, including serving as Chair of the P...

Glenn is an absolutely brilliant economist and a public intellectual extraordinaire. In addition, Glenn is the pioneer of podcasting by academic economists. Glenn's remarkable podcast -- The Glenn Show-- debuted in 2008.

In this episode of Economics Matters -- the Podcast, I ask Glenn to talk about the Glenn Show, including the topics and guests he's had during the show's now almost two-decade run. But...

Martin Wolf is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded Commander of the British Empire in 2000 "for services to financial journalism". This is Martin's third appearance on Economics Matters -- the Podcast. Martin's 2023 book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, warned that liberal democracy was in recession, with authoritarianism on the rise. Two years later his dark vision ha...

Are we about to have another financial meltdown or at least a major crash? Is this the time to get liquid and stay poised to buy low rather than lose high? Please let one of the world's top financial guru's, John Rutledge, provide his deeply informed sense of the current financial system.

John focuses on times the economy is out of wack -- far from equilibrium is his language.  He is Chief Investment Strate...

President Trump's interest is largely self interest. According to The NY Times, he has personally pocketed $1.4 billion over the past 12 months. While not stuffing his pockets and those of his family, he has transformed our "shining city upon a hill" into a quasi-fascist state, sold out our allies, upended the rule of law, deployed a private army that murders American citizens in broad daylight, orchestrated politica...

Paulo Nogueira Batista is one of Brazil’s most prominent, influential, and instrumental economists. Paulo was vice president of the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS in Shanghai, from 2015 to 2017, and Executive Director at the IMF for Brazil and 10 other countries in Washington, from 2007 through 2015. 

Paulo, as you'll hear/see, and as his bio clearly documents, is a sober, sophisticated, accomplished globa...

Ciff Winston is back on Economics Matters. He's also just out with an impressive new book -- Market Corrections NotGovernment Interventions: A Path to Improve the US Economy. 

The book is a devastating critique of government policy failures -- policies that the private sector had to ultimately overcome or sidestep. Cliff joins us precisely one year after our podcast on Biden's infrastructure bill, ...

Innovation is the hot sauce of economic progress. Trevor Chandler is one of the hottest inventors on the planet. Whether it's inventing Covid detection masks, AI-driven portable disease-detection machines, or robotic AI-guided robotic sensors, Trevor is a whirlwind of discovery and practical implementation.

Join me in this fascinating and highly entertaining interview with Trevor Chandler. You'll meet his robots, learn ab...

John Llewellyn, Lehman's Former Chief Economist, Head of Independent-Economics, and Leading Global Analyst,Talks Today's and Tomorrow's Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

John, as you'll quickly learn from this terrific podcast, has seen more and knows more about the global economy, regional economies, and geopolitics than virtually all of the world's top finance and economics ministers as well as treasury secretaries. John foun...

Dan is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years each in private practice, and at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he moved to NYU in 1995. In 2023, he received ...