John Tamny

Episode 209: “The Money Confusion: Why Inflation Now?” with John Tamny

In 1974, with annual inflation raging over 12%, President Gerald Ford introduced WIN (“whip inflation now”) buttons telling Americans: “To help increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less. To help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less.” In other words, the responsibility to fix inflation fell to ordinary Americans. It didn’t work – because they didn’t cause it in the first place – and it would be another eight years before Fed Chairman Paul Volcker tamed the inflation beast. With draconian measures, like draining bank reserves, the Fed funds rate rose to 19.1% and mortgage rates reached over 18%. Volcker’s “remedy” engineered not one severe recession but two of them, back to back. Today, a “WIN” button might stand for “Why Inflation Now?” The many explanations include: the explosion of Federal spending and the money supply, Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine war, the economic disruptions caused by Covid policy lockdown, the war on fossil fuels and (my favorite) claims from MSNBC commentators that Republicans have invented the term inflation for political purposes. In […]

Episode 191: “Lessons from the Street: Stephen Schwarzman’s Book Prompts Bill to Compare Insights into the World of Money” with John Tamny

In this episode, my friend John Tamny interviews me about legendary Wall Street leader and Blackstone founder Stephen Schwarzman’s book What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence. There are many fascinating insights and lessons in Steve’s book which we can all benefit from. A few highlights: Steve Schwarzman started Blackstone with a unique strategic plan.  There’s a tremendous lesson in how he approached building his firm. For any young man or woman who wants to build a business, or any type of organization, Steve Schwarzman’s book would be a great place to start learning about “what it takes.” When Steve Schwarzman tells his team “don’t lose money” it’s about a mindset. Think through the downsides, what Jay Pritzker called “the horribles.” Both, in part, became billionaires from thinking this way. One of my favorite Steve Schwarzman Rules: “Worrying is an active, liberating activity. If channeled appropriately, it allows you to articulate the downside in any situation and drives you to take action to avoid it.” Great advice. Private equity’s been demonized by a lot of people with agendas […]

Episode 186: John Tamny and I Don’t Agree About Everything, and That’s OK

Author John Tamny joins me on this episode for a freewheeling back and forth about some of today’s big concerns. John, a free market fundamentalist and original thinker, almost always has a contrarian take on things. John’s books include Who Needs the Fed, When Politicians Panicked, Popular Economics and The End of Work. Some of the questions we get into: Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter Why credit’s never there when you need it What it means when Jeff Bezos says your margin is my opportunity Has social media censorship been overstated Have social media companies created a market opportunity for Musk Should we have more engagement with China, not less Is the Fed just an outsourced function of Congress Why you’re hard pressed to find examples where governments have created much wealth Are the agendas of big multinational companies and government converging What it might mean if Elon Musk sells more Tesla stock to buy Twitter Did Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story matter Has Wall Street, just like Silicon Valley, taken a hard left turn. And John’s […]

Episode 169: George F. Will on “American Happiness and Discontents” with Don Boudreaux and John Tamny

In this episode we get to talk with George F. Will about his latest collection of essays, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020, and also about his magnum opus, The Conservative Sensibility. Joining in on the conversation are John Tamny, Vice President of FreedomWorks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of When Politicians Panicked, and Don Boudreaux, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, research scholar at Mercatus Center, who runs the go-to blog for free market economic thinking, Cafe Hayek. Always witty and erudite, George offers up his views on today’s pressing concerns, queried, challenged and amplified by John and Don, two very smart men. Among our questions: How and when do Americans recover the liberties lost from over two years of government  lockdowns and mandates? Why did so many libertarians acquiesce? Public choice theory says that people in government are not any different than people in the private sector. Is this still true? A prosperous and free society depends on trust. Will America’s government health establishment be able to recover the public’s trust? Can woke progressivism’s long […]

Episode 158: “After Covid: Recovering Our Liberty” with John Tamny and Don Boudreaux

It’s almost two years on from the onset of the Covid virus and we know a lot now that we didn’t then. Society should be healing. But we live in vitriolic and partisan times, and widespread disagreement abounds about what it was, what it is, what it isn’t and how to cope with it. Yet to those who understand how economies work, this much seems clear: governments’ blunderbuss one-size-fits-all lockdowns and mandates have turned a manageable public health problem into a social, medical and economic catastrophe. It did not have to be this way. Joining me on this episode to talk about the price we’ve paid and where we go from here are two of our most independent economic and social thinkers: Donald Boudreaux,  professor of economics at George Mason University, who runs the “go to” blog “Cafe Hayek” which has become a critical resource for facts about Covid and sensible response strategies. And John Tamny, editor of Real Clear Markets, a Forbes Magazine editor and the author of “The End of Work” and “When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, […]