Economics Matters with Laurence Kotlikoff

What if the most powerful tax-advantaged account in your financial life was designed by one economist with a better idea, and the full version of that idea was never actually implemented? You've probably heard of the Health Savings Account. You may even have one. But the man who invented it says the version Congress passed is a watered-down shadow of what it could be. And that's just the b...

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 Mehlma...

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 p...

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...

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...

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 pol...

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...

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 o...

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 one...

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...

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...

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...

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 ri...

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 Chi...

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 b...

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, so...

Ciff Winston is back on Economics Matters. He's also just out with an impressive new book --  Market Corrections Not Government 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 infrast...

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...

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 treas...

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...

With the leading ten AI companies comprising one third of the value of the S&P and none showing a profit plus the threat they pose to our jobs, let alone humanity, we best keep careful track of the industry. My former graduate student, Seth Benzell, is one of our nation's top AI experts. Seth discusses AI's so-called  scaling law,  the problem of too little data to fit the industry&#39...

Orlando Patterson is simply mesmerizing. We all take "freedom" for granted. But Orlando has studied what it is and isn't -- now and across the millenia. The result of this immensely deep as well as deeply fascinating scholarship is a sober take on what we take for granted -- that freedom is clear cut, fundamental, universal, and here to stay. Orlando sets us straight, not based on op...

I'm not a big fan of investment advisors. Economics teaches us that not everyone can beat the market. Yet, there are tens of thousands advisors out there who will tell you that they and they alone have the secret sauce. Actually, economics teaches us that no one can beat the market unless they have inside information. But economics also tells us how to keep the market from beating you -- by ta...

Steve Laffey is a true American rages-to-riches success story. But Steve took the biblical saying, "to those who have much is owed," fully to heart. After a highly successful career in banking, Steve returned to run for mayor in his birthplace -- Cranston, Rhode Island, taking it from bankruptcy to solvency and growth. His remarkable story is conveyed in  this  Wikipedia entry. This is S...

I've been a huge fan of Holman Jenkins for years. His columns are deeply insightful and fun -- skewering the left and the right in equal measure. I found our conversation remarkably calming. Holman is a true student of history, so when he says this too will pass, it's particularly reassuring. Many columnists come and go. But Holman has been writing for and guiding the editorial page of the...