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RE-AIR: Robert Samuelson on Paul Volcker and the Great Inflation

Release Date: 12/11/2019

Nellie Liang on Stablecoins After GENIUS, Private Money, and the Global Dollar

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Nellie Liang is a former Treasury and Federal Reserve official and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In Nellie's first appearance on the show, she discusses the future of stablecoins following the GENIUS Act, what stablecoins mean for private money and illicit finance, Fed master accounts, the global role of the dollar, and much more. Watch the on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the for this week’s episode, now with links. Recorded on August 18th, 2026 Subscribe to David's Substack: Follow David Beckworth on X: Follow the show on X: ...

Stephen Miran on Regulatory Dominance, Shrinking the Fed’s Balance Sheet, and the Return of Monetarism

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Stephen Miran is a former governor of the Federal Reserve, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Donald J. Trump, and currently a senior strategist for Hudson Bay Capital Management. In Steve’s third appearance on the show, he discusses his life as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers and as a Federal Reserve governor, the Fed’s balance sheet, regulatory dominance, the future of the discount window, the possible return of monetarism, and much more. Watch the on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the for this week’s episode,...

Donald Kohn on the Fed’s Past, Present, and Future

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

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Ben Harris on AI, Fiscal Sustainability, and the Resilience of the U.S. Economy

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Ben Harris is vice president and director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution and previously served in senior economic policy roles at the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisers. Ben returns to the program to discuss why recent economic shocks have been less damaging than expected, the outlook for inflation and energy markets, whether AI can improve the U.S. fiscal outlook, why we should temper our AI optimism, how longer lifespans and higher interest rates could complicate the fiscal picture, and much more. Watch the on our new YouTube Channel! Check...

Bill Nelson on Shrinking the Fed’s Balance Sheet and Reviving Interbank Markets

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Bill Nelson is chief research officer and chief economist at the Bank Policy Institute and a former deputy director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board. In Bill’s 11th appearance on the show, he discusses how central banks are rethinking their operating systems, the case for a smaller Fed balance sheet and more routine discount window borrowing, the revival of interbank markets, lessons from Silicon Valley Bank, and much more. Watch the on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the for this week’s episode, now with links. Recorded on July...

Gianluca Benigno on Central Bank Balance Sheets, Stablecoins, and Nonlinear Inflation

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Gianluca Benigno is a professor of economics at the University of Lausanne. Previously, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an economist at the Bank of England. Gianluca returns to the program to discuss financial r-star, the changing landscape of central bank balance sheets, the unique challenges facing the Swiss National Bank, how stablecoins could affect Treasury markets and the demand for reserves, the return of nonlinear inflation, its implications for monetary policy, and much more. Watch on our new YouTube Channel! Check out...

Barry Eichengreen, Paul Blustein, and Brendan Greeley on Dollar Dominance

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Barry Eichengreen is a is well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Blustein is a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal journalist who has authored several acclaimed books on global economic institutions. Brendan Greeley is a veteran journalist from the Financial Times and current PhD student at Princeton studying monetary history. They all return to the show for a special roundtable discussion where they discuss the history of dominant currencies, whether we will always end up with a single reserve currency, whether...

David Wessel on the Fed’s Current Inflection Point

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

David Wessel is a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings and is the director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. In David’s first appearance on the show, he discusses stories of the Greenspan Fed, what is was like in Europe when the euro was adopted, the legacy of the Powell Fed, his thoughts on the great man theory, the outlook for the Kevin Warsh Fed, the ongoing challenge of Fed independence, and much more. Watch on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the for this week’s episode, now with links. Recorded on June 15th, 2026 Subscribe to David's...

Sam Lyman on the Digital Payments Race Between the US and China

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Sam Lyman is the head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and formerly was a senior advisor and speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Bessent. In Sam’s first appearance on the show, he discusses Secretary Bessent’s secret skill, the competition in the digital payments space between the US and China, why the strategic Bitcoin reserve is important, what the future of Bitcoin holds, where things stand with the CLARITY Act, the Q Day conundrum, whether Satoshi Yakamoto is alive or dead, where Sam thinks the anti-AI sentiment is coming from, and much more. Watch on our new YouTube...

Stephan Luck on What History can Teach Us about Financial Stability

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Stephan Luck is a Financial Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In Stephan’s first appearance on the show, he discusses how the 2008 Great Financial Crisis shaped his career, how he and his coauthors leverage LLMs to comb through massive amounts of historical data, what this data can teach us about responding to bank failures, what people get wrong when they try and make historical analogies to the GENIUS era, the lessons we can learn from the German hyperinflation, and much more. Watch on our new YouTube Channel! Check out the for this week’s episode, now...

More Episodes

Robert Samuelson is an economics columnist for the Washington Post and spent several decades working at Newsweek, where he wrote on various economic topics. Robert is the author of several books, including *The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement* and *The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence*. He joins the show today to talk about the latter and its implications for today. David and Robert go in-depth about the Great Inflation, as they discuss the disagreement within macroeconomics during the 60s and 70s, the history and significance of the period, and how Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker sought to end the inflation.

Tributes to Paul Volcker:

*Remembering Paul Volcker, The Man Who Tamed Inflation* by Scott Sumner

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/473963-remembering-paul-volcker-the-man-who-tamed-inflation

*Paul Volcker’s Legacy* by Scott Sumner

https://www.econlib.org/paul-volckers-legacy/

*How Paul Volcker Beat Inflation and Saved an Independent Fed* by Roger Lowenstein

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-paul-volcker-beat-inflation-and-saved-an-independent-fed/2019/12/10/7e58d7ae-1b64-11ea-87f7-f2e91143c60d_story.html

*Paul Volcker Was Inflation’s Worst Enemy* by John Taylor

https://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-volcker-was-inflations-worst-enemy-11575937617

*Paul A. Volcker, Fed Chairman Who Waged War on Inflation, Is Dead at 92* by Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert D. Hershey Jr.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/paul-a-volcker-dead.html

Transcript for the episode: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/12112019/robert-samuelson-paul-volcker-and-great-inflation

Robert’s Washington Post profile & bio: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/robert-j-samuelson/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6e300b47761d

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