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An Excellent Bloomberg Television Interview with Harvard's Niall Ferguson

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Kendall Harmon

He discusses the Obama administration’s fiscal policy, the U.S. government’s debt and proposed changes to the financial regulatory system.

I happened to catch this yesterday morning. Note especially the concern about the mounting national debt and the mention of the historical parallels with the 1930’s (he sees significant discontinuities there). Watch it all (a little over 10 1/2 minutes).

Posted in * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, Credit Markets, Economy, Federal Reserve, History, Office of the President, Politics in General, President Barack Obama, The National Deficit, The U.S. Government, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner

3 comments on “An Excellent Bloomberg Television Interview with Harvard's Niall Ferguson”

  1. Kendall Harmon says:
    July 2, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    Line of the interview for me

    “They are not necessarily doomed to fail, the question is just how big the pain will be….”

  2. BlueOntario says:
    July 4, 2009 at 7:51 am

    Unfortunately, history usually takes a back seat to “knee jerk.” Ferguson is one of the few “big picture” people writing today, which is a good thing, but perhaps too little of a good thing – we could use a few more voices to balance the debate.

  3. Pageantmaster Ù† says:
    October 10, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    Pretty alarming – US gross debt at 100% of Gross Domestic Product – a years output!

    Ferguson says that one gets out of it by either inflating the debt burden away or defaulting on it; and the US may well have to inflate its way out of it.

    We in Britain are facing similar problems wondering how to reduce the huge debt burden run up recently. There are other alternatives: one can raise taxes but that risks depressing things further and is politically unpopular, or just keep borrowing money and live with the huge interest payments.

    We in the UK tried inflating our way out of huge debt in the late 1960’s and 1970’s – it got the debt down but was disasterous for the economy and peoples’ savings and it has taken 40 years to really recover from that…and now others have taken its place and we are back in huge debt again.

    Thanks for posting this – much to think about.