John Cochrane, fellow of the Hoover Institution and author of “The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level”, joins us to discuss the West’s economic stagnation and what it would take to restore robust growth. From America’s slowdown to Britain and Europe’s near-zero growth since 2010, Cochrane diagnoses the fundamental supply-side challenges holding back prosperity and explains why the UK’s GDP per capita of £52,000 lags so far behind America’s £80,000 and Singapore’s £90,000.
The conversation explores what Cochrane calls the “Marie Kondo approach” to economic policy, where growth requires systematic institutional reform rather than stimulus spending. He analyses everything from California’s failing £100 billion high-speed rail project to Britain’s planning system, arguing that cost disease and regulatory sclerosis have made it impossibly expensive to build anything. Cochrane also examines why the 2021 inflation proved secular stagnation theory wrong and what “frontier growth” versus “catch-up growth” means for different economies.
In the final section, Cochrane turns to fiscal crises and financial reform, warning that sovereign default is now a realistic possibility for major economies including the United States. He makes the case for narrow banking to prevent future financial crises, explains why there is no such thing as “maturity transformation”, and offers a surprisingly optimistic view that political change can happen faster than anyone expects, pointing to Trump’s election and Argentina’s libertarian president as examples of rapid shifts in the politically possible.
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