The Fact That Liberal Economics And Liberal Politics Parted Ways Is Quite Fascinating

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today is Edward Price, a diplomat, a work for the United Kingdom, for the government, and the head of economic policy during the Brexit years. Well, Edward Price, give us an update. Where the heck are we right now?

0:17 What’s going on with the price of a dollar, what’s going on with tariffs? You give the American people an update?

0:26 Speaker 2 Well, thanks for having me, John, I’m not sure if anybody’s qualified to give a true update. And that’s another way of saying that the international macroeconomy, the picture they’re in is pretty confusing. I mean, on the one hand, in the last ten years or so, we’ve achieved peak globalization.

0:42 We had massive economies of scale, we had comparative advantage, we had the United States exporting Fiat currency and the Chinese exporting goods. But somehow the outcome of that globalization wasn’t what political scientists always wanted, right, which was peace.

0:57 It was what the political scientists always feared, which is tension and conflict. So the fact that liberal economics and liberal politics parted ways is fascinating. And to answer your question, I think we’re at the moment now, the inflection point in which the United States says, okay, this is a mess.

1:12 We’re going to start making moves absolutely.

1:17 Speaker 1 I mean, my opinion on Brexit was that the fact that the British tell me, if I’m wrong, the British government was being invaded. They woke up one day and they’ve realized that the UK used to be sixty seven percent British, and all of a sudden they woke up one day it was forty seven percent. Am I wrong?

1:35 Speaker 2 You are right? Yes, that wasn’t the issue with Brexit. I think that it was a much more complicated economic picture, and I think that the fact that the United Kingdom was exporting invisible services capital services to Europe escapes the nis of the general population. So there are many reasons that the British voted for Brexit. But I have to

1:55 say that one of the interesting things in retrospect is that those parts of the country that voted against the European Union had the lowest level of immigration. So I think that’s probably an urban myth.

2:06 Speaker 1 Well, maybe tell us what’s going on in the global economy. There’s were many many rumors that Russia and China in India were trying to get rid of the dollar and change around the global currency. Give us your give us your pulta net.

2:31 Speaker 2 Well, I think that that the dollar in any long term horizon is in trouble. John. There are too many dollars in existence, at least as measured by the rational size and the rational demand of the US economy. And I’ve written about this actually recently National Review. That comes down to the Nixon presidency. President Nixon is the guy

2:49 that moved us from a metallic standard to a fiat dollar, and the implications of that decision have been working through the system ever since. One arguably was the global financial crime when massive US denominated capital flooded back into one of our assets, in this case property, But another is eventually going to be what I call the dollar frown.

3:09 And look, we’re already seeing that US treasury yields really rose recently, and that defies what you usually think about, which is a safe haven playbook, which is the dollar smile. And instead there’s a growing thesis which is that there are too many dollars in the world. As I say, and honestly, I don’t know how economic policymakers would fix that,

3:27 because it certainly wouldn’t be another round of q E.

3:31 Speaker 1 Understood. What else do you want to tell you, imagine people now you’re teaching. You’re teaching right now in New York University.

3:41 Speaker 2 I have been teaching. I’m not teaching this semester, but I have been teaching, and I suppose my general message is let’s keep subtle, let’s be kinder to each other at home. One of the things that worries me is that we’ve got these two great political economists the wrong way around, Hobbs and Rousseau. Hobbs is about power. Russo

3:58 is about cooperation. We’ve seen in the last twenty five years to have applied Russo abroad and Hobbs at home. Let’s flip that around. Let’s have Russo at home. Let’s be kinder to each other. Let’s take the temperature down here and a bit more Hobbs abroad, which is basically finding and defeating our enemies.

4:14 Speaker 1 Understood and well ed. Price. Thank you so much for coming on today, and let’s keep talking and keep the American people informed. And I believe keep being kept informed is more important than anything else.

4:32 Speaker 2 Oh Amen to that, John, Thanks for having me on. Thank you