Category: video

What difference does the Benghazi disaster make?

Bill Maher doesn’t understand, but Greg Greenwald does?

The author of two very popular histories, 1491 and 1493, is here interviewed, discussing the great exchange of species (and specie) after the discovery of the New World:

On a pedantic note, Mr. Mann apparently had not read (at the time of this interview) E.M. Forster’s classic essay on political systems, “Two Cheers for Democracy.” And he mentioned “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” a famous essay not by William F. Buckley (whose name he suggested as the work’s author) but, instead, neo-​conservative Irving Kristol. But, no matter, this remains a fascinating discussion, and makes me want to read his books. Or at least buy them. (Finding time to read a book is getting harder and harder, it seems. One of the points made in this excellent discussion is that labor is the only thing getting more expensive, over time. Reading is work, if very fun work.)

John Tierney conducts the interview, and has a great segment in the question-​and-​answer period towards the end.

The minimum wage hurts people. Maybe not smart people like yourself, but real people with real hopes, dreams, and human feelings. Jeff Tucker tells the tale:

Here, Nobel Laureate in Economics Vernon Smith introduces his colleague Steve Gjerstad on why the Fed’s early-​in-​the-​millennium policy to induce a housing bubble “went awry”:

Smith and Gjerstad are working on a book on the Great Recession, and Gjerstad provides, here, a data-​heavy discussion, and uses that data to show why Keynesian policy doesn’t work. Gjerstad makes an especially interesting comparisons between Japan and Finland. Well worth sitting through the whole lecture.