Stay ConnectedAlphachat is the conversational podcast about business and economics produced by the Financial Times in New York. Each week, FT hosts and guests delve into a new theme, with more wonkiness, humour and irreverence than you’ll find anywhere else
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Tobias Adrian, formerly of the New York Fed, runs the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the International Monetary Fund. Brendan and Colby sat down with him after publication of the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report. They talked about collateralised loan obligations, of course, but also about China and how the US faces risks just like any other country when hot capital flows in.
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On the occasion of the release of the International Monetary Fund's Fiscal Monitor, Brendan talked to Vitor Gaspar, who runs the fund's Fiscal Affairs Department. Mr Gaspar, formerly of the Banco de Portugal, the European Commission and the European Central Bank, drew a distinction between "good" and "bad" spending. He also argued that a "competitive" economy isn't just an economy that pays low wages, and threaded a fine needle on whether Europe needs more infrastructure investment. And he responded to the contention by his friend Olivier Blanchard, former chief economist of the IMF, that debt isn't necessarily always bad.
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Law professor Odette Lienau joins Colby and Brendan on the sidelines of the IMF spring meetings in Washington, DC to discuss the sovereign debt crises in Venezuela, Argentina and Mozambique. They also discuss why vulture funds could do some good.
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Alphaville's Jemima Kelly and Izabella Kaminska sat down with Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and current organiser of a trans-European group of what he calls "radical Europeanists" — in favor of union, without deflation or austerity. Mr Varoufakis answers criticism from the left, pointing out that even if the euro or the EU were poorly conceived, leaving them now would have catastrophic consequences for the poor. He gives a brief history of economic thought, connecting Joseph Schumpeter back to Karl Marx, saying it's not so clear that leftists know what Marx, a globalist, would be saying today. Oh, and also: Pamela Anderson.
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No matter what the British Parliament decides, for almost three years the UK, Ireland and the EU have been dealing with the reality of the Leave vote. Positions have hardened, investments have been foregone, and all the countries involved have become different places, in ways that cannot be undone. Brendan Greeley of FT Alphaville and Mark Blyth of the Rhodes Center at Brown discuss consequences with Stephen Kinsella, economist at the University of Limerick and Megan Greene, chief economist at Manulife Asset Management.
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Leah Boustan of Princeton and Maggie Peters of UCLA look at the wave of migrants to the US from Central America and compare it to the last great wave, from Europe in the late 19th century. Some things are the same: immigrant families are adopting "American" names at the same rates as before, for example. Some things are different: the speed of communication and container shipping mean that American companies prefer to get cheap labour through outsourcing, and won't lobby for increased immigration.
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Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur and more recently How to Fix the Future, sits down with FT Alphaville's Izabella Kaminska. They both tell the history of their own disenchantment with the internet, and discuss why the Elon Musk story has turned into a Shakespearean tragedy, while Jeff Bezos is more of a Bond villain. "When you do away with gatekeepers you get anarchy," says Mr Keen, but dystopian misery isn't the answer, either.
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Forget Brexit. Growth in the eurozone is slowing down, but not equally for all countries. Which leaves the continent with the same question it's had for a decade: is it capable of making policy flexible enough for all of its economies? Waltraud Schelkle of the London School of Economics argues that Europe's currencies always swung with the deutschmark, so the European Central Bank offers some level of control. Ashoka Mody of Princeton says the euro will never be flexible enough to let countries like Italy make adjustments.
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Even if the trade talks are settled, long-term friction will remain between China and the United States. China has an industrial policy which will see it strive to make more advanced products, such as aircraft and medical devices. The US wants to keep selling these kinds of high-value manufactured goods to China. It remains a fundamental issue for the two world economic powers. FT Alphaville's Brendan Greeley speaks first with Brad Stetser, the former US Treasury economist and China watcher, and then is joined by Colby Smith to hear from Freya Beamish, China expert at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
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Answering the question of whether Germany's export-driven model will ever change, and whether Germany's obsession with saving and budget surpluses will ever change. And how to say "Groundhog Day" in German. Wade Jacoby of Brigham Young University and Megan Greene of Manulife Investments join FTAlphaville's Brendan Greeley and Mark Blyth from the Rhodes Center.
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