Accompanied by increases in stress, anxiety e and anger. Welcome. Im ed steinfeld, welcome to this special book talk on angrynomics, a new and really timely work by my friend mark blyth and his coor author. Were joined here today coauthor, were joined by mark, the william r. Rhodes professor of International Economics and professor of Political Science at international and public affairs. Mark and i are going to chat for 20 or 25 minutes or so, but then we would love to take questions if you all in the audience. In fact, if you have a lot of questions, well cut our chat shorter, and well go right to your questions. Those of you joining us via zoom, it would be great if you could write your questions in the q and a box, the q and a window, and well monitor those. And for those of you joining via youtube live, just write your questions in the comment section. Those questions will get to us. And please start writing those questions now, especially if youve already had the pleasure and privilege of reading angrynomics. So, mark, lets get started. I love this book. Its really provocative and fascinating. You mention in the book that the work is intended to restore economics over angrynomics. Ing what does that mean really . All right. So theres a good i call [inaudible] lifetime ambition was to turn economics into history. And what he meant is its basically like a root canal. You need a root canal, its painful, you fix it, right in nothing special. It becomes part of the process. The desire to engineer the world in that way x. That would be nice if we could get to that world. Theres real limits on whether you can do that or not. But what weve got instead is a world that seems to be making more and more people angry for a variety of different reasons. And the motivation, on average, the worlds never been richer. We have more resources. We should be able to do more things. And yet at the same time, weve seen people becoming very angry over the past decade or so. The tea pa party. Then after the tea a party, we first begin to have black lives matter and racial protests. Then we get into the lockdown over covid. Then we have more racial strife, its in a global context. Antiinequality in chile, hong kongs democracy, the complete breakdown of many European Party systems, the rise of populism, trump president , the scottish referendum. All of that is coming up despite us never being richer. So why we think this is happening and ultimately what we can do about it. But this distinction between angrynomics versus economics, we know theres a lot of angry out there, but is the point that anger is motivating people to behave in ways that arent economically sound . I mean, why the angrynomics is . How has anger changed what we understand to be economics . So the way we talk about that, anger at the front, we can talk about that. The middle of the book is also a macro, what it would mean. Theres an any we use in the book analogy we use in the book [inaudible] break them open theyre basically the same, they have the same components, but theyre arranged in different ways kind of like countries. Everybody has a capital market, a labor market, but theyre very different from even other. And the way you get these things to work, there are certain economic ideas, and over time [inaudible] they accumulate bugs in the software and you have cautions. When you you have crashes, you t annoyed. When the economy crashes both at a micro e and a macro level, that creates outpourings of anger. And we try to trace in the middle of the book what are the stretches that produce anger. But just to get into the basics of it, we define angrynomics is when the economy stops serving or is is perceived to stop serving the majority of citizens. In a sense its a rigged game, that basically theres a bunch of insiders, various city called elites or cosmopolitans who have made off with all the cash, all the advantages,es she sequestered all that for themselves and everyone is working harder for less and less. The anger frame is that were trying to make sense of the different types of anger expression that we see. Yeah. The way i understood the book was crises are important. There are moments which these systems break down, but theres something much more long term about the nature of anger that builds up. So the way i read it is to say that over long periods of time, a kind of a disconnect happens. On the one hand, there are these experts who push certain kinds of paradigms, frameworks for understanding the way the world works. So theres these dominant paradigms. And i think your point is, correct me if im wrong, at least at one level sometimes those paradigms as smart as the experts are or think they are the paradimes are just wrong, and ordinary people know that. Ordinary if people hear this stuff about paradigms but say thats b. S. , that just isnt right. Thats one thing. But, you know, you could view that as just expert hubris. But then theres this other thing you and eric refer to which is just out and out selfdealing by elites, or people in power whether financially or politically. Tell me a little bit about how im supposed to make sense of those longterm trends, just bad ideas but the experts arent smart enough to figure out versus just selfdealing elites. So why choose . Lets have both simultaneously, or at least environments in which one allows the other to come to prom announce which is where prominence. Im not sure its the case of theyre not smart enough to think about. We tend to think about it this way, our feelings about the world, our software for running the economy is kind of fixed at a moment in time. Usually after a moment of crisis. So, for example, in the 70, the chi sis of inflation. All the crisis of inflation. All the ideas that come out in the 80s is all reflected in that moment. But we now live in a world in which we havent had inflation in 20 years. The only inflation is in asset prices. So without it basically softening [inaudible] so its more like the world evolves and changes, but the code instructions stay the same, and thats when it creates problems. In terms of the selfdealing of this, this goes back to the fact if anger is released in the system and its kind of like a volatility constraint and blows off, who in a a sense gets to weaponize the anger . Whats the point of it . We live in a particular moment where a convergence of digital and other Media Technologies and the end of the Old Established media monopolies has created space for political entrepreneurs to weaponize this in a way we havent seen before. Now, we can talk about trump and twitter, but the original example is [inaudible] who runs all the media in italy. When you have a system wrap [inaudible] people are saying, oh, you know, youre telling me theres no inflation, but everything i care about, housing, college, health cares gone up, how can there be no inflation . Well, theyre quite right. Its the metric of the expert, theyre totally different things. That results in a loss of credibility. At the same time, you have this wind of weaponization of politics which is possible in a way it wasnt before which feeds back and stokes the anger further. In a sense, why choose. The two of them are kind of working part and parcel. Yeah, that makes sense to me, but let me push a little bit more on why i think it is important to choose a little bit even though these are totally intertwined. I think about myself in the 1980s, 90s, i took econ 101, and we grew up in a moment. Regardless of my political views, i guess i nodded accordingly when i was told markets are the most equitable, efficient way of allocating resources and all ships will rise with the rising tide and better to deregulate and globalization is good. I think, fine, those are good ideas, and we all nodded. And all the while that was going on, theres all this other evidence at least about the process, you know, wage stagnation in the middle and all these people suffering, and i guess i heard that, but still i could nod as an expert yeah. And say in the end its all going the work out. Maybe im an idiot, but, okay, thats a mistake of hubris. And then the idea is we need new paradigms, maybe new people, but you could see change coming through better ideas. But if fundamentally the problem is the norms of leadership have just on the left and right have been tossed and its all about selfdealing now, thats a different kind of problem. I mean, that calls for thats revolution, thats regime change, thats man the barricades rather than write a different textbook. Right. I know theyre intertwined, but which one really the issue today this. Well, if we think about the protests going on, the second wave of black lives matter and the protests in the u. S. , these are claims to moral outrage. These are clear claims to you are selfdealing, you are hypocrites, you do not actually apply the law equally. And i think it varies by, you know, area in this regard. I think another way of putting it rather than sort of the hubris on one side and the selfdealing on the other side is simply the fact as the world has become more integrated and globalized and all those things we grew up with, its a natural human tendency for us to [inaudible] we see this in politics, but we also see it in economics and everything else. If you grew up believing free trade is good for you with, you will defend the argument even if theres lots of evidence coming the other way. And i still defend parts of that argument. It doesnt mean the whole thing wrong, right . So it take ill throw another keynes core argument. That [inaudible] that combines with the realist views of selfdealing and basically in the sense the software no longer matching the hardware to produce a world in which you get a lot of uncertainty, and that leads towards the type of dynamics that we see with angrynomics. So let me restate to make sure ive got it. The idea there are a bunch of bad ideas out there, ideas that have onslessed before people in power recognized that. And because theyre slow to respond, that creates this opening for, in your words, tribal identity, tribalism and that kind of anger to be used as a technology that these, that some people will weaponize this while the experts are slow to respond and you get the, you know, ther theless coneys, the trumps who weaponize this stuff, and you get this moment were in today. In the sense, its actual real things people are responding to. Ill give you an example of this. So if you watch american media, lets use that horrible mainstream media. When you have the lockdown protest, everybody in the world [inaudible] very few of us saw the picture of the 2,000 people who were also there without guns who were essentially seeing what we see all the time but kind of field out. So there was a federal reare serve study a few years back that said 40 of americans, could be even more actually, would have trouble getting 400 together in an emergency. The checks hadnt arrive yet. Meanwhile, theyre watching the television and seeing that the Federal Reserve is saying if youre rich and you have assets, dont worry, well buy everything. You dont have to. [inaudible] to understand whos got the air bag and who doesnt, right in and who has insurance and who doesnt. And thats whats real, and that is whats been utterly weaponized. But we also want to acknowledge this is absolutely legitimate. And the fact that folks like you and i have been tone deaf for so long is a real problem. But at the same time, in 2009 during the financial crisis, again, regardless of my political views, it made me crazy that in the early part of the First Obama Administration it seemed that nothing was being done punitively against the banks or the bankers or that when big bonuses were paid out, nothing happened. You know, nothing punitive. It made me nuts with anger or moral indignation. So it does seem to me that this is a fairly extended, longterm process. Absolutely. And, you know, people pick up little bits of different parts of the information and interpret it in different ways. You can see that, for example, obamas response to the new administration coming to power, not the establishment democrats correctly come to the [inaudible] innkeepers and others, the ones who built the system to try to bail the system. Well, you end up in a world where basically the old mantra was bail,ing bail, send to jail. I dont think obama thought lets make that the policy target, but thats the way it ended up, can that then sent a signal to people that, basically, theres two sets of rules. If im a Small Business match, i go to the wall. If im a banker [inaudible] essentially the system weve been running for the past decade and a half. Right. I mean, i dont know how deeply we would want to go into this, but also race in the american story. Although, arguably in some of the other National Contexts too. Race then suffuses a lot of this discussion about or involving rage and anger or and moral indignation but also access to prosperity. Yeah. These things, i would never be final enough to reduce race to economics. Thats absolutely ridiculous are. Particularly in the context of the United States. It has its own history, its own drivers. Ill give you one example of something i posted last week. About two weeks ago the boston Federal Reserve issued a study, and it looked at net family wealth, basically assetses and liabilities for families in boston. Your average white family, think about this is a misleading [inaudible] youve got a bunch of super rich anemia boston, so it people in boston, so it pushes it up. Essentially, its 247,000 a year. Your black family in boston 8. Let me say that again, 8, right . You do not get those type it is of inequalities unless you have serious institutions pushing things in this direction for many years at a time. The redlining of property, access to credit, unable to access the financial system, policing is just one part of that set of institutions. So, of course, this is tied into it in a particular form of anger and moral outrage which i think is is utterly justified in the United States today is what we see in the current process. Its, you know, in the book you and eric have a number of very interesting proposals. I guess well call them policy proposals for National Wealth funds, dual Interest Rates, direct transfers to Household Income which i think are quite novel and provocative and persuasive in many respects. But how would that the then play out against what you just said . New deal and new great the society. Weve had pushes like this which then, again, get filtered through race and other kinds of biases that still lead to important parts of the population not benefiting. Is there some way that these new proposals could get around that . So what we try to do is think who is this group for, right . Its basically for everybody whos interested in this question. The way that we wrote the book, we basically recorded it on siri. We used a couple of phones, and eric did a bunch of reading, i did a bunch of reading, and then we talk the book. We then got siri to transcribe it. She had a hard time, but we put it into normal text. When you did, it sounded like two rich white guys telling everybody all the solutions and we know whats going on, and all you need to do is [inaudible] and thats it. So we hated it. So we put it back into a dialogue form and really tried to open it up. We till ended up with these proposals [inaudible] no, ill say theyre accessible though, its yeah. Partly ill blame eric because hes a Monetary Policy geek. This is the serious point, if you say Green New Deal to people, just the very term new deal is itself politically toxic. It also says something about the hack of sort of bipartisanship and also genuine new ideas that can reach across the political divides. The lasted good thing the democrats can point to happened 80 years ago. I think the case for decarbonization as a call is overwhelming, but if youre going to say basically new deal, its dead before it starts. So [inaudible] policies which are basically not based on increasing taxation that make a real difference to the assets that people who dont have assets could accrue over a lifetime if not shorter period of time that could make serious departments in inequality that also are likely to get people to say, yeah, short revolution, thats not bad. So, you know, thats why we ended in this [inaudible] before with people even start listening to them in . Theres no point in saying them. Yeah. And well get into, i hope, some of the details about some of the proposals, and im sure that the audience will have questions about it. I want to explore a little bit how these proposals again, whether its for dual Interest Rates or National Wealth fund, direct transfers to Household Income how do those translate e to really a new kind of poll poll politics in i guess some of this may have to [inaudible] i suppose one view is people vote their pocketbooks, which is plausible. But maybe a different view is people want to feel something, they want their dignity reaffirmed, you know . I want to feel something. Yeah, nobodys [inaudible] i e totally get that, right . Nobodys talking about that. And your point, if ive got it right, is look,ing you know, were locked into this politics of either these techie answers which people dont want to hear, big empty slogans versus the raw meat of negative zero sum, xenophobic identity, and one of of none of those is good. What is the kind of politics thats going to rehappy the fissures reshape the fissures in some of these societies . So people is have had sovereign wealth funds, you think of norway has all this oil, get all these dollars, what are we going to do with them . We dont use dollar. Makes norway one of the richest countries in the world. Without getting too much into this on the technical side, if you invest in stocks over the long run, the yields 6 a year, more or less. If you invest in bonds, theyre negative. So why would you ever buy bonds in well, every time theres a financial crisis, the governments cost of [inaudible] was negative because with people want to buy bonds. Why would we rather than private equity just issue more bonds because people want them when theyre negative, buy miles away from the politicians and then over ten years if you did that 20 of u. S. Gdp and bought up those assets, you would have have a multitrillion dollar wealth fund which you could then give to people for college, for reforming health care, you could really make a difference in the things that actually make a difference in peoples lives. And thats the type of thing because its actually doing what the fed does in a sense but without doing it in such