Month: September 2018

Banking used to be a laid-back profession involving long lunches and the odd loan approval to a business. Over the last few decades that has all changed as financial institutions focus increasingly on selling products to the public and thinking up ever more complicated money making schemes for the world markets. This process - often described as financialisation - has meant increased profits for the banks but is also seen as a threat to the rest of the economy. Authors Rana Foroohar and Joshua Ryan-Collins argue that some financial institutions may once again repeating old mistakes

David Grossman considers the growing influence and appeal of state capitalism, asking whether free-market and state capitalist systems can coexist and compete fairly. Joining David are Joshua Kurlantzick, author of "How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World", and economist Dr Linda Yueh, author of "The Great Economists, How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today".

Governments are often ready to close down sectors of their economies which they believe are inefficient, like coal mining, and keen to promote more efficient high tech companies. Back in 2000, author and government adviser Edward Luttwak coined the term Turbo Capitalism to describe how governments are enabling the destruction of well paid "dignified" jobs and replacing them with poorly paid low status occupations. These new roles may appear to be part of a more efficient system, but are, he argues, actually more damaging to society as a whole. He is joined by author James Bloodworth, who described the six months he spent working undercover in a variety of poorly paid positions in "Hired".

Imagine you are heading to the shops and someone steals your shopping list. Then they race ahead and bought all the goods ahead of you, forcing you to buy your shopping from them at a higher price. That is what is happening to ordinary share traders like pension funds. When they go to buy some shares, they find high frequency traders have snapped them up nanoseconds before them and want to sell them at a higher price. These traders now account for the majority of all trades on major stock markets. David Grossman explores the rights and wrongs of this new world with Brad Katsuyama, CEO of IEX, a new stock exchange which wants to clamp down on high frequency traders, and Professor Donald MacKenzie of the University of Edinburgh.

David Grossman asks how and when money is created in the modern economy, how that influences asset prices and financial stability and hears about a radical Swiss idea for monetary reform. Joining the debate are Positive Money director Fran Boait and Professor Sir Charles Bean, former chief economist and deputy governor for monetary policy at The Bank of England.

Over the last two decades South America has witnessed a series of large scale economic experiments where countries have introduced their own brand of left wing politics. Dubbed Socialism of the 21st Century its successes and failures are debated by Dr Asa Cusack from the LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre and Professor Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

David Grossman considers the impact that the revolution in artificial intelligence could have on our jobs, income and society. He is joined by Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge University and Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

David Grossman discovers why it's so hard to resist the billion-dollar industry of digital distraction. David talks to Tim Wu, author of 'The Attention Merchants, The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads' and former Google executive James Williams, author of 'Stand Out of Our Light, Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy'.

Why can't some of the most profitable companies in the world be valued? From fitness classes to global tech firms and coffee chains, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake reveal the growing dominance of the intangible economy and the implications for society, equality and productivity.