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November 16th, 2009
Live Q&A with Niall Ferguson, host of THE ASCENT OF MONEY
If you missed the live Q&A with Niall Ferguson, the host of the Emmy® Award-winning series “The Ascent of Money”, watch it now.
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This exclusive event was made possible by T. Rowe Price.
4 comments
I understand one of the main themes of this excellent series to be the growth of our understanding and management of risk, rudely interrupted from time to time by externally imposed shifts in our perception of the scale and source of that risk.
But I would have liked to see more discussion of how much of the recent economic shocks chronicled in the series was due to authentic misunderstanding of risk vs. lack of transparency in the composition and recording of financial transactions, (i.e. a failure to communicate known risks to the investor-taxpayer-underwriter). I would appreciate comments from Prof. Ferguson on how to assess the relative importance of these two factors.
This would help us think more intelligently about policy considerations. If lack of transparency is the major issue, we’ll probably consider more public reporting and oversight (e.g. require hedge funds to provide more information to the SEC). If misunderstanding risk is the issue, then we need to rethink the wisdom of letting each person (oops, each employed person) do their own long-term risk assessment through 401K and similar individually managed old-age insurance products.
I just caught the episode “Bond of War” last night, Nov 23, 2009 and wanted to know if the Ascent of Money will be airing again? This was an interesting show and would really love to see the whole series.
Does Dr. Ferguson believe that the US will begin to recover from the worst of the recession by mid-2010? If it is going to be a “jobless” recovery, does that mean only certain sectors will be favored (if so, which ones) and will the stock market remain as volatile as it has been in the last couple of years?
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Funding for THE ASCENT OF MONEY is provided by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, T.Rowe Price, The Smith Richardson Foundation, James and Merryl Tisch, and PBS. Additional funding for educational materials is provided by the Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation, Inc.
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11/17/2009 :: 02:13:43 PM
Reid Carter Says:
QUESTION FOR PROFESSOR FERGUSON
Given
1) that America is only 5% of the world’s population and thus in the MINORITY and
2) that China, India, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan are the world leaders in manufactured goods and some of these nations hold $billions in American debt because America no longer adds value and
3) therefore that America having become a debtor nation for the first time it its history and
4) since it was the American financial shenanigans beginning in the 90’s like credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s) kept proprietary by an arrogant, pompous, aloof banking industry and a strongly Republican blocked government from banking oversight and thus a blemish on America’s credibility as a debtor nation and
5) that the rate of goods creation as a function of limited ability for science to produce as it had over the past 150 years meaning the possibilities of return to capital and therefore investment will taper off, and
6) I’m sure you can add some substantive predictors yourself…
MY QUESTION: What is the future for a free wheeling, free spending, wasteful, careless, world power like the America we’ve know for these past 75 years? [HINT: Just saying "no" won't go! Re. the INABILITY TO AGREE (a bill barely passed the majority by 2 votes in 435) that health care affects us all from the day we're born to the day we die and should be a condition of a society as "advanced" as ours!]