Saturday, January 21, 2012

First Principles on the Business News Networks

Yesterday I spent the day visiting the TV studios of CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and the Fox Business Network to discuss my new book First Principles. Thanks to the news anchors the discussion—and debate—was interesting and lively.

I started early, co-hosting Squawk Box from 7 to 9 am with anchors Becky Quick, Joe Kernan, and Andrew Ross Sorkin on the set at CNBC studios in New Jersey. Here is a video from the opening where I briefly presented the theme of the book—that America has deviated from the principles of economic freedom—and responded to some good questions from Joe and Andrew (author of the best seller, Too Big To Fail). Later in the show Steve Liesman joined us on the set and we had a rousing debate segment about the Fed and why economists so often disagree while Joe Kernan raised doubts about the whole subject of economics (had to work hard to get a word in edgewise here). At the end of the show Andrew and I wrapped up with a brief discussion of the economic implications of the 2012 election and where the big economic differences are between Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Barack Obama

Then over to midtown Manhattan to Bloomberg News studios on Lexington Avenue for an hour’s visit on Surveillance Midday anchored by Tom Keene. Tom has great ways to bring economic ideas into the news of the day and make them entertaining, and he certainly did that with the ideas in First Principles. Here is a video of the opening and ending of that show. Allan Meltzer joined us halfway through the show via a remote video feed, and he added his strongly held views that monetary policy needed to be less discretionary and more rule-like, which I appreciated.

At the end of the day I went over to News Corporation Building on Sixth Avenue for an interview with Gerri Willis on her Fox Business News show The Willis Report . It was a fast-moving on-point interview (4½ minutes) in which she managed to bring out a host of issues ranging from Fed policy to crony capitalism.

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