Macro Musings with David Beckworth

Barry Eichengreen is a is well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Blustein is a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal journalist who has authored several acclaimed books on global economic institutions. Brendan Greeley is a veteran journalist from the Financial Times and current PhD student at Princeton studying monetary history. They all return to the show for a special roundtable discussion where they discuss the history of dominant currencies, whether we will always end up with a single reserve currency, whether monetary sovereignty is earned or given, the question of exorbitant privilege, what there is to do about a second China Shock, the future of dollars in the digital age, and much more.
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Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.
Recorded on May 11th, 2026
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:01 - On Each Author's Book
00:11:12 - Globally Dominant Currencies
00:25:37 - Single Reserve Currency
00:28:34 - Fed's Control Over Global Dollar System
00:38:39 - Exorbitant Privilege
00:46:30 - China Shock 2.0
00:49:23 - Future of the Global Dollar System
00:58:16 - Outro

David Wessel is a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings and is the director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. In David's first appearance on the show, he discusses stories of the Greenspan Fed, what is was like in Europe when the euro was adopted, the legacy of the Powell Fed, his thoughts on the great man theory, the outlook for the Kevin Warsh Fed, the ongoing challenge of Fed independence, and much more.
Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel!
Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.
Recorded on June 15th, 2026
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:48 - David's Career
00:19:30 - Legacies of Fed Chairmans
00:31:51 - Kevin Warsh Fed
00:43:34 - Fed Independence
00:55:13 - Outro

Sam Lyman is the head of research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and formerly was a senior advisor and speechwriter for Treasury Secretary Bessent. In Sam's first appearance on the show, he discusses Secretary Bessent's secret skill, the competition in the digital payments space between the US and China, why the strategic Bitcoin reserve is important, what the future of Bitcoin holds, where things stand with the CLARITY Act, the Q Day conundrum, whether Satoshi Yakamoto is alive or dead, where Sam thinks the anti-AI sentiment is coming from, and much more.
Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel!
Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.
Recorded on May 21st, 2026
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:49 - Sam's Career
00:05:37 - Nation-States and Digital Payments
00:14:40 - Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
00:18:29 - Future of Bitcoin
00:24:27 - Bitcoin vs. Dollar-Based Stablecoins
00:38:32 - Update on the CLARITY Act
00:44:48 - Quantum Computing
00:49:34 - Satoshi Yakamoto
00:52:20 - Foreign Campaign Against AI
00:57:44 - Outro

Stephan Luck is a Financial Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In Stephan's first appearance on the show, he discusses how the 2008 Great Financial Crisis shaped his career, how he and his coauthors leverage LLMs to comb through massive amounts of historical data, what this data can teach us about responding to bank failures, what people get wrong when they try and make historical analogies to the GENIUS era, the lessons we can learn from the German hyperinflation, and much more.
Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel!
Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.
Recorded on June 1st, 2026
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:55 - Stephan's Career
00:11:21 - Bank Failures
00:28:19 - Policy Implications of Bank Failures
00:37:21 - National Banking System
00:46:30 - German Hyperinflation
00:57:06 - Outro

Barry Eichengreen is a well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. In Barry's first appearance on the show he discusses a career in untangling the world's monetary history, the origins of his new book Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto, the first uses on currencies in the 7th Century BC, the unexpected start of the dollar, how we landed on the central bank model, the dollar's rise to global reserve currency, which if any currencies as poised to take on the dollar, and much more.
Watch the full length video on our new YouTube Channel!
Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.
Recorded on May 27th, 2026
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:17 - Barry's Books
00:10:14 - Money Beyond Borders
00:17:17 - Lydia and Greece
00:20:46 - Renaissance of Credits
00:23:36 - Spanish Silver
00:28:26 - The Emergence of Central Banks
00:38:11 - British Empire vs. Roman Empire
00:43:34 - Dollar as One of the Dominant Reserve Currencies
00:56:29 - Outro