Money, Inflation and Policy with the Grumpy Economist John Cochrane | EP126

John Cochrane is an economist, specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics, the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Previously John was a Professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and before that at the Department of Economics. Josh is also an author of the Grumpy Economist blog.

 

In this episode we talked about:

• John’s Background in Economics
• Interest Rates & Inflation
• Modern monetary theory 
• Milton Friedman
• Market outlook 
• Fiscal policy
• Macroeconomic Environment

Useful links:

https://www.johnhcochrane.com/

https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/

 

Transcription:

Jesse (0s): Welcome to the Working Capital Real Estate Podcast. My name's Jessica Galley, and on this show we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to Working Capital, the Real Estate podcast. I'm talking with John Cochran today. John is an economist and the Rosemary and Jack Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institute.

 

He's a former professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the Department of Economics, and the author of a great fantastic blog that you should check out The Grumpy Economist. John, how you doing today?

 

John (45s): Good, thank you.

 

Jesse (47s): So we talked a little bit before the show, John, you know, the podcast itself, the listeners that we talk a lot about the kind of environment that we play in as entrepreneurs and real estate investors and that being the economy. And you have a up a book that, you know, I heard on another podcast the Fiscal Theory of the Price level, which will put a, a link to and despite the title and to scare anybody off. Maybe you could give a kind of an overview of first of all, maybe your background in economics and, and kind of the work you do, and then we could chat a little bit, a little bit about the book.

 

John (1m 22s): Great. Let's see. I'm, I'm economist and I've been thinking about money and inflation since 1982 and I've split my time between thinking about that and thinking about stocks and bonds. So money inflation, business cycle stocks and bonds and a whole bunch of other things. Being an economist is a wonderful thing because we, you can, you can jump from one thing to another and, and actually, you know, make real contributions in lots of places. The book is called The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level.

 

If you Google me and find my website, you'll find the book. You will also, the book is full of equations and designed to convince my fellow economists that they need to come over to this. There are some essays on the same website, which I re recommend. You start with, fiscal histories are particularly like no equations and tries to tell a different story about where inflation came from and where it's going in the US over the last, in the postwar period. The basic idea is where does inflation come from?

 

Not so much too much money chasing too few goods, but more importantly, too much overall government debt relative to what people think the government is willing and able to pay back. And if you're sitting on say,