Is Steve Laffey America's Last Real Republican? Steve's Back to Survey the Wreckage of the Trump Presidency

What if the biggest investment opportunity in the world is hiding in plain sight, and the reason no one is taking it is fear of the unknown? Theo Kocken spent two decades building Cardano into one of Europe’s most respected pension risk management firms. Then he walked away to fix something bigger: the broken financial infrastructure keeping billions of people in low-income countries from accessing the capital they need to grow. In this conversation, Professor Kotlikoff and Theo explore currency risk in developing markets, the mechanics of risk-sharing that could unlock trillions in private investment, and what a Monty Python filmmaker has to do with explaining the next financial crisis. What You’ll Learn In This Episode: [00:07:00] How Cardano was founded and why Theo left to focus on development finance [00:08:00] The Currency Exchange Fund (TCX): how it protects companies from devastating loan shocks in Africa and Asia [00:23:00] The real state of African development: why the GDP numbers don’t tell the whole story [00:29:00] ILX Fund: mobilizing pension capital alongside development banks for high-impact projects [00:37:00] Boom Bust Boom: the Monty Python-produced documentary on the human origins of financial crisis [00:43:00] Private credit and insurance risk: why today’s financial system may be setting up the next crisis Featured Guest: Theo Kocken is a professor of risk management at VU University Amsterdam and extraordinary professor at NWU University in South Africa. He is founder of Cardano, a leading pension risk management firm, and co-founder of Cardano Development, a not-for-profit focused on financial inclusion in low- and medium-income countries. He is also a founding force behind TCX (The Currency Exchange Fund) and ILX, and the producer of economic documentaries including Boom Bust Boom (2015) with Terry Jones of Monty Python. Resources Mentioned: TCX: The Currency Exchange Fund ILX Fund: AfDB Partnership Boom Bust Boom Documentary (2015) Cardano Development

What does it mean when one of the country's leading labor economists, a former Obama White House advisor who served as chief economist at the Department of Labor, tells you that Washington's bet on AI saving Social Security is built on a foundation of wishful thinking, and that the real numbers have been pointing toward crisis since 2017? Betsey Stevenson studied physics at Wellesley, switched to economics because the marginal costs were lower, earned her PhD from Harvard, passed up a Michigan faculty offer to work in the private sector, wrote a brand-new job market paper from private sector data to re-enter academia, and eventually landed at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan — where she now teaches, researches, and co-authors a leading economics textbook with her partner Justin Wolfers. In this episode, Professor Kotlikoff sits down with Stevenson for a conversation covering the divorce law economics that launched her career, what Title IX actually proved about sports and upward mobility, how two economists navigate a two-career relationship, and a frank assessment of where the US economy is heading under the weight of deficits, AI hype, and a capital income tax structure that may be quietly turning America into a servant economy.

What if the single strongest predictor of whether a poor kid rises into the middle class has nothing to do with intelligence, work ethic, or even education, and everything to do with who happens to be in their classroom in third grade? Raj Chetty grew up in New Delhi, came to the US in fourth grade, emailed 15 Harvard professors his first week on campus, was working as a research assistant for Marty Feldstein within weeks, graduated college a year early, and became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history. He has since used anonymized tax records covering virtually every American to build the most detailed picture ever assembled of who gets ahead in this country, why, and what we could actually do about it. In this episode, Professor Kotlikoff sits down with his MacArthur Genius Fellow and John Bates Clark Medal-winning colleague for a conversation covering the grocery store experiment that upended tax theory, the kindergarten classroom that changes your earnings for life, the Facebook data revealing why Iowa produces more upward mobility than Atlanta, and a brand-new private capital market proposal that could finally align financial incentives with the American dream.

What does it mean when the co-founder of America's premier nonpartisan fiscal policy institution tells you that both parties have systematically abandoned the working class, the young, and the American Dream. Not by accident, but by design? Eugene Steuerle co-founded the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam, taught himself economics via correspondence course while serving in the Army, and has spent five decades at the center of every major U.S. fiscal debate. He has testified to Congress roughly two dozen times, received the Paul Samuelson Award for Dead Men Ruling, and has now followed it up with Abandoned, a damning account of how both political parties locked in spending for the elderly and wealthy while leaving everyone else behind. In this episode, Professor Kotlikoff sits down with his longtime friend and intellectual ally for an unsparing conversation about the structural forces driving America's fiscal crisis, who is getting hurt, and what it would actually take to fix it.

What if solving Argentina's inflation crisis required nothing more than a single televised announcement — and the government is still not making it?