Jul 21, 2026 · 47 min · 8 segments
Recessions are often explained as the inevitable result of excess: too much borrowing, too much speculation, too much optimism, or some hidden imbalance waiting to be corrected. But what if that story…
Tyler GoodspeedGuestPaul MuellerHost
Samuel GreggGuestIt goes in the face of a lot of economic writing and theorizing for hundreds of years.
You wrote a review for The Free Beacon about this, and so I want to— bring your comments here, your perspective on this sort of boom bust narrative and how as human beings, we kind of have, we're kind of drawn, I think, in a sense to make analogies or things that we're aware of.
And so there's this kind of natural penchant we have for the idea of atonement or punishment or cycles.
So you can talk kind of broadly, historically, why economists and others have talked about the economy as being very cyclical and kind of your assessment and takeaways.
So when I read the book, what I found myself constantly thinking about were the debates in the 1930s about business cycle theory.
And of course, there was a lot on people's minds at the time, of course, because with the Great Depression, people are wondering, okay, so when does this cycle come to an end? What caused this cycle to take this particular turn? And what can, if anything, can we do about it? And I find it fascinating, if you go back and you read people who are writing on this, this theme, it included some of the very big names of economists in the 1930s.
And what we have to get into is trying to work out whether there's anything we can actually do about that.
It goes in the face of a lot of economic writing and theorizing for hundreds of years.
You wrote a review for The Free Beacon about this, and so I want to— bring your comments here, your perspective on this sort of boom bust narrative and how as human beings, we kind of have, we're kind of drawn, I think, in a sense to make analogies or things that we're aware of.
And so there's this kind of natural penchant we have for the idea of atonement or punishment or cycles.
So you can talk kind of broadly, historically, why economists and others have talked about the economy as being very cyclical and kind of your assessment and takeaways.
So when I read the book, what I found myself constantly thinking about were the debates in the 1930s about business cycle theory.
And of course, there was a lot on people's minds at the time, of course, because with the Great Depression, people are wondering, okay, so when does this cycle come to an end? What caused this cycle to take this particular turn? And what can, if anything, can we do about it? And I find it fascinating, if you go back and you read people who are writing on this, this theme, it included some of the very big names of economists in the 1930s.
And what we have to get into is trying to work out whether there's anything we can actually do about that.
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