Sep 24, 2026 · 27 min · 13 segments
15 years ago on WEALTHTRACK, acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson recommended privatization to reduce America’s burgeoning debt burden & innovations to reform its failing public schools. The problems…
Niall FergusonGuestConsuelo MackHost
I think we're in that state where we've got ourselves out of the near Great Depression.
I mean, things were really bad, 08, 09, and I think up until the summer of 2009, there wasn't much to distinguish our situation from that of the early 1930s.
From the summer of 2009, we avoided that scenario, which is why I said it was a slight depression, because it was a depression, but just not a great one.
But the trouble is the reason that we didn't have a Great Depression was that we threw massive fiscal and monetary stimulus at the problem.
in less than a decade, mostly as a result of what we did in response to the crisis.
And there's also been an enormous expansion of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, which is the monetary base of the entire monetary system.
And so you suddenly find yourself nursing a hangover, asking yourself, How do we stabilize this explosion of public debt? I mean, at the moment, the federal government is on track to borrow another one point something trillion dollars.
For the third year running, there will be a deficit of around 10% of gross domestic product, which in the past we'd have associated with a major war, even a world war.
And we also have this question, what is the Federal Reserve going to do if quantitative easing, Mark II, doesn't deliver the promised results? Are we going to see the Fed buying more and more bonds, QE3, QE4? And what is that going to do in terms of inflation? So I would say we can put the depression behind us.
But now we're dealing with this strange and almost unprecedented hangover because we've never really been in this situation before.
I think we're in that state where we've got ourselves out of the near Great Depression.
I mean, things were really bad, 08, 09, and I think up until the summer of 2009, there wasn't much to distinguish our situation from that of the early 1930s.
From the summer of 2009, we avoided that scenario, which is why I said it was a slight depression, because it was a depression, but just not a great one.
But the trouble is the reason that we didn't have a Great Depression was that we threw massive fiscal and monetary stimulus at the problem.
in less than a decade, mostly as a result of what we did in response to the crisis.
And there's also been an enormous expansion of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, which is the monetary base of the entire monetary system.
And so you suddenly find yourself nursing a hangover, asking yourself, How do we stabilize this explosion of public debt? I mean, at the moment, the federal government is on track to borrow another one point something trillion dollars.
For the third year running, there will be a deficit of around 10% of gross domestic product, which in the past we'd have associated with a major war, even a world war.
And we also have this question, what is the Federal Reserve going to do if quantitative easing, Mark II, doesn't deliver the promised results? Are we going to see the Fed buying more and more bonds, QE3, QE4? And what is that going to do in terms of inflation? So I would say we can put the depression behind us.
But now we're dealing with this strange and almost unprecedented hangover because we've never really been in this situation before.
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