- Finance & Banking
- Economics
- Innovation
- History
- Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
Jon Hartley and Charles Calomiris discuss banking crises, the Diamond-Dybvig model, deposit insurance, the history of bailouts and public subsidies for banking, the historical comparison of the US and Canada banking systems, quantitative easing and ample reserves banking, stablecoins, non-bank lenders, and Charlie’s magnum opus Fragile By Design.
Recorded on February 27, 2026.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Charles W. Calomiris is Henry Kaufman Professor Emeritus of Financial Institutions in the Faculty of Business and Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs at Columbia Business School, Director of the Business School’s Program for Financial Studies Initiative on Finance and Growth in Emerging Markets, and a professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. His research spans the areas of banking, corporate finance, financial history, and monetary economics. His recent book (with Stephen Haber), Fragile By Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (Princeton 2014), received the American Publishers 2015 Award for the best book in Business, Finance, and Management, was named one of the Best Economics Books of 2014 by the Financial Times, and one of the Best Books of 2014 by The Times Higher Education and by Bloomberg Businessweek.
Jon Hartley is currently a Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, an economics PhD Candidate at Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the UT-Austin Civitas Institute, a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center. Jon also is the host of the Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century Podcast, an official podcast of the Hoover Institution, a member of the Canadian Group of Economists, and the chair of the Economic Club of Miami.
Jon has previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management as a Fixed Income Portfolio Construction and Risk Management Associate and as a Quantitative Investment Strategies Client Portfolio Management Senior Analyst and in various policy/governmental roles at the World Bank, IMF, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the Bank of Canada.
Jon has also been a regular economics contributor for National Review Online, Forbes and The Huffington Post and has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Globe and Mail, National Post, and Toronto Star among other outlets. Jon has also appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News, Bloomberg, and NBC and was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 Law & Policy list, the 2017 Wharton 40 Under 40 list and was previously a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.
For more information, visit: capitalismandfreedom.substack.com/
