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In this episode of PFI Talks, host Jiří Zatloukal sits down with Richard Sylla, professor emeritus at NYU, former president of the Economic History Association, and co-author of the classic A History of Interest Rates, for a wide-ranging conversation on financial history and its echoes in the present day. Sylla warns that the rapid rise of U.S. government debt — nearing $40 trillion — is his greatest concern, driven by entitlement spending that neither party seems willing to tackle. Drawing on decades of research into interest-rate cycles, he argues the U.S. may be only five years into a 15–20 year upward trend, adding pressure to an already strained fiscal picture. The conversation turns to Alexander Hamilton, the subject of much of Sylla's scholarship: how the young Treasury Secretary built America's financial system almost from scratch — assuming state debts, founding the first Bank of the United States, creating the dollar, and laying the groundwork for the modern Treasury bond and corporate markets. Sylla draws striking parallels between attacks on Hamilton's central bank in the 1790s and today's political pressure on the Federal Reserve, and between Hamilton's industrial policy and today's tariffs, subsidies, and the CHIPS Act. Other topics include cryptocurrency and stablecoins compared to America's chaotic "wildcat banking" era, the missed opportunity for fiscal union in the eurozone, the influence of economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron on Sylla's thinking, and why Sylla sees Hamilton's financial system — still visible in feats like SpaceX's $70 billion single-day IPO — as one of the most underrated legacies in American history. A conversation about debt, central banks, and why financial history never quite stops repeating itself.

Martin Daunton is one of Britain's most distinguished economic historians, Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge, where he served as Master of Trinity Hall from 2004 to 2014 and twice as Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Born in Cardiff in 1949, he studied economic history at the University of Nottingham, completed his PhD at the University of Kent, and was appointed lecturer at Durham in 1973 before moving in 1979 to University College London, where he was promoted to the Astor Professorship of British History. He held the Chair of Economic History at Cambridge from 1997 to 2015 and is currently a Visiting Professor at Gresham College in London. Daunton's scholarly work covers the economic and social history of Britain since 1700, the shifting boundaries between the market and the state, the politics of taxation and public finance, the relations between national and international economic policies, and debates over intergenerational equity. His many books include House and Home in the Victorian City (1983), Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840 (1985), Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700-1850 (Oxford University Press, 1995), and a major two-volume history of British taxation, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1799-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Just Taxes: The Politics of Taxation in Britain, 1914-1979 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), followed by Wealth and Welfare: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1851-1951 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and State and Market in Victorian Britain: War, Welfare and Capitalism (Boydell Press). His most recent book, The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023 (Allen Lane / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), is a sweeping history of the institutions and individuals who have built and managed the global economy over the last ninety years. It traces how one economic order breaks down and another is built, from the trade and currency warfare of the Great Depression, through the liberal Bretton Woods order that emerged after the Second World War, to the rise of neoliberalism, financialization and hyper-globalization in the late twentieth century, and ends with a call for a more just and sustainable economic government in the face of inflation, food insecurity, climate change and renewed geopolitical conflict. The book was named one of Foreign Affairs' Best Books of the Year. Beyond Cambridge, Daunton has served as President of the Royal Historical Society, Commissioner of Historic England, trustee of the National Maritime Museum, and Chair of the Leverhulme Trust Research Awards Advisory Committee, and has held visiting professorships in Japan and Australia. Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with Martin Daunton.

Michael Sonenscher is one of Britain's most distinguished intellectual historians, Fellow and Director of Studies in History at King's College, University of Cambridge, where he has taught for several decades. His work has reshaped how scholars understand the political, economic and moral thought of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, and the deep intellectual origins of the categories such as public debt, commercial society, the division of labour and capitalism itself through which we still try to make sense of the modern economy. Sonenscher's early work focused on the social and economic history of the French ancien régime, including The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France (1987) and Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge University Press, 1989). He went on to publish two major studies of the intellectual origins of the French Revolution with Princeton University Press: Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (2007), which traced how eighteenth-century debates about sovereign borrowing and inequality fed directly into the upheavals of 1789, and Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution (2008). He has also edited and translated the political writings of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès for Hackett, and published Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Division of Labour, the Politics of the Imagination and the Concept of Federal Government (Brill, 2020). His most recent books speak directly to current debates in political economy and political theory. In Capitalism: The Story behind the Word (Princeton University Press, 2022), Sonenscher recovers the surprising origins of the term "capitalism", first coined in early-nineteenth-century France as a fusion of two distinct sets of ideas, one about public debt and war finance, the other about the division of labour, and shows how this prehistory continues to shape contemporary arguments about markets, welfare states and inequality. In After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2023), a sweeping 567-page study, he traces the genealogy of modern political ideologies, from liberalism to nationalism to communism, through the long European argument that followed Immanuel Kant's question about how the lives of individuals relate to the whole of human history. Sonenscher is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, where he writes on European politics, constitutional thought and the intellectual roots of contemporary political conflicts. Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with Michael Sonenscher.

Jon Spencer is a Partner at TriWest Capital Partners, one of Canada's leading private equity firms. Based in Calgary, Alberta, TriWest was founded in 1998 and has raised more than ~$1.75 billion of committed capital across seven funds, completing fifty platform investments and over sixty add-on acquisitions, with a focus on partnering with management teams of Western Canadian mid-market and lower mid-market businesses across the industrial, manufacturing, services and distribution sectors. Spencer joined TriWest in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades helping to lead the firm's investment activity. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Monarch Industries, a long-established Canadian manufacturer of industrial castings, hydraulic components and concrete-mixing equipment, and sits on the boards of A Parent Media Company (APMC), Supreme International, Lithion Power Group and Prostar Energy Services. Earlier in his career he worked at RBC Capital Markets in the Global Energy Group, where he was involved in public equity offerings and mergers and acquisitions assignments across the North American energy sector, and began his career at Credit Suisse as an investment banking analyst. Spencer graduated with distinction from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, where he earned an Honours degree in Business Administration. Alongside his investment work, he has been actively engaged in the Canadian corporate finance community, having served as President of the Calgary Chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth. Leoš Rousek, the Head Of Corporate Communications at PPF Group (https://www.ppf.eu/en) and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with Jon Spencer.

Sir John Kay, CBE, FBA, FRSE, is one of Britain's leading economists, whose career has spanned the academic world, business and finance, and public affairs. Born in Edinburgh in 1948, he has held chairs at the London Business School, the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics, and has been a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford since 1970, when he was elected to a permanent teaching post at the University of Oxford at the age of 21. Kay studied at the University of Edinburgh and then at Nuffield College, Oxford, where he worked under James Mirrlees, the future Nobel laureate. He served as the first Research Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, founded the consultancy London Economics in 1986, and in 1996 became the founding Dean of Oxford's Saïd Business School. He was also the first Professor of Management to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers to the First Minister of Scotland (2007–2011) and chaired the Kay Review of UK Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making, which reported to the British government in 2012. Following the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, he was appointed to the Standing Council on Scotland and Europe. Kay is the author of many influential books, including Foundations of Corporate Success (1993), The Truth About Markets (2003) — named Politics Book of the Year in 2005 — Obliquity (2010), The Long and the Short of It (2009, revised 2016), and Other People's Money (2015), which won the Saltire Prize and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His more recent works include Radical Uncertainty (2020, with former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King), Greed is Dead (2020, with Paul Collier), and his latest book, The Corporation in the 21st Century (2024), which examines how the modern corporation has been transformed by globalisation, financialisation and the rise of intangible assets. A regular Financial Times columnist for nearly three decades, Kay received the Senior Wincott Award for Financial Journalism in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (1997), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008) and the Academy of Social Sciences (2016). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2014 for services to economics and was knighted in the 2021 Birthday Honours for services to economics, finance and business. Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with John Kay.

Sir Paul Collier, CBE, FBA, is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. He is also Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a co-director of the International Growth Centre, a joint initiative of LSE and Oxford. From 1998 to 2003 he served as Director of the Development Research Group at the World Bank, and he was the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford, which he led from 1989 until 2014. Collier studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford, where he also earned his D.Phil. He has previously held a professorship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and served as a senior advisor to the Blair Commission for Africa. In 2014 he was awarded a knighthood for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa, and in 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. His research covers the causes and consequences of civil war, the political economy of fragile states, the management of natural resources, urbanisation in low-income countries, and most recently the economics of "left behind" regions in advanced economies. He is the author of several internationally acclaimed books, including The Bottom Billion (2007), which won the Lionel Gelber, Arthur Ross and Corine prizes; Wars, Guns and Votes (2009); The Plundered Planet (2010); Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World (2013); Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World (with Alexander Betts, 2017); The Future of Capitalism (2018); Greed is Dead (with John Kay, 2020); and Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places (2024), a Silver winner in the 2025 Axiom Business Book Awards. Collier has also been recognised with the Adam Smith Prize from Glasgow's Philosophical Society (2023), the A.SK Social Science Prize (2013), the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize (2009), and was named by Foreign Policy magazine among its top global thinkers. He writes regularly for the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Jiří Zatloukal, financial journalist at Seznam Zprávy and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with Paul Collier.

George Selgin is an American economist. Until his retirement in July 2025, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, where he was the founding Director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and editor-in-chief of its online publication, Alt-M. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, Honorary Professor at Francisco Marroquin University, and an associate editor of Econ Journal Watch. George Selgin is considered a Bitcoin OG, having participated in the original cypherpunk mailing list alongside Wei Dai and Nick Szabo—a forum that contributed to the ideas behind Bitcoin’s creation. Hal Finney and Nick Szabo have both said that his work helped inspire the development of Bitcoin. He was among the first economists to study the economics of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Selgin is also an expert on the history and economics of traditional metallic coinage. His book, Good Money, recounts the story of private coin minting during Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution. He is widely regarded as a leading authority on Gresham’s Law, the longstanding economic principle concerning the circulation of money.

Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. She was Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund and held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. She serves in the Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisors. She has written on a variety of topics in macroeconomics and international finance. Her work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises in both advanced economies and emerging markets. Her best-selling book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly documents the striking similarities of the recurring booms and busts that have characterized financial history. It has been translated to over 20 languages and won the Paul A. Samuelson Award. Based on publications and scholarly citations, Reinhart is ranked among the top economists worldwide, according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). She has testified before Congress and has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thompson Reuters' The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds. In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE's Adam Smith Award, among others.

Morgan Housel is a prominent financial writer, award-winning author, and investor known for his insightful perspectives on money, investing, and behavioral economics. He is a partner at ⁠The Collaborative Fund, ⁠a venture capital firm at the intersection of finance, innovation, and social progress. With a keen interest in storytelling, Housel has built a reputation for his ability to convey complex financial concepts in a clear and engaging manner. He is a highly sought-after speaker and shares insights on investing, financial planning, and the ever-evolving landscape of the global economy. His ability to blend storytelling with data-driven analysis has earned him acclaim as a thought leader in the financial industry. As a financial writer, Housel’s writings reflect a deep understanding of the psychological aspects that influence decision-making in the world of money. In 2020, he published “⁠The Psychology of Money⁠“. Through a series of short stories, the book explores the relationship between money and human behaviour. It offers readers practical wisdom on building wealth and is said to be “one of the best and most original finance books in years.” It has sold over four million copies, and has been translated into 53 languages. Morgan Housel’s latest book “⁠Same As Ever⁠” is a New York Times bestseller and offers timeless wisdom aimed at helping people navigate the uncertainty of the future. Housel shapes conversations about money and its profound impact on individuals and society at large. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. In 2022, MarketWatch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets. He serves on the board of directors at ⁠Markel ⁠and was formerly a columnist for The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. Housel lives in Seattle with his wife and two kids.

One of the world's top monetary historians Michael D. Bordo, Professor at Rutgers University, sees alarming parallels between today and the catastrophic 1930s.KEY POINTSThe "Wily Coyote Moment"· Markets running on air over a fiscal cliff - haven't looked down yet· Sudden crisis could hit when confidence breaksFed Under Attack· Trump pressuring Fed just like Nixon did in the 1970s (led to runaway inflation)· Attempt to fire Lisa Cook threatens central bank independencePerfect Storm Brewing· Unsustainable debt + protectionism + potential tech bubble· Globalization reversing like it did 100 years ago· "All the bad policies from the 1930s are coming back"What Must Be Done· Keep central banks independent and credible· Focus only on price stability· Remember: nationalism and protectionism led to disaster before"I find the current era extremely worrisome. In some ways it reminds me of the 1930s."Michael D. Bordo is a Board of Governors Professor of Economics and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.Interview conducted by Jiri Zatloukal, Prague Finance Institute

John H. Cochrane is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and an adjunct scholar of the CATO Institute. Before joining Hoover, Cochrane was a Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and earlier at its Economics Department. Cochrane earned a bachelor’s degree in physics at MIT and his PhD in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He was a junior staff economist on the Council of Economic Advisers (1982–83). Cochrane’s recent publications include the book Asset Pricing and articles on dynamics in stock and bond markets, the volatility of exchange rates, the term structure of interest rates, the returns to venture capital, liquidity premiums in stock prices, the relation between stock prices and business cycles, and option pricing when investors can’t perfectly hedge. His monetary economics publications include articles on the relationship between deficits and inflation, the effects of monetary policy, and the fiscal theory of the price level. He has also written articles on macroeconomics, health insurance, time-series econometrics, financial regulation, and other topics. He was a coauthor of The Squam Lake Report. His Asset Pricing PhD class is available online via Coursera. Cochrane frequently contributes editorial opinion essays to the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg.com, and other publications. He maintains the Grumpy Economist blog. Leoš Rousek, the Head Of Corporate Communications at PPF Group (https://www.ppf.eu/en) and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with John Cochrane.

Historian and investment strategist Edward Chancellor draws parallels between the current surge in tech giants — the Magnificent 7 — and past speculative bubbles such as the 19th-century British railway mania and the 1990s internet boom. He warns of overvaluation fuelled by massive investments in artificial intelligence. Explore how rising interest rates, a soaring national debt – what Chancellor calls the "debt supercycle" – and the Federal Reserve’s repeated crisis interventions may be setting the stage for a more severe financial crash. In this episode of PFI Talks, conducted by Jiří Zatloukal, Chancellor also discusses the contrasting impacts on U.S. residential versus commercial real estate, the rise in gold prices as a market “Armageddon” bet, and the economic consequences of deglobalization accelerated by tariffs and shifting capital flows under the Trump administration.

Štěpán Drábek je mladý český ekonom a popularizátor vědy. Působí jako makroekonomický analytik v Prague Finance Institute. Je autorem monografie o inflaci, která byla oceněna Učenou společností ČR. Nyní pracuje na překladu největšího díla nobelisty F. A. Hayeka The Constitution of Liberty.

William N. Goetzmann is the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies and Faculty Director of the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management. He is an expert on a diverse range of investments. His past work includes studies of stock market predictability, hedge funds and survival biases in performance measurement. His current research focuses on alternative investing, factor investing, behavioral finance and the art market. Professor Goetzmann has written and co-authored a number of books, including Modern Portfolio Theory and Investment Analysis (Wiley, 2014), The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets (Oxford, 2005), The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture and the Crash of 1720 (Yale, 2013) and most recently, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (Princeton, 2016). Leoš Rousek, the Head Of Corporate Communications at PPF Group (https://www.ppf.eu/en) and contributor of PFI Talks, talked with William Goetzmann.

Renowned economist Branko Milanović joins Prague Finance Institute to discuss the end of neoliberal globalization, the rise of China as both a geopolitical and economic rival, and the global reshuffling of income. He explores how China’s growing middle class is overtaking parts of the Western population and what that means for domestic stability in rich democracies. From shifting forms of capitalism to the "citizenship premium," Milanović offers deep insights into the transformation of the global economic order. The interview was conducted by Jiří Zatloukal, Financial Journalist.