Audio archives for this show:

Throughout the past several months of intense politics, economics has gotten the short shrift in most media, perhaps including Backbone Radio.  Of course, the focus on politics during one of the most important and interesting political seasons of my lifetime was justified, but it’s now time to return our focus to other things.

The big news this week was almost all economic, both domestic and international.

Starting close to home, the chairmen of Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission, often called the Deficit Commission, released their blueprint for some deficit reduction.  Reactions to it were mixed on the conservative side and almost uniformly negative from Nancy Pelosi and the left.  This could mean that the plan has substantial merit, at least as opening a critical discussion. Or it could mean that the political left are far better negotiators than the right – and I’m sure that’s true too.

We’ll get into the details of the Deficit Commission’s report (or, more precisely, the proposal of its chairmen) with our guest in the first hour, Harvard University Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics, Jeffrey Miron, one of the nation’s foremost libertarian economists.

We’ll also spend some time with Dr. Miron (who received his Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T. in 1984) discussing the Federal Reserve Bank program commonly called QEII (meaning their second stab at “quantiative easing".)  There has rarely been a more important and less well understood (by the general public) economic policy decision in the nation. What exactly is quantitative easing?  How is it supposed to work? And most importantly, what is it likely to do to our economy in the short and long runs?

There was also important international economic news. Free trade and competitive currency valuations may seem dry to the average citizen, but Backbone Radio listeners are not average citizens.  You, like we, realize that these are some of the most important issues facing America and the world today, and therefore we’re going to spend a fair bit of time going in depth on the significance of free trade and of President Obama’s utter failure to advance…well, anything…in his recent trip to the G-20 meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

During our second hour, we’ll be joined by George Mason University economist Lawrence White to talk about Quantitative Easing and about his new paper (co-authored with two economists from the University of Georgia) asking the question “Has the Fed been a failure?“

During our second and third hours, I’ll be joined by the head of the Defenders of Capitalism Project (affiliated with the Leadership Program of the Rockies), Michael Williams.

In addition to talking about the importance of free market economics in the context of this week’s news, we’ll also talk some politics, including a discussion of what the Republican leadership may do regarding committee assignments for the upcoming new Congress as well as the role of the extraordinarily large GOP freshman class which will make up fully a third of House Republicans.

Mike Williams is also, like me, an Objectivist, i.e. in agreement to a substantial degree with the ideas and ideals of Ayn Rand, a topic we’ll also address during the show.

I’m going to start a new thing this show: A little trivia contest.  At some point during the show, I’ll ask a question about some past person or event.  The first person to call in with the right answer (only calls, not IM or e-mail) will win a copy of Fredric Bastiat’s “The Law’, page for page the most effective attack on socialism (and therefore “Progressivism") ever written.  I hope to do this for most shows during the upcoming year, trying to encourage you all to be less shy about calling into the show.

Please join me by listening to (and calling in to) this week’s Backbone Radio program from 5 PM to 8 PM on 710 AM KNUS in Denver and 1460 AM KZNT in Colorado Springs.

If you’re not in range of the radio waves, you should be able to listen to the show online by clicking HERE.

I hope you’ll actively participate in the conversation with me: Call the studio at 303 696 1971, e-mail me at rossputin(at)rossputin.com, or instant message from my site at http://rossputin.com or through AOL Instant messenger to screen name Rossputin.