John Llewellyn, Lehman's Former Chief Economist, Head of Independent-Economics, and Leading Global Analyst,Talks Today's and Tomorrow's Geoeconomics and Geopolitics

John, as you'll quickly learn from this terrific podcast, has seen more and knows more about the global economy, regional economies, and geopolitics than virtually all of the world's top finance and economics ministers as well as treasury secretaries. John founded Independent-Economics after Lehman's bankruptcy and his internal warnings went unheeded. Prior to working at Lehman, John spent two decades at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris where he was, first, Head of International Forecasting and Policy Analysis and then Chef de Cabinet to the Secretary-General. His OECD positing came after a decade-long professorship in economics at the University of Cambridge where he was a Fellow of St. John’s College. John holds an undergraduate degree from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford. He has published widely.

Dan is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at NYU Law School, is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Before entering law teaching, he spent three years each in private practice, and at the Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation, where he worked on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1987, Shaviro began his teaching career at the University of Chicago Law School, and he moved to NYU in 1995. In 2023, he received the National Tax Association’s Daniel M. Holland Medal, recognizing lifetime achievement in, and outstanding contributions to, public finance.

Shaviro’s scholarly work mainly focuses on tax policy and other fiscal policy, along with inequality and the intersections between law, literature, and social science. His books include Bonfires of the American Dream in American Rhetoric, Literature, and Film (2022), Fixing U.S. International Taxation (2014), Decoding the U.S. Corporate Tax (2009), and Do Deficits Matter? (1997). He has also published a novel, Getting It (2010), and a memoir, Now Is Now and Then Is Then.

At NYU School of Law Shaviro teaches various tax and other courses, including a scholarly colloquium on tax policy and public finance.

With the leading ten AI companies comprising one third of the value of the S&P and none showing a profit plus the threat they pose to our jobs, let alone humanity, we best keep careful track of the industry. My former graduate student, Seth Benzell, is one of our nation's top AI experts. Seth discusses AI's so-called scaling law, the problem of too little data to fit the industry's parameters mystically being cured by double descent, and the bitter lesson. Seth also talks us through how much money AI can save and, therefore, make by replacing humans in accomplishing existing tasks.

Seth is an assistant professor of Management Science at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. He's a Digital Fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy as well as a Digital Fellow at the Stanford HAI Digital Economy LabHe received a B.A. in economics and a B.S. in physics and mathematics from Tulane University before earning his economics PhD at Boston University. Seth's website is https://www.sethgbenzell.com/. He works on the economics of digitalization, including automation, networks, and information systems. Seth and his co-host, Andrey Fradkin have a terrific podcast, called Justified Posteriors, that focuses on AI.