[inaudible conversations] good afternoon and welcome to the Cato Institute. I direct the center for global liberty and prosperity here at cato the title and style of the book were featuring today, socialism sucks, is admittedly more irrev vanity than the typical more staid Public Policy books but i can assure you that the authors that we are featuring today are serious, accomplishments economyis whose decade of scholarly work inform the publication. Thesen title two economists drink the way through the unfree world gives a flavor nor unton generalizational approach. That subtitlele didnt surprise me. I tend to run into ben powell and bob lawson at economic or academic conferences around the country, and around the world, and inevitably they have drinks in their hands. Probably because we chat at receptions, hotel bars and the like. But the conversation is always interesting, informative and fun. And thats also true of this new book. This is a light book about a heavy topic so its fortu
After some huge losses on friday, relatively speaking to what we have seen over the last couple of months, you can see that the futures are once again indicated for a tripledigit down day. Dow futures right now down by close to 150 points below fair value. It looks like the s p 500 would open up down 18 points if we were to open here. And the nasdaq down by 48. The dow was down by 394 points on friday, a decline of 2. 1 . That was the worst daily performance since brexit. The s p broke the 43session streak without a move of 1 in one direction or the other. Finally getting decisiveness down by 2. 4 . Obviously, a lot of things have changed. People are coming back from vacations. Some are coming back with the big issue fed speak. There were concerning comments for the bulls if you listened to boston fed president Eric Rosengren to sound like he was in favor of a hike. He was in favor of a hike last time, too, but the fed is meeting next week. We do have more fed speak today including Nee
Birthday. Have i no doubt it will be marks best presentation yet. You might ask, why am i willing to go out on a limb this way . Well, as an economyism might put it, on the one hand, according to the website superscholar. Org, mark is one of the top 20 living economists in the world. I guess that designation is a gentle way of reminding us that as the no longer living economist john keens famously said, in the long run, were all dead. But i digress. Marks topranked status was echos by a can columnist who recently and given tonights subject matter fittingly wrote that mark has emerged as one of the clearest writers on our all matters economic today. The next Milton Friedman. Back to what economists would say. On the other hand, mark comes by his knowledge of Milton Friedman on a firsthand basis. As he will reveal in his talk, miltons paradise, my friendly fights with Milton Friedman. They had a dear but occasionally prickly relationship. They argued over issues but always remained cordi