Rag Radio: World-Renowned Economist James K. Galbraith on Greece, the Austerity Movement, and ‘The End of Normal’

Thorne Dreyer’s guest, the renowned economist Dr. James K. Galbraith, holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair of Government/Business at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin. Galbraith, who is the son of the preeminent economist of the Great Depression, John Kenneth Galbraith, in 2015 advised then Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, his friend and former colleague at UT-Austin.

On the show we discuss Greece and the austerity movement; how the situation in Latin America differs from that in Europe; Galbraith’s most recent book, The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth, and the four factors that he sees as blocking a “return to normal”; issues involving global economy, scarcity, and growth; the Great Recession and whether we should be expecting another one — or worse. And what has led Dr. Galbraith to move beyond Keynesian economics and to disavow both traditional conservative and liberal economic orthodoxy.

James Galbraith holds degrees from Harvard (A.B., 1974) and Yale (Ph.D. in Economics, 1981). He won a Marshall Scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge, and served on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee. He is chair of Economists for Peace and Security and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute. In 2010 he was elected to the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. In 2012, he was President of the Association for Evolutionary Economics. He is a 2014 co-winner of the Leontief Prize for advancing the frontiers of economic thought.

Also participating in our interview of Dr. Galbraith are The Rag Blog‘s Alice Embree and Roger Baker.

Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer, cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The host and producer of Rag Radio, Thorne Dreyer, is a prominent Austin-based activist and writer who was a pioneer of the ’60s underground press movement. The show’s engineer and co-producer is Tracey Schulz and the staff photographer is Roger Baker. The syndicated show is broadcast (and streamed) live Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (Central) on KOOP in Austin, and is later rebroadcast and streamed on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA., on Houston Pacifica’s KPFT HD-3 90.1-FM, and by KKRN, 88.5-FM in Round Mountain, CA — and is a featured podcast at VT. All Rag Radio podcasts can be found at the Internet Archive. Contact: ragradio@koop.org

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