Kris Mitchener

“And bimetallism is gonna say the amount of money circulating is gonna be determined by that ratio between gold and silver. And these systems essentially emerge out of convenience, right? We want some sort of species that's gonna be convenient and durable. And so we wanna use it as a unit of account, as a medium of exchange, as a store of value and you know as other social scientists have written money is a construct, it's a social construct and so we choose things of value.”

“The challenge was to, of course, keep those things relatively close that the master of the mint had to keep the price relatively close to that market price. And otherwise, if those things deviate, you're gonna get an arbitrage opportunity. People are gonna if you set it too high, they're gonna start using one over the other.”

“What really kind of fascinates me both about history and economics is how you know, kind of crisis periods are so leave such a deep impression on both our institutions and our economy and so is drawn to those episodes and those by their nature we hope at least are kind of rare events. I mean, maybe we could argue they're more common increasingly like in the last, you know, thirty to forty years we've seen more financial crises but nevertheless we still think of these as kind of rare events which then makes you shift your lens to longer run perspectives.”

“I remember during the great financial crisis, Niall Ferguson, the historian, mentioned that many people who were working on Wall Street at the time were young. They're in their their twenties, and they had no perspective. For them, it was the great moderation. Everything was stable. Everything was normal. To them, they had no concept of, for example, of a national housing crisis. Last time that happened was during the Great Depression. Right? So it is important that we look back to history and people like you help us see that the bigger picture.”

“Some of my research, you know, again, in different contexts going back to the depression really shows how quickly those deposit outflows take place. And if you don't have some sort of response, whatever your lender of last resort optimal response would be, if you don't have some sort of response to stop those outflows when there are runs taking place in the financial system, that can really cascade and spill over to other financial institutions and really, you know, create an economic calamity.”