Peter Conti-Brown is a historian and legal scholar of the Federal Reserve System, and an associate professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Sean Vanatta is a senior lecturer in financial history and policy at the University of Glasgow. Peter and Sean join the show to discuss their new book titled: Private Finance, Public Power: A History of Bank Supervision in America, as well as how powerlifting can be analogized in macroeconomics, and the implications of Trump v. Wilcox.
Check out the transcript for this week’s episode, now with links.
Recorded on May 27th, 2025
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Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:02 - Powerlifting
00:06:17 - Trump v. Wilcox
00:12:27 - Private Finance, Public Power
00:15:18 - Supervision vs. Regulation
00:22:52 - Banking in the Early Republic
00:36:10 - Consolidation of Regulators
00:41:06 - Focus of the Fed
00:45:00 - The Great Depression
00:56:10 - When to Let a Bank Fail
01:02:47 - Outro
