This week on our Masters in Business radio podcast, we speak with Stephen Roach, the former chief economist at Morgan Stanley who expanded their presence in Asia, eventually becoming Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. He is now a fellow and lecturer at Yale University.
Roach began his career as a researcher at Brookings and the Federal Reserve before going to Wall Street. He describes learning his craft from such Street luminaries such as Barton Biggs and Byron Wien.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Roach discusses the role of the Federal Reserve in helping to both foster the credit crisis as well as rescue the financial industry from its own follies afterwards. He gives Ben Bernanke mixed grades for his performance (bad pre-crisis, good post), and is especially critical of Alan Greenspan.
Roach credits Jonathan D. Spence’s The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds in completely changing his perspective on Asia. He discusses his first hand observations – Roach lived in China for 3 and half years – of what the US and China misunderstand about each other. He also explains the enormous impact of China is having on both the developed and Emerging Markets, and why investors should not lump all of EM together.
The entire discussion is a tour de force education in how economic analysis can be used as a part of an investing discipline.
Hear the full podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg.com. Earlier podcasts can be found on iTunes and at Bloombergview.com.
BR, is there a transcript?
~~~
ADMIN: No, but there might be one in the future
BR, really enjoyed the interview.
Listening to or reading what Stephen Roach has to say is always thought provoking, enlightening, and enjoyable. BR’s MIB podcast interview of Dr. Roach was particularly so. His views often differ from the conventional wisdom but are well supported and sound right. Great interview.