Peter R. Fisher, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy, shared a sceptical view of the Fed's humongous balance sheet held by Mr Bessent and Mr Warsh. But he is more concerned about the continued drift towards short-term borrowing under Mr Bessent. "He's got a very short horizon. You can tell he's a former hedge-fund guy," Mr. Fisher says.

Professor Simon Johnson sat down with fellow Nobel laureate economist Philippe Aghion to examine what ails Europe and how to revive its dynamism.

As chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell faced several concussive events. The odds any Fed chair would face all of those shocks within eight years are roughly .018%, or 1 in 5,550, according to professor Kristin Forbes. "What we should take from this is that the global environment has changed. Central banks are no longer going to focus mainly on domestic demand shocks, with the responses pretty clear," Forbes said. "Instead, we are living in a world where central banks are going to increasingly be forced to handle major, low probability events, often which are not economic or that emerge from abroad."

Senior lecturer Robert Pozen wrote: "Most financial advisers tell their clients to hold a 60-40 portfolio—60% in stocks and 40% in bonds. Stocks are volatile, and bonds can provide a counterweight when share prices fall. But after more than 20 years in the money-management business, I've concluded that many investors hold too much in bonds and not enough in equities."

"The challenge is if we have a severe crisis and fiscal policy doesn't respond quickly," said senior lecturer Eric Rosengren. "The flexibility that monetary policy provides is hamstrung" if the Fed agrees to limits on the size and composition of the balance sheet and needs permission to act.

Professor Andrew W. Lo said that AI struggles with tax optimization, doesn't understand regulatory nuance and — unlike a human financial adviser — isn't subject to legal requirements, such as acting in a client's best interest. He stressed that it's important to ask critical questions when using AI for retirement advice, such as prompting an AI to say where it might be wrong and to list its assumptions and uncertainties.

In this episode of Vox's "Today, Explained" podcast, professor Deborah Lucas said: "It never makes economic sense to bail out a small, chronically unprofitable enterprise. There's a lot of talk that it would've helped the employees of Spirit Airlines, but a typical bailout really doesn't just help the employees. The main beneficiaries are the debt holders of the company. A lot of bailouts are subsidies to the rich, if you will. They don't necessarily reach the people you're hoping to when you think about bailing out a company in order to save jobs."

By the time companies are discussing bailouts, "they're already toast, and you're just trying to resurrect them from the dead," said professor Deborah Lucas. Bailouts can have a bad reputation, she said, but there are some cases where there is some justification. That's why, Lucas added, there was a lot of support for bailing out the banks in response to the 2008 financial crisis.

On this episode of Bloomberg's "The Close," senior lecturer Eric Rosengren discussed how the Iran war will impact the upcoming Fed decision, the 2026 rate outlook, and Judge Boasberg's rejection of subpoenas of the Federal Reserve in the Jerome Powell case.

In this podcast episode, senior lecturer Eric Rosengren said administration actions could weaken confidence in Fed independence and complicate rate cuts. He added that even if short-term rates fall, long-term rates may rise as markets fear persistent inflation.