In this episode of PFI Talks, host Jiří Zatloukal sits down with Richard Sylla, professor emeritus at NYU, former president of the Economic History Association, and co-author of the classic A History of Interest Rates , for a wide-ranging conversation on financial history and its echoes in the present day.
Sylla warns that the rapid rise of U.S. government debt — nearing $40 trillion — is his greatest concern, driven by entitlement spending that neither party seems willing to tackle. Drawing on decades of research into interest-rate cycles, he argues the U.S. may be only five years into a 15–20 year upward trend, adding pressure to an already strained fiscal picture.
The conversation turns to Alexander Hamilton, the subject of much of Sylla's scholarship: how the young Treasury Secretary built America's financial system almost from scratch — assuming state debts, founding the first Bank of the United States, creating the dollar, and laying the groundwork for the modern Treasury bond and corporate markets. Sylla draws striking parallels between attacks on Hamilton's central bank in the 1790s and today's political pressure on the Federal Reserve, and between Hamilton's industrial policy and today's tariffs, subsidies, and the CHIPS Act.
Other topics include cryptocurrency and stablecoins compared to America's chaotic "wildcat banking" era, the missed opportunity for fiscal union in the eurozone, the influence of economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron on Sylla's thinking, and why Sylla sees Hamilton's financial system — still visible in feats like SpaceX's $70 billion single-day IPO — as one of the most underrated legacies in American history.
A conversation about debt, central banks, and why financial history never quite stops repeating itself.