Chris Johns: Boris, bankers, and is the UK a basket case?

Chris Johns is a regular contributor to Eamon Dunphy’s The Stand podcast and he also writes regularly about politics and economics. More recently he has launched his own podcast with fellow economist Jim Power, called ‘The Other Hand’. I read and listen to his work regularly and always find him to be highly intelligent, wonderful with words, and very insightful about a lot of the issues I find fascinating – like who or what is ‘the markets’ and why do they seem to exert so much control over all of us? How did the UK become such a basket case so quickly? Why do economists get paid so much to make predictions that 90% of the time turn out to be wrong? There was so much I wanted to ask Chris that we ended up talking for almost 2 hours, so we’ve decided to chop it up into two parts for you. This is part 1 in which we learn about Chris early life and how he was the first of his family to go to University, how he ended up being able to semi-retire at 55, his brilliant take on Boris Johnson and UK politics, why economists should never get paid to make predictions, why Facebook should never have been allowed to get so big, and lots more. COMEDY – Boris Johnson, David McWilliams, and Michael O’Leary leave voicemails for Chris on the Mario Rosenstock Podcast hotline Produced by Patrick Haughey, AudioBrand