Larry Lindsey ’76 H’93 is better qualified than most to offer an insider’s view of life in the White House. He served in policy positions under three Republican presidents. He’s also famous for correctly predicting the stock market bubble of the late 1990s while serving as governor of the Federal Reserve, and for accurately predicting that the financial costs of the Iraq war would be much higher than White House estimates when he served as chief economic adviser to President George W. Bush.

A leading GOP economic commentator, Lindsey regularly offers his views on CNN, Fox, CNBC, and other news outlets. On Thursday, March 29, 2018, Lindsey came to Pickard Theater at Bowdoin for a question and answer session with members of the Bowdoin community moderated by President Clayton Rose. During the 75-minute event, Lindsey provided his views on a wide range of subjects, including taxation, trade, markets, and human self-interest.

The Harvard-trained economist took a number of questions from the audience, including from students and from a member of the faculty who took issue with the assertion made in his latest book, Conspiracies of the Ruling Class: How to Break Their Grip Forever (Simon and Schuster, 2016), that those in power often manufacture insolvable issues in order to seize or stay in power. As examples, Lindsey pointed to issues of race and offered a cost-benefit analysis of the Paris Climate Accord.

Lindsey also expressed dismay at the current level of turmoil in government, describing Washington as being in a state of “low-grade civil war.”