Dave Davies

He's a business and financial columnist for The New York Times.

His new book is 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation.

We'll talk more after this short break.

This is Fresh Air.

You know, you and I are speaking on Tuesday, and the president will be in Pennsylvania as part of a tour to convince America that the economy is strong, that his policies are working, that affordability is kind of a phony democratic narrative.

What's your take on this?

Is this going to be effective?

Before I let you go, I want to return to kind of another big question.

You know, in the 1930s, when things were really bad in the United States, there was talk about whether capitalism had outlived its usefulness.

And, you know, I think it's clear unfettered free enterprise can create great wealth but also great inequity in their economy.

There is creative power in competition and markets are beneficial.

But if you look at the landscape today with multi-billionaires wielding just such enormous influence and a campaign finance system which essentially allows unlimited special interest spending.

And the lessons that we thought we had learned from the 1929 crash and the guardrail set up to make things better are kind of increasingly repealed or ignored or worked around.

You talk to a lot of people about this.

You think about these things.

Should we be questioning the viability of capitalism in the modern economy?

When you say state-sponsored capitalism, you're not talking about like Stalinist economic planning.

You're talking about government policy which sort of allows special interests to essentially take control.

You know, Trump has said he's going to give farmers, was the number $12 billion to make up for what they've been hurt by?

The tariffs, he's talking about, you know, lower income taxes because tariff money is available to cancel that out.