Senator Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux on the Triumph of Economic Freedom

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Peter Boettke talks with former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux about their new book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom, a sweeping challenge to seven persistent myths about American capitalism. The conversation ranges from the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression to the financial crisis. Along the way, they reflect on why these myths endure, why economic freedom has done more than any other force to improve the lives of ordinary people, and why economists and educators must keep returning to history and basic economic reasoning in an age when old policy errors are constantly resurrected in new forms.

Dr. Gramm served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eighteen years in the U.S. Senate where he was Chairman of the Banking Committee. Gramm is a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was Vice Chairman of UBS Investment Bank and is now Vice Chairman of Lone Star Funds. He taught Economics at Texas A&M University and has published numerous articles and books including The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024), coauthored with Robert Ekelund and John Early, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2022 and winner of the 2024 Hayek Book Prize.

Dr. Boudreaux is a Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Professor of Economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University; an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute; and holds the Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center. He is the author of numerous books, including The Essential Hayek (Fraser Institute, 2015) and Globalization (Greenwood Press, 2007).

Show Notes:

• Sven Beckert’s, Capitalism: A Global History (Penguin Press, 2025)

• Thomas Sowell’s, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles: Revised Edition (Basic Books, 2007)

• Adam Smith’s, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Liberty Fund, 1982)

• Milton and Rose Friedman’s, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (Harper Collins Publishers, 1990)

• Fraser Institute | Realities of Socialism

**This episode was recorded on February 25, 2026**

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