A Conversation with Jim Chanos

It’s the golden age of fraud, and other observations

For me, one great thing about this digital era is that I can converse with interesting people without all the rigamarole associated with studio recording. It’s not just that you don’t have to be in the same place; if you’ve never done it, you have no idea just how much of your time gets wasted to do even a few minutes of live TV.

Recently I talked to Kim Scheppele about the death of democracy in Hungary (and we’ll record around 10 more minutes about the U.S. situation soon.) Now for something completely different: a talk with Jim Chanos, the legendary short-seller, about the state of the markets and the world.

I knew Chanos through the “dinners” he refers to in the conversation. Every couple of months some civilized Wall Streeters, media people and economists get together for a dinner where we plot global domination carefully analyze global trends drink wine and tell bad jokes. Chanos has come to some of those dinners, and despite his fearsome reputation is charming, completely approachable and something of a historical scholar (he’s been teaching courses at Yale and Wisconsin.)

I hope you find this conversation as interesting and as much fun as I did. Video past the paywall, followed by a cleaned-up transcript.