For the final episode of this season, we spoke with Nathan Tankus of Notes on the Crises, who writes about the pandemic-induced global depression and how policymakers should respond to it. Nathan started his newsletter at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in order to analyze the economic impacts of the global crisis. Nathan has been recognized as a prominent voice in economic policy. His newsletter has followers ranging from journalists to economists, including those working at the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Department of the Treasury.  We talked about why Nathan decided to write about the pandemic, what it’s like to write in the field of economic policy, and the Bloomberg profile that skyrocketed the success of his platform. We’ll take a brief pause as we wrap up this podcast season, but stay tuned for more conversations next month. Let us know if you have suggestions for who we should interview next season! Links Notes on the Crises, Nathan’s newsletter Nathan on Twitter A 28-Year-Old With No Degree Becomes a Must-Read on the Economy, Nathan’s Bloomberg profile Highlights (1:35) Why Nathan decided to start covering the pandemic (7:44) How Nathan built his initial following (24:28) The role of credentials in the field of economics (35:26) How a Bloomberg profile led to achieving his long-term goals (57:39) Nathan’s thoughts on monetizing his newsletter On writing about a crisis: Of course, crises are terrible things. But the one thing that analysts really relish in a crisis is that it's very easy to make a crisis, and analyzing what's going on in the crisis, your full-time job. Because it's such a timely and urgent issue, there are people who are always willing to have these conversations with you and to argue with you. It's the perfect instigator for public conversation and debate.  On having the ability to write freely: I was writing so much that first week. I wrote 21 pieces for Substack. I wrote one piece for another publication in a month. I was publishing a piece basically every weekday. That scale, that pace – there's just no other publication that's set up to do that kind of thing, especially not in the freedom that I had to just focus on it and do it the way I wanted to do it. Doing it myself was just complete freedom to define it how I wanted to. On his decision to focus on one topic: For other publications, it's not necessarily "news" to say the same thing ten different ways. But I felt it was news. To really understand the pandemic ... you can't just read one piece that explains it to you. It has to be something that you engage with day in and day out for weeks. Transcript Nadia (00:00:31): You write Notes on the Crises, which covers in your words the play-by-play of the current pandemic-induced global depression and how policymakers should respond to that. I remember seeing your name pop up around mid-March. You started your newsletter on Substack at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. What prompted you to start writing? Nathan Tankus (00:00:51): Well, I hadn't really been paying attention. I had a lot of other things going on, a lot of other things that I was focused on. I hadn't really been paying attention to what was going on. I sort of vaguely knew what was going on, especially because I was following the Democratic primary, but not in detail. Then, March 9th was the first time I got a wake up call about what was going on. That was when free market trading on U.S. Treasury securities - when the prices went way up, which means the interest rates went way down. Nathan Tankus (00:01:35): We actually temporarily hit negative interest rates on some U.S. Treasury securities. That really made my eyes open up wide, and try to understand exactly what was going on. Around the same time, the oil price collapsed