Listen Online
Watch Online
Find a Station in Your Area
Watch Now
Listen Now Tuesday, November 4, 2025
Today is Election Day, if you haven’t already, please vote!
On Point of View today, Dr. Merrill Matthews is our guest host and he’s going to have a super, busy show! His first guest is former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. He joins Dr. Matthews to talk about politics, the economy, and his new book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom. Dr. Matthew’s next guest is John Fund. As a writer for National Review, John will discuss Trumps progress so far and these mid-term elections at the state and local level.
We look forward to hearing from you! Please call us at 800-351-1212 or post on Facebook at facebook.com/pointofviewradio.
Dr. Merrill Matthews
Author | Public Policy Analyst | Columnist for The Hill
Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., was for 25 years a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. He is a public policy analyst specializing in health care, entitlements, and energy issues and is the author of numerous public policy studies. He is past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association ofRead More
Guests
Phil Gramm, PhD
Former Senator | Author | - Vice Chairman of Lone Star Funds
Senator Gramm joined Lone Star Funds as Vice Chairman in December of 2012. He served as Vice Chairman of UBS Investment Bank from December 2002 to December 2011. At UBS he provided senior leadership in such landmark IPOs as Visa, the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), the China Merchants Bank and LGPhillips in Korea. He was instrumental in the follow-on equity offering for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the privatization of Telstra in Australia and the sale of 20% of Akbank in Turkey to Citibank. Senator Gramm served six years in the US House and eighteen years in the US Senate. His legislative record includes landmark bills like the Gramm-Latta Budget, which reduced federal spending, rebuilt national defense and mandated the Reagan tax cut, and the Gramm-Rudman Act, which placed the first binding constraints on federal spending. As Chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Gramm steered through legislation modernizing banking, insurance and securities law, which had been languishing in Congress for 60 years. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed banks, securities firms and insurance companies to affiliate as part of a Financial Services Holding Company. Gramm is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Phil Gramm holds a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in economics, the subject he taught at Texas A&M University for 12 years. He has published numerous articles and books, including The Myth of American Inequality published in 2022. He is married to Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, former Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Bush. They have two sons and five grandchildren.
The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism
Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has unleashed unimaginable growth in opportunity and prosperity. And yet, at key points in American history, economic disruption has led to a greater role for government, ostensibly to protect against capitalism's excesses. Today, government regulates, mandates, subsidizes and controls a growing share of the American economy.
In this book, Phil Gramm, one of America's premier public policy advocates, and noted economist Donald J. Boudreaux look at the seven events and issues in American history that define, for most Americans, the role of government and how the 21st century world works. To many Americans, these 5 periods of American history-the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America's postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession--along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, represent strong evidence for expanding government in American life. Gramm and Boudreaux argue that the evidence points to a contrary verdict: government interference and failed policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.
Setting up each topic with a “just the facts” approach that defies partisanship, Gramm and Boudreaux provide a compelling and highly readable powerful reassessment that will challenge open-minded readers to rethink the conventional wisdom and the policies that spring from them.
In this book, Phil Gramm, one of America's premier public policy advocates, and noted economist Donald J. Boudreaux look at the seven events and issues in American history that define, for most Americans, the role of government and how the 21st century world works. To many Americans, these 5 periods of American history-the Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, decline of America's postwar preeminence in world trade, and the Great Recession--along with the existing levels of income inequality and poverty, represent strong evidence for expanding government in American life. Gramm and Boudreaux argue that the evidence points to a contrary verdict: government interference and failed policies pose the most significant threat to economic freedom.
Setting up each topic with a “just the facts” approach that defies partisanship, Gramm and Boudreaux provide a compelling and highly readable powerful reassessment that will challenge open-minded readers to rethink the conventional wisdom and the policies that spring from them.
John Fund
National Affairs Columnist - National Review
John Fund is national-affairs columnist for National Review. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than two decades, starting in 1984, and was a member of the newspaper’s editorial board from 1995 to 2001.
Fund has written for Esquire, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and the New Republic. He co-wrote Cleaning House: America’s Campaign for Term Limits with James Coyne. In 2004, he wrote Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. He has written two books with Hans von Spakovsky: Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
Fund has written for Esquire, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and the New Republic. He co-wrote Cleaning House: America’s Campaign for Term Limits with James Coyne. In 2004, he wrote Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. He has written two books with Hans von Spakovsky: Who’s Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
Viewpoints
Take Action
Listen Now
Watch Online
