Economist Dambisa Moyo says CEOs must play a role in sustaining the consumer class as AI eliminates jobs

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady interviews economist Dambisa Moyo.

The big leadership story: Trump brushes off concerns about oil prices as they surge past $100 a barrel.

The markets: The oil price shock is causing a bruising global selloff.

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Today is the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations by Scottish economist Adam Smith, a foundational text of modern economics that inspired the U.S.’s founders to create an economy based on free markets, fair taxation, a natural division of labor and a state focused on protecting the basic conditions for that to work. It’s a poignant anniversary at a time when the U.S. economy is losing jobs and mercantilism is on the ascent amid war and tariffs.

I spoke on Friday with Dambisa Moyo, a noted economist, author and baroness since being appointed a life peer in the U.K. House of Lords in 2022. She is giving a speech later today on Adam Smith at the University of Edinburgh. (You can watch the livestream here at 2 p.m. ET) 

“Time and time again, Adam Smith has shown that free markets, free people, and deeper capital markets are all net positive for progress,” says Moyo, who also points to Smith’s earlier treatise on moral sentiments when imagining how he’d view the world of today. “He thought human beings would be more compassionate … he would think there’s not enough morality in how business leaders and individuals are thinking about inequality and the cost to society.”

Moyo argues that we’re in a moment where technology could usurp economics in the way that economics once........

© Fortune