Dwarkesh Podcast

Ken Rogoff is the former chief economist of the IMF, a professor of Economics at Harvard, and author of the newly released Our Dollar, Your Problem and This Time is Different.On this episode, Ken predicts that, within the next decade, the US will have a debt-induced inflation crisis, but not a Japan-type financial crisis (the latter is much worse, and can make a country poorer for generations).Ken also explains how China is trapped: in order to solve their current problems, they’ll keep leaning on financial repression and state-directed investment, which only makes their situation worse.We also discuss the erosion of dollar dominance, why there will be a rebalancing toward foreign equities, how AGI will impact the deficit and interest rate, and much more!Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* WorkOS gives your product all the features that enterprise customers need, without derailing your roadmap. Skip months of engineering effort and start selling to enterprises today at workos.com.* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they recently released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* Gemini Live API lets you have natural, real-time, interactions with Gemini. You can talk to it like you were talking to another person, stream video to show it your surroundings, and share screen to give it context. Try it now by clicking the “Stream” tab on ai.dev.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – China is stagnating(00:25:46) – How the US broke Japan's economy(00:37:06) – America's inflation crisis is coming(01:02:20) – Will AGI solve the US deficit?(01:07:11) – Why interest rates will go up(01:10:55) – US equities will underperform(01:22:24) – The erosion of dollar dominance Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

On this episode, I chat with Victor Shih about all things China. We discuss China’s massive local debt crisis, the CCP’s views on AI, what happens after Xi, and more.Victor Shih is an expert on the Chinese political system, as well as their banking and fiscal policies, and he has amassed more biographical data on the Chinese elite than anyone else in the world. He teaches at UC San Diego, where he also directs the 21st Century China Center.Watch on YouTube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Sponsors* Scale is building the infrastructure for smarter, safer AI. In addition to their Data Foundry, they just released Scale Evaluation, a tool that diagnoses model limitations. Learn how Scale can help you push the frontier at scale.com/dwarkesh.* WorkOS is how top AI companies ship critical enterprise features without burning months of engineering time. If you need features like SSO, audit logs, or user provisioning, head to workos.com.To sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Is China more decentralized than the US?(00:03:16) – How the Politburo Standing Committee makes decisions(00:21:07) – Xi’s right hand man in charge of AGI(00:35:37) – DeepSeek was trained to track CCP policy(00:45:35) – Local government debt crisis(00:50:00) – BYD, CATL, & financial repression(00:58:12) – How corruption leads to overbuilding(01:10:46) – Probability of Taiwan invasion(01:18:56) – Succession after Xi(01:25:10) – Future growth forecasts Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe