"Today I’m speaking with Ken Rogoff, who  is a professor at Harvard, recent author   of Our Dollar, Your Problem, and  former Chief Economist at the IMF.  Ken, thanks so much for coming on the podcast...."

"Probably the most important talk I ever  gave in China was at what's called the   China Development Forum in 2016. It's this giant hall that had most   of the top leaders in the party. A  lot of the e..."

"local government debt that you mentioned,  that was an innovation put in with the   2010 stimulus. But they kind of left it  running and used it as a stimulus program.  Long tangent, but the local gov..."

"I was there six months ago. Where did you go?  Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing,  Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Emeishan.  So you saw a few of the medium-sized cities.  At least one of them, I think, is the new ..."

"and all this investment had been done  through purely market mechanisms,   would things have turned out much better? Even if China gets rid of all financial   repression today, they save a lot. So thi..."

"and they have to pay their soldiers less,  isn’t that actually more relevant if we were   trying to figure out who would win in a war? Shouldn’t we actually be looking at the fact   that they have a b..."

"crisis. Right now we know their prices  are falling. It's not because they're   inventing stuff really fast. We know that  interest rates are being pushed to zero.  All these are signs that demand has..."

"their own payments mechanisms. Russia actually did quite a bit in preparation   for the invasion. We see China doing that. Maybe they’re selling Treasury bills, we   don’t know exactly. I would advise..."

"South Korea had a crisis in 1983 and another in  1997. They haven’t been crisis-free, by the way.  There are a lot of factors. The  demographics would be the most obvious one.  The rise of not just Ch..."

"I had looked at that for a long time  afterward. Going back to 2005—that’s   long after the Japanese crisis—I would hear from  people like Jiang Zemin, who was the president   of China that I met, "We..."

"If you do it too quickly, you get a  crisis. Many crises are caused by that.  Asking as somebody who obviously doesn’t  know the details, at a high level how   would you explain it to a novice? How co..."

"You’re losing a lot of cumulative growth. Look  at Greece today or Portugal. You kind of get   back to where you're having a positive  growth rate, but you're not picking up…  They're very different f..."

"Just for the audience, there are four ways we  could get out of the debt: We could default,   which you don’t think is likely... But really good for my book.  Already you timed this one so well. I’ll ..."

"It depends if we run into a world where interest  rates start creeping up… Right now, the 10-year   rate is around 4.5%. That’s the nominal rate. The  inflation-indexed one is a little over 2%. The   ..."

"If you wanted to replicate how  the Fed works—if you wanted other   parts of government to work that way—is there  something we could do? Or is it more of a human   capital problem than an independenc..."

"But let’s say crypto regulation, that  would be a good example. Why don’t we   have something more independent there? Instead,  as you well know, it’s been overrun by politics.  In fact, there’s this ..."

"No, it’s been amazing. But it is a constant fight. You can go to a country like Turkey. I don’t know   what the inflation rate is today,  but it hovered up toward 100%.  And Erdoğan—the president of T..."

"was like a lone voice in the wilderness  saying these things might happen again.  I would teach inflation to my students. They’d  sit there patiently. It was like I was teaching   them the music of Fr..."

"back then. The world has changed a lot. Does that mean US growth would have been   even higher after World War II if we had  just kept the government debt or figured   out some other way to deal with ..."

"On the growth thing, Europe’s growth has been  pretty bad after 2010. Japan obviously has had   pretty bad growth after their crisis. Why will  we be in a different position if we do have this   kind ..."

"I think if AGI came that fast and  that big, it would make the populism   phenomenon we’re facing now seem like nothing. If AI is going to be massively deflationary—if   it makes all these goods so mu..."

"Keynes founded modern macroeconomics.  He was an incredible Renaissance person,   having both sides of the brain. One of his insights that just   transformed things was this. Before Keynes, we used wh..."

"They felt they couldn’t lower them  into significantly negative territory.  So they were sort of paralyzed. There was  this deflation, or at least too-low inflation.  Monetary authorities thought they..."

"interest rates to go up because of AI, what  should the government be doing right now to   be ready for that? Should they be locking in  hundred-year bonds at the current interest   rates since they’r..."

"rates are going to go up but not just for the  good reason that we’ve gotten more creative   and that everything’s going to be better. You've said in the book that you expect a   rebalancing from US e..."

"my first book was a very mathematical one,  Foundations of International Macroeconomics.  In theory, you should diversify. You shouldn’t  put all your money in the United States. I did a   video with ..."

"US premium should just keep getting  bigger and bigger—these things have   some regression to the mean. Maybe not  with AI all being in the US, I don’t know.  Is it that you’re predicting  that the S&..."

"it makes sense that it would be easier for you to  catch up. But there’s another intuition that if   you’ve been persistently behind the frontier,  there must be some deep endogenous reason.  You’re a..."

"Is there some institutional reform we  could make that would get us out of this   political equilibrium we're stuck in. Both parties, when they're in power,   are incentivized to increase the debt and..."

"I had many friends get drafted. Their brains got  fried by heroin even if they didn’t get killed.  And, sanctions. I'm not saying that we've solved  all our wars with sanctions. But make no mistake,  ..."

"So just to note, the United Kingdom is  not the reserve currency. They're not   the dominant currency. They used to be,  a hundred years ago. They look a lot like   us now, with big current account de..."

"is something that's been debated. Stephen Miran, who was a Harvard student,   he's the head of Trump’s Council of  Economic Advisers. Very smart guy.  He's made this clever argument that because  ever..."

"There’s a really interesting book  by Charles Mann. I think it's called   1493. It’s about how during the Ming Dynasty in  17th-century China, they kept issuing different   paper currencies and it was..."

"pay less on our debt because of that. That’s a fascinating example you bring   up. The Chinese actually invented the printing  press. They invented paper currency way before the   Europeans. But then,..."

"Or why it's been so hard to displace? It’s not just that we’ve stayed on top,   we’ve just gone like this. Remember, in the 1970s,  Europe actually peeled away from the dollar bloc.   But the rest of ..."

"times. I worry our luck is wearing thin. I quote a chess player—the great Bent Larsen,   who was number two to Bobby Fischer when  I was playing. He was asked, “Would you   rather be lucky or good in ..."

"I hope we continue, but we are doing a lot  of things right now… I don’t think Trump is   the cause of the dollar being in gentle  decline. That’s just wrong. I think it   would’ve happened with Harri..."

"I appreciate your patience and  you educating me on this topic.  No, it’s an honor to be on your famous  podcast. I heard from so many young   people when I told them I was talking to you. They were l..."