The Economic Risks Keeping Paul Krugman Up at Night

Summary

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Prof G Markets: "The Economic Risks Keeping Paul Krugman Up at Night"

Date: December 5, 2025
Host: Ed Elson (& Claire Miller, co-host)
Guest: Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-Winning Economist

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Episode Overview

In this insightful episode, Ed Elson and co-host Claire Miller sit down with Paul Krugman—Pulitzer-winning columnist, economics professor, and renowned public intellectual—to dissect the biggest economic risks keeping him up at night. With 2025 being a whirlwind year marked by abrupt policy shifts, AI booms, persistent affordability crises, and ballooning deficits, Krugman offers a candid, sometimes sobering analysis of America’s economic health, the fragility of markets, evolving corruption in politics, and his hopes (and fears) for the future.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

2025: A "Weird" Economic Year

[09:49] Paul Krugman:

• Describes 2025 as “a weird year” due to the “extreme” simultaneity of major economic forces:
  • End of 90 years of US trade policy and new high tariffs.
  • Explosive growth in AI creating a new kind of economic boom—unlike any in recent history.
• "It's a very, very bizarre economy right now."

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The Affordability Crisis & Measuring Poverty

[10:34–16:44]

• Affordability is complex: Nominal real incomes are up since the pandemic, but the reality is nuanced:
  • Housing (especially first homes) is far less affordable.
  • Interest costs have risen sharply.
  • New entrants face a “frozen job market”—difficult for job changers and young people.
  • Key middle-class markers (like home-buying) are slipping out of reach.
• Poverty Measurement:
  • Krugman dismisses an article suggesting a $140K poverty line as “kind of a stupid point” but agrees the metric is outdated.
  • “If you really want to think about poverty, there’s one question: Can people afford the essentials of living?... Poverty as a measure of social exclusion is really what you want, mostly.” [13:53]
  • Many federal programs rely on the poverty line for budgeting — arbitrary but necessary for policy.

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Deficits, Debt, and Secular Stagnation

[18:06–22:58]

• America is spending $7T while taking in $5T, with no war or recession—“feels unsustainable”.
• Krugman reflects on:
  • The “secular stagnation” era—persistent weak demand that only deficit spending is countering.
  • The US’s ability to borrow due to “rule of law” status—but recent political shifts threaten this.
• “The character of American governance has changed so much in this past year that you have to wonder whether any assumptions based on the kind of country we used to be still apply.” [22:03]
• Herb Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” [21:40]

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Market Fragility: Tech Concentration & the AI Bubble

[26:09–33:57]

• “40% of the S&P is represented by 10 companies”—a huge vulnerability.
• Heavy AI/data center capex is keeping GDP afloat. If one titan like Nvidia falters, “we're in what feels like a global recession, if not something worse.” [27:03]
• Krugman on the tech boom:
  • “This bubble, if it is a bubble, is an amazingly joyless bubble compared with the 90s.”
  • The fate of the market is in the hands of “like 10 guys.” If their moods shift, “they can take down the whole world economy.” [27:51]
• Speculation on a government-backed AI bailout:
  • Krugman doubts political feasibility—“People hate AI. They hate the companies, they hate the people. This is the most unpopular boom.” [30:54]

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Artificial Propping and What Happens When the Music Stops

[31:17–33:57]

• Deficit spending and AI investment are “artificially inflating everything.”
• Krugman notes:
  • AI capex is 1–2% GDP—not enough for a 2008-scale crash, more like 2001’s tech bust.
  • Fallout may be ugly if sentiment turns, but “it's not the end of the world.”
  • “This does look crazy, but... we probably don’t want to go overboard in terms of the scale of what’s at stake.” [33:57]

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Political Capture: Crony Capitalism, Corruption, and Influence

[34:26–43:29]

• The White House lacks coherent AI or economic policy; crony capitalism dominates.
  • “These dinners... are all basically big corporate types... trying to butter up the White House... This isn't really policy, it's crony capitalism.” [35:46]
• Notable Wall Street execs (like Jamie Dimon) are wary and less engaged; tech billionaires lead the courtship.
  • Krugman: “It is being led in large part by billionaires whose best days are behind them... they're looking for something big to bring back the glory days.” [38:38]
• On corruption:
  • “It really is on a different scale... Even the Gilded Age looks relatively clean by comparison.” [41:47]
  • The 2008 bailouts had “very little outright bribery”, but now it’s bags of cash, meme coins, “billions in personal rewards for the First Family—that’s something new in American history.” [43:29]

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The Riskiest Risks & What Could Go Right

[43:54–46:57]

• Environmental issues top Krugman’s "sleep lost" list—not just deficits or AI:
  • “We've reached a moment when the technology actually makes it... easy and cheap to limit climate change, and the United States is just totally turning its back on this miraculous technology.” [44:20]
  • Warns China is capitalizing on green energy as the US lags.
• Positivity/Possibility:
  • AI could still produce a genuine productivity boost—just as the fiber optic revolution did, even if its companies went bankrupt.
  • “A persistent 150 basis point rise in rate of productivity growth... would make a lot of our economic problems just melt away.” [45:20]
• Biggest political risk: Authoritarian takeover of the US.
  • “If you’re not worried about that, you’re not paying attention.” [46:33]

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Why Environmental Risks Are (and Should Be) Top of Mind

[45:44–49:11]

• Greenhouse gas emissions are cumulative; future damage is baked in.
• Krugman doesn't own Florida real estate: “We are very likely to see a whole lot of property damage and economic damage.”

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Reflections on Media: Old vs. New

[49:35–53:23]

• Krugman appreciates the flexibility and speed of new platforms like Substack, but traditional outlets (NYT, Bloomberg) provide crucial “pound the pavement” reporting.
  • “There’s a lot more… freedom to say what you want to say... [and] do stuff I couldn’t do—charts, stats, getting wonky.” [50:13]
• Crisis for media: only a handful of organizations can make reader revenue/paywall models work; local news is collapsing.

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On 2025’s Economic Oddity:
  “It’s a weird year... 90 years of US trade policy abruptly thrown into the waste bin and replaced with... high tariffs. And... this AI boom... It’s a very, very bizarre economy right now.”
  – Paul Krugman [09:49]

• On Affordability:
  “If you lose [your job] or you’re new to the labor market, it’s very hard to get a first job or a new job.”
  – Paul Krugman [10:59]

• On Poverty Metrics:
  “If you really want to think about poverty... are people really part of the broader society? Poverty as a measure of social exclusion is really what you want, mostly.”
  – Paul Krugman [13:53]

• On the Artificial Magic of Markets:
  “But for all of that spending on data centers we would probably be in a recession right now... If a handful of people have a mood swing they can take down the whole world economy.”
  – Paul Krugman [27:51]

• On Corruption:
  “It really is on a different scale... billions of dollars in personal rewards for the First Family, that’s something new in American history.”
  – Paul Krugman [41:47; 43:29]

• On the Biggest Risks:
  “We’ve reached a moment when the technology actually makes it surprisingly easy and cheap to do a lot to limit climate change. And the United States is just totally turning its back on this miraculous technology.”
  – Paul Krugman [44:20]

• On Authoritarian Threats:
  “My immediate concern... is: will America still be a democracy next year? ... If you’re not worried about that, you’re not paying attention.”
  – Paul Krugman [45:59; 46:33]

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Segment Timestamps

• Krugman Interview Begins – [08:41]
• State of 2025 & Affordability – [09:49–12:38]
• Poverty Metrics Debate – [13:44–16:44]
• Deficit/Debt Discussion – [18:06–22:58]
• Market Fragility & AI Bubble – [26:09–33:57]
• Crony Capitalism & Corruption – [34:26–43:29]
• Greatest Risks (Environment, Authoritarianism) – [43:54–49:11]
• Media Reflections – [49:35–53:23]

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Notable Moments

• Krugman humorously notes the “joyless” nature of today’s tech bubble vs. the exuberant 90s.
• Points to a disturbing “personal rewards for the First Family” trend as evidence of unprecedented corruption.
• On environmental issues: Krugman is more worried about the US turning away from climate solutions and the cumulative damage that’s already baked in.
• On media: Celebrates the new freedoms of Substack but warns of the existential threat to local news coverage and the sustainability of media as a whole.

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Conclusion

Paul Krugman paints a picture of an American economy at a crossroads—where AI-driven booms prop up markets built on fragile ground, political capture reaches new heights, and mounting environmental risk is overshadowed by fears of democratic backsliding. This episode is essential listening (and reading) for anyone seeking a frank, unvarnished snapshot of America’s capital markets and its turbulent future.

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Transcript

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[Paul Krugman]

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[Ed Elson]

That's how many hours on average people spend shopping online at work. I hate those little reminders that people who bought this also bought. Okay, those people are also emotionally fucked up in the head. Stop profiling me.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Listen to me.

[Sponsor Announcer 3]

Markets are bigger than us.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

What you have here is a structural.

[Ed Elson]

Change in the world.

[Sponsor Announcer 2]

Distribution.

[Paul Krugman]

Cash is trash.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Stocks look pretty attractive.

[Ed Elson]

Something's going to break. Forget about it Ed. I made that up myself.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Yeah, I could tell.

[Ed Elson]

You could tell? I made it up myself. I had a great joke on. What was it? Oh, there's the Prof. G show. I don't know if you know this I have another pot. I do. Other podcasts said that's right, and it was that I watched Jaws last night, but instead I watched it backwards. And it's actually the heartwarming story of a shark that helps disabled people recover their lives.

I think that's genius, really.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Dialing it back. And this was the question last week, should we dial it back? I thought the answer was no. I guess the answer is yes. We've got a dad joke about Jaws and about shopping.

[Ed Elson]

Would you trust the judgment of someone who takes the time to comment on a YouTube video? I mean, we love our fans. We love our fans.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Love them. But not listening to any of you, no shot.

[Ed Elson]

I always try to be positive in comments. I'm not getting into fights anymore with people online because I'm usually fighting against a bot. And then I find my erectile dysfunction gets even more dysfunctional. And so.

Tonya, it's coming. You laugh now. You laugh now. Just wait, my friend. Just wait. Teladafil, which, by the way, is a generic name for Cialis, just get used to it. And it's less embarrassing to say to your nurse, who's got. Or your nurse, your doctor who always has, like, an attractive nurse in the room. And you have to say, I'm kind of interested in those drugs that. What is it, how you say, make dick hard?

I don't know who I'm imitating there. I just know that's all kinds of wrong. You know what? Actually, our producers fucked up. You know what today's number should have been?

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

What?

[Ed Elson]

30. Why's that?

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Ah, okay, there we go.

[Ed Elson]

Ed Elson, 30 under 30, according to Forbes, which, by the way, I did not know Forbes still existed. But it is still very prestigious.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Very prestigious.

[Ed Elson]

And Catherine, we're on another podcast, Raging Moderates. She came on. This is such exciting news. Ed just got 30 under 30 on Forbes, and I literally reflexively shouted out, that bitch owes me everything.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

It's true. I do owe you everything.

[Ed Elson]

Tell us, how does it feel to be the 30 over 30 or 30 under 30?

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Yeah, it's nice. You know, the secret of the 30 under 30 is it's actually 600 under 30. They keep on increasing the number of us every year. So, I mean, that's the sort of little footnote that. That. That we should consider, but still very exciting.

[Ed Elson]

Well, you join past alumni, including Mark Zuckerberg, LeBron James, Miley Cyrus, LeBron James.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

He and I have a similar career trajectory, I think.

[Ed Elson]

I think you're much more similar to Miley Cyrus, but that's just me, the guy who started Spotify.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

That's pretty good company. Also Elizabeth Holmes. And also Sam Bagman freed. I mean, if anything's going to happen to me, I'm going to end up in prison in the next two years. If we're being realistic here, let's bring.

[Ed Elson]

This back to me. I peaked pretty early. I came out of the gate strong out of business school. I started a strategy firm. Someone got me invited to Davos. I was literally 29 at Davos, and I thought it would just keep going uphill, just up into the right. And by the time I was 33, I was divorced, broke, and basically living like a caveman in New York. Like occasionally leaving to try and go to the Ready Teller and get food and pursue sex unsuccessfully and then going back, retreating back to the cave. So that's what's coming next for you, Ed. That's what's coming. That's next up. Next up.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

I can't wait. You just got it. You can't let it get to your head.

[Ed Elson]

Oh, that's too late for that. You're one of those quiet, conceited guys. You're always like, oh, well, I don't think about me, me, me all the time.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

I have to make you think that I don't think about me all the time.

[Ed Elson]

That fake British accent is about says it all. That says it all, Claire. And I know you're from fucking Alabama. Anyways, what do we got going on today?

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We got a conversation with Paul Krugman, which is going to be great. And I would also add that we are recording our annual Ask me anything episode next week. So please send in your questions [e-mail] or drop them in the comments. Very excited about that episode. I think that's all I got before we got this conversation with a Nobel prize winning economist.

[Ed Elson]

More importantly, along the same lines, did you see me on Oprah?

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

I didn't see you on Oprah, but I saw the photo of you and Oprah. Is it out yet?

[Ed Elson]

No, she and I just roll together. What do you think? Yeah, I was on her show.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

No, I'm dating on the show.

[Ed Elson]

We're dating.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

I just haven't seen the interview.

[Ed Elson]

We've decided to come public with our relationship.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We were talking in the side channels. It strangely looked. AI generated that photo of you and Oprah Winfrey.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah, it did look fake, didn't it? Everyone looks so happy. It didn't look like repeat. I had no idea what to expect. I know you want to know more.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

About This I do, actually.

[Ed Elson]

I walk into a room and they have filled the room with like a hundred young people. Eighty of them are men.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Wow.

[Ed Elson]

And they all proceed to ask me questions about mental health and what should I do? I'm having trouble connecting to relationships. And I'm like, dude, I don't know. When I was your age, I was getting fucked up and approaching people in Irish bars. I don't know, I was literally sweating. And I had to basically start every sentence with, I am not a licensed therapist. I'll just give you my experience and if it's helpful, great. But. And at one point I said to this woman, I'm like, I don't know. I have no idea. It sounds like you're really, you know, it sounds like you're struggling. I have no idea. It was so uncomfortable. I think someone told them I was Dr. Drew or something, or Esther Perel.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

You gotta assume that position. If you're going on Oprah, you're not gonna be doing hard hitting economics. You're gonna be talking about feelings. Right.

[Ed Elson]

My friend Gayle King got me on the show. Gayle King's my new best friend. She's super cool and nice and funny. Anyways, I was on Oprah.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

That's very cool.

[Ed Elson]

That's it. And now Paul Krugman.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Let's get into it. Here is our conversation with Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and distinguished professor of economics at the Graduate center of the City University of. Paul, thank you very much for joining us for the very first time on Prof. G. Markets.

[Paul Krugman]

Oh, hi there. Good to be on.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Scott. Clinton has an issue with the intro.

[Ed Elson]

We talk about Paul so much, I assumed he'd been on seven or eight times. We feel as if we know you. We're parroting your, your data so much.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Well, we're slightly short on time, so I want to get straight into the questions. I have so many questions for you, Paul, and the first is, you know, we're coming to the end of the year here and a lot has happened. We've had a new administration, we've had Liberation Day, we've had tariffs. AI has exploded. You have been writing about economics for years. You're a foremost leader in economics just at a very broad level. What has stood out to you in 2025 and how do you think 2025 is going to be remembered in economic history?

[Paul Krugman]

I mean, it's a weird year and that's all I can say. I mean, history doesn't usually give you clean experiments. It's usually more than one thing going on. But this year is really extreme. On the one hand, you have 90 years of US trade policy abruptly thrown into the waste bin and replaced with very high tariffs. And on the other side, you have this AI boom, which is the biggest sort of. Well, it's the biggest thing since the housing bubble. But the housing bubble was kind of on its own. And here we have the AI boom sort of colliding with and interacting with the tariffs. And it's a very, very bizarre economy right now.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

One of the things you've been talking about lately is affordability. And that's something that's been very prevalent in politics, most notably, probably with the mayoral election.

Where do we stand in terms of affordability in this economy right now? Clearly we're seeing some growth in the overall economy because of AI, but the affordability crisis seems to be kind of a different thing.

[Paul Krugman]

The problem that we have in talking about affordability is that there is a simple thing which is just your real income, typical person's wage divided by the consumer price index, which is actually up a little bit since pre pandemic. So we're actually not seeing the simple version. Oh, prices are way up and everybody is impoverished is not true. Way too much reporting talks as if that was the story, but that doesn't mean that everything is okay. So once you start to look under the surface, you see, first of all, there are some real cost of living issues or just generally getting by issues. There's interest costs are way up, certain really critical things. Above all, I would say that the cost of your buying your first house are way up. So people are not imagining that there's an affordability crisis. And then if we just sort of take affordability as kind of a proxy for how are things? Well, the economy is in some important ways worse than it looks. We don't have high unemployment, at least not yet. We don't have high inflation by historical standards. But we do have this frozen job market where if you got your job, okay, but if you lose it or you're new to the labor market, it's very hard to get a first job or a new job. And again, I do think that, and I will be writing myself some more, I think that the way that some things that are key markers or have been key markers of middle class status are receding out of reach matters in a way that the normal numbers don't quite capture.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We read a really interesting substack article recently which has kind of gone viral by this guy, Michael Green, this asset manager, where he brought up And I don't know if you've seen this, but he brought up this poverty line question where the current poverty line in America that we all use is around $30,000, a little over $30,000. And he made the point that this is an old metric, an old measurement that we used that worked in the 60s but no longer works anymore. And he came up with kind of an adjusted calculation, and he landed on $140,000 as the poverty line. It's been very controversial. Some people said that that number is all wrong, but the point kind of stands. It's like, well, we're all talking about affordability. We're all trying to figure out what's going on for the American economy, particularly on the lower end. And this has really resonated with people. I just want to get your reactions to that article and this idea that perhaps that metric that we've used to measure poverty might be flawed.

[Paul Krugman]

I actually have been aware of the article and not bothered to read it because this is kind of a stupid point.

I sit at the City University. I sit at something called the Stone center for the Study of Socioeconomic Inequality. Let me tell you, my colleagues know all about poverty measurement. And the poverty measure is one of those things where basically Lyndon Johnson needed a quick and dirty measure of poverty. And an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Molly Arshansky, did a quick and dirty calculation which somehow got stuck. And the original calculation was based on the cost of food, and since then has been just adjusted for the consumer price index and nothing else. Molly Arshansky did something really useful, and it turned out to be extremely useful to have a standard measure of poverty, even if it's somewhat arbitrary. But if you really want to think about poverty, there's one question which is, can people afford the essentials of living? And then there's a bigger, tougher question, which is, are people really part of the broader society? Poverty as a measure of social exclusion is really what you want, mostly. Most countries actually measure poverty quite differently. They say that poverty is having less than half the median income. And we can do that for the United States. And it does show that we've actually, because of increasing inequality, poverty has risen over time. And yes, the material standard of living associated with half the median income has gone up. But in some ways, that doesn't help much. So this is the wrong approach. I mean, in some ways, it should just say, poverty, poverty. How are we doing? How many people are really effectively excluded from the economic mainstream in America? And the answer is a lot and too Many.

For.

Almost bureaucratic policy reasons. We're kind of stuck with this poverty measure, but trying to fiddle with it to make it better.

That's really not very helpful.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

It sounds like maybe you agree with the premise, though, which is that this idea of a poverty line is kind of an arbitrary and stupid way to measure things. With this question of, how is America doing? And I feel like one of the larger points is, like, the economy is so much different today than it was 60 years ago. There are so many other things that we need to account for. You mentioned there that real income is up, but this affordability crisis is still a problem. For all of the other issues that you mentioned, the job market, housing market, borrowing costs, all of these things, which seems to bring us to this question of, like, how are we supposed to measure the economy then? If we can't rely on the poverty, we can't rely on income, what should we be looking at?

[Paul Krugman]

I mean, I would say the poverty measure is arbitrary, but not stupid. There was a reason for doing it, that there's a reason why a lot of. A lot of federal programs are keyed to the official poverty threshold because they have to be key to something. So if you look at what are the subsidy rates under the Affordable Care act, they're tied to your income as a percentage of the official poverty line. And.

Changing that would be kind of a nightmare. It's just there are more important things to spend political capital on. So let's focus on what's important. And again, we have pretty good measures of inequality. We have a pretty good sense of how many people really can't afford to be part of the mainstream of American life. They're all very troubling. So just, we don't need the problem. The fault lies not in our numbers, but in ourselves. Right. It's fundamentally a question of what kind of society do we want to have and how do we deviate from that. And clearly, if the poverty line, if you have some calculation that sets the poverty line at a level that is way above where people actually consider themselves poor, then that's wrong. It doesn't matter what the details of the calculation are. So let's just say are there a lot of Americans who are below some line? Yes, there are.

[Ed Elson]

If someone said we're taking in $5 trillion in receipts, tax receipts, and spending 7 trillion, I would naturally assume that we were either at war or trying to jumpstart or reverse an economic decline, a malaise, get us out of a recession or a depression. And yet we're not. I Mean, I don't think either of those are true. And the fact that the economy is not surging with $2 trillion in additional deficit spending, to me says that mass and underlying sickness, that the economy is actually much weaker than people think. Your thoughts?

[Paul Krugman]

Before COVID a lot of us were talking about.

Secular stagnation, which is a totally impenetrable set of words. It gives you no clue of what we're actually talking about, what it really was that we actually had persistently inadequate demand, persistently inadequate spending in the economy, and that interest rates were always extremely low. And even that wasn't enough to really jumpstart the economy. It may well be that we would still be in that state if it weren't for these big budget deficits. And so that's a concern. It's also the case that advanced stable rule of law nations that borrow in their own currency have a lot of leeway to run up large debts. They can go a long way up that debt to GDP ratio without getting into a financial crisis. Is that still a description of America?

We're large, but are we stable? Are we a rule of law society? If I were an investor, wouldn't I worry about some current or future autocratic presidents deciding to just arbitrarily write down our obligations? So these numbers are troubling.

But. But we all know where it comes from. We basically have a political deadlock where we have immensely popular programs, I think deservedly so, like Medicare and Social Security. And we also have a complete unwillingness to collect enough taxes to pay for them.

[Ed Elson]

To me, this feels unsustainable when we're operating at what feels like it's not a good economy, not a bad economy, just what you call, I don't know, somewhere in the middle. And we've decided that it's just standard operating procedure to go 40%, you know, to spend 140% of our tax receipts. To me, A, I feel that's unsustainable. Do you agree? And B, when? And it's hard to tell when. But how does the music stop? Is it just when? I've never bought. The people won't show up for our treasury auctions. They'll just demand more payment in exchange for the risk.

Is there a limit do we go to? I mean, Japan's much higher than us. Okay, but at what point does the debt become an issue?

[Paul Krugman]

Britain had debt that was 250% of GDP at the end of World War II. But it wasn't a crisis because people said Britain is a serious country.

Run by people who are not idiots. And they will, in the end, do what is necessary, as they did to control their debt load. Now, the trouble is that we may not be a serious country, and more to the point, that the markets may conclude that we're not a serious country. And that's when the limit hits. It's not an arbitrary number. It's kind of, who are we?

Stein's Law.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

Whose son was a much less funny comedian. But Herb Stein's Law was, if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. And Stein's Law clearly must apply at some point. But so far we haven't hit that. Though I have to wonder. I mean.

The character of American governance has changed so much in this past year that you have to wonder whether any assumptions based on the kind of country we used to be still apply. But I put a lot of work on this. I actually was looking for. At various times, I've looked for examples of countries that, like the United States, borrow in their own currency, have a high level of debt and are kind of politically paralyzed, but are not, you know, hyperinflation territory or whatever. And for crises, and it's really hard to find them in history. I mean, talk about the French franc in 1926, where. But it is really hard to. We don't have a lot of historical examples, so that will help us understand how this ends. Sooner or later, it has to end one way or another. But how? I don't know.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show, send it to a friend. And please follow us if you haven't already.

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[Paul Krugman]

Zoe, the mall's about to close. It's impossible to do anything in 15 minutes. Oh, it's possible, Harvey.

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[Ed Elson]

I know.

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[Paul Krugman]

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[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We're back with Prof. G Markets.

[Ed Elson]

So one of the big themes of our show, our talk tracks is that our economy has become more fragile because 40% of the S&P is represented by 10 companies and that if Nvidia announces, a big company announces they're not getting the return they'd hoped regarding their investment in AI. Nvidia doesn't meet expectations. Nvidia goes down 60 or 70%, which I will remind people every one of the big tech companies has been down that much in a 12 month period at some point in the last 10 months or 10 years. And basically overnight the S and p is off 10, 15, 20% which represents a half of global market capitalization. And immediately we're in what feels like something like a global recession, if not something worse. Our sense is that that feels more likely than not in the next 24 months. Your thoughts?

[Paul Krugman]

I think you and I.

Not Ed, but you and I have remember the 90s.

[Ed Elson]

I knew it was going to be that we're old.

[Paul Krugman]

Definitely is and.

There'S a lot of markers.

That feel like the.com actually more telecom in terms of economics. But the excesses of the tech bubble.

Details differ quite a lot. And I have to say that this bubble, if it is a bubble, is an amazingly joyless bubble compared with the 90s. But sure I think there's a we are in a situation now where.

But for all of that spending on data centers we would probably be in a recession right now. And so it's not at all hard to see this going south quite suddenly. And it's also by the way it does worry me that and this was not true back then that a lot of this is not only there's a few companies but really the economy is being driven by the capex decisions of like 10 guys. If a handful of people have a mood swing they can take down the whole world economy.

[Ed Elson]

To me this all all roads lead to the same place and that is and the thesis is that the cloud cover I think the S and P and the Nasdaq are the worst metrics invented in modern modern economy because they create the delusion of prosperity and don't really say how people are actually doing or feeling. And without the cloud cover of the S and P being up double digits it'd be much more difficult for the president to be sending a mass police, secret police into big cities and that he has a huge vested interest in the continued kind of lollapalooza champagne and cocaine of the AI BET driving the markets. And to me this all leads to one place. When I look at the expectations built into the forward earnings of these companies, I don't think it's sustainable. And all roads for me, or not all roads. I think there's a very big likelihood that in 2026 we see some form of a bailout in the form of government backed debt such that these guys can continue this capex which seems to be propping up the market and the economy. A bailout of AI in the form of some quote unquote government investment or government backed continued buying of or financing a capex. Your thoughts?

[Paul Krugman]

I think maybe tempted. We certainly shouldn't think of this administration as having any free market principles and so quite possible that they might want to do it. I remember 2008 and it's worth remembering that in the face of the absolute meltdown of markets, the first time that TARP which was limited bailout of banks, the first time the TARP was put in front of Congress, it was voted down. I don't think it's that easy to engineer a bailout. I think that. And among other things were people worried about.

People worried about the budget and the deficit and all of that. And this is really big. I mean it's one thing to bail out Silicon Valley bank or something like that, that's a fairly small thing. But this would be really, really huge. Really, really hard to justify. And one thing that is really clear also is that people hate AI. They hate the companies, they hate the people. This is the most unpopular boom. I mean.

As I said, this is a joyless bubble compared with the 90s. Everyone was kind of.

Feeling some good. There were some good vibes about the companies, even the ones that failed. So it could happen. But I think that politically it would be extremely difficult.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

It's really interesting. I feel like.

Two big themes here or one big theme in two stories is that it feels as though we are artificially propping up the economy right now. And we've talked about it in relation to deficit spending which is already kind of out of control. And now with the big beautiful bill, it will get more out of control. And the predictions are that it's going to grow our economy, perhaps the stock market because we're going to spend so much money. And this is coming from the administration that said we're going to balance the budget. So that's a whole other can of worms. And at the same time you've got massive AI Capex investment which is basically keeping our GDP growth positive. And we're not yet seeing the underlying demand in the consumer economy that would warrant the amount of investment that we're see that we're seeing in AI, which I think leads me and Scott and probably a lot of our audience to believe that whenever the music stops because of the amount that we are artificially inflating everything in our system right now, it's going to be an extremely aggressive and shocking downturn. I just want to get your reactions to that notion.

[Paul Krugman]

The IMF once did a systematic study of how successful are economists at predicting recessions. What is the track record of economists at predicting recessions? And the answer is zero success. Might as well use a Magic 8 ball as ask me or anybody else on this. There's just too many damn things happening in the world to be very good at this. Now maybe it's worth saying that the capex on data centers and related and I've been the measures are but we're talking about something like 1 to 2% of GDP. So although.

That'S not chicken feed, but that's not enough to produce a 2008 level crash. It's more like so think more light 2001 than 2008. So it's not all that catastrophic if you try and do the math. Now, what the effects on sentiment might be, what the effects of falling stock prices might be is harder to say. But this does look crazy. But I think we probably don't want to go overboard in terms of the scale of what's at stake. It will certainly be unpleasant and there will be demands that we bail this thing out and also furious pushback against those demands. But.

It'S not the end of the world, which I can say because I remember the end of the world which did sort of happen in 2008. So.

It'S worrisome. But let's not get too over excused on this.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

When you talk about the politics of AI. When you look at the way that this administration has been handling AI and I'm really thinking about, you know, these dinners where you've got Zuckerberg and Tim Cook showing up to the White House offering gifts.

I mean, you said there that these campaign decisions, it's not just in the hands of a few companies, it's really in the hands of a very, very small set of people. What do you make of how the White House is handling AI, handling AI policy right now? How do you think it will shake out politically? And where does this land in the economic story of America?

[Paul Krugman]

Well, it's not clear to me that we really have an AI policy. It's actually in general, it's not clear to me that we have an economic policy at all. I mean one of the things that is really for those of us who've spent decades interacting with the policy wall community, what's really remarkable about this administration is there's nobody to talk to, there's nobody in there. They ask who in the White House is thinking hard about AI and how it's going to affect the economy. The answer is nobody. There just is nothing there. And what's happening, this is more the dinners is these are all basically big corporate types, but especially it turns out, the tech sector, although there are some others who are trying to butter up the White House and look for. So this isn't really policy, it's crony capitalism.

[Ed Elson]

And.

[Paul Krugman]

They'Re doing what they have to do or they think they have to do. Although actually I find it interesting that Wall street, which is another source, there's another big pile of money and influential people over there, they've been actually much less visible in all of this. Not zero, but much less. And I thought it was really interesting that Jamie Dimon was asked why we have the people who are helping the destruction of the White House and its replacement with a grotesque ballroom. Jamie Dimon was asked why JPMorgan Chase isn't part of it. And he said, well, we need to think about what future DOJs will do. Which was an amazing thing actually to say, although couched in deliberately bland language. But he basically thinks that a lot of people. There's a real possibility that a lot of people involved in policymaking right now are going to end up going to jail.

It's a very strange situation. But there is no policy. I mean, if you ask who's the point man on actual hard thinking about this?

Well, maybe David Sacks, part time employee. The policy and the personal interest are so enmeshed that it's not really policy as we knew it.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Why do you think we've seen this divide between Wall street and Silicon Valley? It's an interesting point that you make. Silicon Valley has really grown its ties to this administration in a way that you're right. It seems Wall street hasn't done or at least not not in the same way or not as openly and outwardly. Why do you think that is?

[Paul Krugman]

The Wall street people in diamond in particular, but in general they've been dealing with government for a long time. I mean, Silicon Valley used to think that it was a libertarian paradise and didn't need government, and now all of a sudden they're throwing cash at.

At the First Family. But they're not sophisticated in this stuff and they probably don't have much sense of where the risks lie, whereas Wall street does. And also, there's a personal thing. One of the things that I find interesting about this whole tech story right now is that it is being led in large. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but it's being led in large part by billionaires whose best days are behind them. Ten years ago, everybody loved Silicon Valley. Everybody loved tech. We thought it was a tool of liberation. We even had biopics made about Mark Zuckerberg. And now everybody thinks of them as greedy monopolists. The word of the year, I guess, two years ago was Cory, Dr. Oz and shitification.

Part of what's driving all this stuff is I think these are people who are sort of looking for something really big to bring back the glory days of 2015 or so.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We'll be right back. And for even more markets content. Sign up for our [e-mail] Subscribe.

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[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

We're back with Profg Markets. I think some people would say, I mean, we're seeing what appears to be certainly crony capitalism. Others would just say flat out corruption.

And then on the other side, some people say, oh well, America has always been corrupt. If it's Silicon Valley now, it was Wall Street 10, 15, 20 years ago. You know, our policymakers are always in bed with whoever has the most money. When you look at this administration and the economic policies in 2025, where does it rank in terms of corruption? How corrupt is this administration compared with history?

[Paul Krugman]

It really is on a different scale. I think even the Gilded Age looks relatively clean by comparison. But certainly compared with look we went through. I was very involved intellectually and certainly talking with all the players during the post 2008 financial crisis and the bank bailouts and all of that. And there was no question that big money on Wall street carried a lot of political clout, but there was very little outright bribery as far as we know. As far as I know.

People weren't handing over bags of cash. They weren't buying meme coins or whatever, which didn't exist yet. It was more. There was a subtle, not that subtle, but a relatively subtle influence. There was the revolving door. Government officials were always were thinking a little bit about their next job. There was just the prestige that comes with money. I did have a couple of meetings at the Obama White House where a couple of people like Joe Stiglitz and me were arguing for a harder line against the banks and the bankers were of course arguing against. And I came out of both meetings saying, you know, we have a fundamental disadvantage, which is that they have much better tailors. It was never the case that we were a deliberative democracy based on principle. Money always talked.

[Ed Elson]

But.

[Paul Krugman]

Billions of dollars in personal rewards for the First Family, that's something new in American history.

[Ed Elson]

Of all the things going on are all the risks, whether it's geopolitical instability, deficit spending, AI, potentially an AI bubble. What worries you the most? Or you think it's not getting enough coverage? And then outline a scenario around the question. We like to ask what could go right?

[Paul Krugman]

Environmental issues.

Should be top of the concern. And there's a terrible thing that's happening right now, which is that that we've reached A moment when the technology actually makes it surprisingly easy and cheap to do a lot to limit climate change. And the United States is just totally turning its back on this miraculous technology.

Which also has geopolitical stuff. China is taking the lead in green energy and the United States is keeping defunct coal plants running. That's what really scares me now. What could go right? Maybe AI really does generate a huge productivity burst.

You can believe both that it's a bubble and that the companies, the Mag 7 or the Mag 10 or whatever your group is, that they are massively overvalued and that the technology is really going to be transformative. It's like I, I spend time watching old ads from the 90s on YouTube. It's one of those great, well, technology does some great stuff. And you look at the ads from Quest about all the wonders that fiber optics was going to bring and they all came true. Quest went bankrupt, but the technology was for real. And if.

A persistent 150 basis point rise in the rate of productivity growth in the United States would make a lot of our economic problems just melt away.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

I'm surprised to hear at the top of your list in terms of risks, you're worried about environmental issues. When we ask the question, the things that often come up are debt is often a really big one.

Civil war in some capacity, largely as a result of inequality. The steepening inequality that we're seeing is often a big one. I think that's probably number one for me.

I'm surprised to hear environmental issues, so I'd like to hear more about that.

[Paul Krugman]

So let me just say I wasn't going to get into the politics, but no, I mean my immediate concern. She asked what keeps me up at night. It's will America still be a democracy next year? Not even so much the civil war aspect as the. We've seen this movie before. We're like quite a lot like Orban's Hungary and at a couple of, you know, a year or two into.

The Fidesh takeover. So, you know, that's, that's what keeps me up at night. You know.

That that comes. I'm not sure about the Civil war, more about just basically a authoritarian coup. Let's just be frank about it. If you're not worried about that, you're not paying attention. And debt is, you know, we probably still have some running room on that, so that will get resolved first. But the environment, look, the world is still emitting a lot of greenhouse gases.

The thing about greenhouse, about emissions is that they're cumulative.

Even if we stopped completely emitting carbon dioxide and methane today.

Temperatures wouldn't start to come back down for generations. So this stuff, and if we continue slowing the rate of growth of emissions, which is kind of the most that we can reasonably hope for right now, is not enough to avoid a really large set of consequences. So I don't own any real estate in Florida because I think that just in economic terms, we are very likely to see a whole lot of property damage and economic damage. So this stuff has receded from attention, but the reality.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Why do you think it's receded from attention? I agree with you. This was sort of top of mind for many, many people. I would say maybe seven, eight, probably a decade ago. And for whatever reason we've forgotten about it, or at least it's certainly way down on the priority list. Why do you think that's happened?

[Paul Krugman]

Well, if I think about myself and my friends, it's because.

We may suffer really terrible environmental damage 10, 15 years from now. But.

America as we know it politically is on the line. Now you focus on the most immediate danger.

And it's also the fact that the political.

Who are you talking to? Is there anybody, certainly in US Politics who was going to be moved by what was said or wasn't said at the COP conference in Balan the other day? You kind of work with where you are. And I will say also more positive, the fact that it looks like there is a path towards stabilizing the climate at a still tolerable level without sacrifice because of these miraculous new green energy technologies that also does change the way that you think about it.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Just before we let you go here, more of a personal question. You were a columnist for the New York Times for many, many years. You now kind of made the leap out into independent media, the new media sphere which we kind of live in. You're on substack. Your substack has exploded. People are absolutely loving it.

General takeaways on what it's like leaving legacy media and now being in new media. What do you make of it?

[Paul Krugman]

I will always be grateful to the Times for offering me that platform. And the new media can do lots of things, but one thing it can't do is the kind of steady pound the pavement reporting that we still, if you look at what do I reference in the substack, and it's a lot of stuff that's being reported by the New York New York Times and Bloomberg.

So we still need all of that.

But I will say that there is a, you know, there's a lot more it's not just freedom to say what you want to say without. Without editors and being able to, you know, not. Not be polite sometimes, but also just format and the kind of stuff I do, which often involves a mixture of. Of charts and statistics and occasionally gets a little wonky for. I can do that, which I really couldn't. I was just talking with some.

Actually just talking with Martin Wolf about this. The great liberation of not having to have my charts look pretty and so not having to wait three days for the graphics department to produce a chart that looks up to time standards and being able instead to just be bang accrued thing out of Excel and PowerPoint. That makes the point. And I can do within an hour or two.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Do you have any thoughts on just where media is headed? I mean, the New York Times is actually under fire just this week because they put out this article about David Sacks and all the ways in which he's compromised. And then suddenly you had this massive outpouring of pushback, largely from David Sachs and his. His mates on the right, saying the New York Times is compromised, it's woke. It's, you know, has an agenda. What do you just make of, like, what is happening to media at large? And what do you think? Where do you think it's all headed? And then. Then we'll get you out of here.

[Paul Krugman]

You know, assuming that we do manage to head off the authoritarian threat, then I think the Times should actually feel grateful. I mean, it's kind of fdr. I welcome their hatred. I mean, this is.

And the Times almost uniquely, I think, in different ways. A couple of other organizations have managed it, but they've managed to make media a financially sustainable proposition. With a paywall that people are willing to actually subscribe to, they're actually a success story in some ways. The problem is that only a handful of organizations can do that. And that is the great concern and how much we can rely on. I mean, it's great that. I mean, what I value from Substack is mostly actually the people who actually do reportage of some kind, people who actually know something and can tell me about it. And that's great, but it's got its limits. And we don't know. We used to have a media that did its job based upon advertising. Now we have a media based upon.

Paywalls, which.

Works, but for many fewer organizations.

Local reporting is a casualty. The fact that it used to be that the classified ads were the great savior of local newspapers, and now they're gone and so are the local newspapers. So I don't know how all this shakes out. Eventually we have to find a model. But. But look, everything.

In the end, technology and the Internet have just shaken up everything.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

Paul Krugman is the Distinguished professor of Economics at the Graduate center of the City University of New York. He was a columnist for the New York Times from 2000 to 2024. In 2008, Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to new trade theory and new economic geography. Krugman was previously a professor of economics at MIT and later at Princeton University. You can check out his substack for his notes on economics and more. Paul, really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Ed Elson]

Thanks Paul.

[Paul Krugman]

Thanks for having me on.

[Co-host (possibly Claire Miller)]

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen o' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our Technical Director and Ken Katherine Dillon is our Executive Producer. Thank you for listening to Prof. G Markets from Profg Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

[Ed Elson]

And kind.

[Paul Krugman]

Reunion.

[Ed Elson]

As the world turn.

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