Andrew Ross Sorkin on What 1929 Teaches Us About 2025

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

When President Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the business world predicted that his unprecedented attempt to reshape the economy would lead to a major recession, if Trump went through with it all. But the markets stabilized and, in recent months, have continued to surge. That has some people worried about an even bigger threat: that overinvestment in artificial intelligence is creating a bubble. Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of today’s preëminent financial journalists, is well versed in what’s happening; his début book, “Too Big to Fail,” was an account of the 2008 financial crash, and this year he released “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation.” He tells David Remnick that the concern lies in the massive borrowing to build the infrastructure for a future A.I. economy, without the sufficient revenue, currently, to pay off the loans. “If I learned anything from covering 1929, [and] covering 2008, it is leverage,” Sorkin says, “people borrowing to make all of this happen. And right now we are beginning to see a remarkable period of borrowing to make the economics of A.I. work.” Sorkin is the co-anchor of “Squawk Box” on CNBC, and he also founded the New York Times’ business section, DealBook.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene.
0:07.0	I'm David Remnick.
0:08.3	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:16.1	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:25.9	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm hearing the same murmurings about the
0:31.4	economy that you are. Catchphrases like, correction, bubble, crash, buy gold, reduce your exposure, or more bluntly cash out.
0:41.9	Since the beginning of the year, when Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the markets,
0:47.0	even at record heights, have been in turmoil. And if Trump had gone through with all his
0:51.7	most unpredictable and punitive tariffs,
0:54.7	we might have faced real disaster, a major recession.
0:58.3	But he didn't, not quite.
1:00.6	And the market stabilized over the year.
1:02.7	In fact, they've been surging lately.
1:04.8	That has some people worried about a threat that could be bigger still.
1:09.2	They worry that the economy and its expansion is so dependent on the realm of artificial intelligence,
1:15.3	with all its fantastical prospects and unknowns, that we might be in trouble and very soon.
1:21.6	Just the other day, Sam Altman seemed to suggest that companies like OpenAI might need a government bailout.
1:28.2	And that caused a furor.
1:30.1	Altman quickly walked that statement back.
1:33.0	In some level, like at some level when something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we've seen in
1:45.7	various financial crises and insurance companies screwing things up. So I guess, given the magnitude
1:52.0	of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, sort of I do think the government ends up
	...

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