I'm Martin Wolf, the Financial Times chief economics commentator.

And I'm Paul Krugman, professor at the City University of New York, and I guess self-employed

online pundit.

In six episodes to run throughout June and early July, we'll be discussing the economic

events reshaping our world.

And it's going to be interesting doing this together because,

well, we've known each other, according to my calculations, around 40 years. So what topics

would you like to discuss? I mean, obviously, it doesn't look like the trade war and all of that

is going to be over any time soon, and we need to talk about that.

Are you prepared to think a little about the political economy of this? How can it be that

what is on the face of it, the most successful economy in the world, has decided to elect

somebody who intends to blow it up.

I'm friends with some science fiction writers, people who write sort of near future dystopian

stuff, and they're very upset because they feel that they're being put out of a job,

because what's actually happening is making everything that they wrote look mild by

comparison with the reality.

I mean, if it weren't for Donald Trump, we would be talking a lot about how do we get China

to not be such a disruptive player in the world economy?

I'd like to talk about Europe and why is it lacking almost for consolation.

I've been doing some work on AI and what it might mean.

These are all things that if it weren't for that guy in the White House,

would all be at the top of our conversation and really we should be talking about.

...