How to make $35 trillion ... disappear

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You may be familiar with the AI-fueled stock market boom. Well, former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Gita Gopinath warns it could mirror the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. But worse. She calculates a similar crash could erase $35 trillion in global wealth. Today on the show, what would that mean for the US and global economies?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:02.0	The AI boom has had a lot of people comparing this moment to the dot-com crash.
0:17.0	That's when the US stock market boomed on the promise of the internet, but then dropped about
0:21.9	50% from its peak.
0:24.2	Gita Goperneth is the IMF's former chief economist and second in charge.
0:28.4	She's now at Harvard.
0:29.8	And Gita has gamed out what a dot-com-style bust would actually mean for the economy today.
0:36.1	We're talking about growth basically coming to a standstill in the US.
0:42.4	This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Daryan Woods.
0:45.7	Today on the show, a conversation with Gita Gopaneth about the possible erasure of
0:50.4	$35 trillion from the global economy.
0:56.0	Economist Gita Gopaneth joined me from her Harvard recording studio late November.
1:01.0	So I think we have all the gadgets we need.
1:03.9	Looks like a very serious microphone there.
1:07.0	Yes.
1:08.5	So today I want to explore how the U.S. stock market could mean trouble for the rest of the world.
1:14.2	And to set the scene, can you describe what's been behind the US stock market's pretty big increase over 2025?
1:22.6	If you want to understand what's happening in the US stock market, I think it also helps to go back about 10 to 15
1:28.3	years, which is that if you compare the performance of the U.S. stock market relative to other
1:34.5	stock markets around the world, the U.S. has been exceptional. So it was a one-way bet in terms
1:40.9	of putting money in U.S. equities. And so that's what happened was not just U.S.
1:47.0	households and firms put their money in the stock market, but the rest of the world also
	...

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