Kenneth Rogoff on Monetary Moves, Fiscal Gambits, and Classical Chess

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff approaches global finance with the same strategic foresight that made him a chess grandmaster. Author of the new book Our Dollar, Your Problem, Rogoff doesn't sugarcoat America's future: he foresees a significant inflation shock within a decade, far more severe than the post-COVID bout. When this second wave hits, he warns, "credibility's really going to be shot."

In this conversation, Ken and Tyler tackle international economic dynamics, unresolved macro puzzles, the state of chess, and more, including whether trade deficits are truly unsustainable, why China's investment-heavy growth model has reached its limits, how currency depreciation neutralizes tariff effects, Pakistan’s IMF bailouts, whether more Latin American countries should dollarize, Japan's deceptively peaceful economic decline, Europe's coming fiscal reckoning, how the US will eventually confront its ballooning debt, the puzzling absence of a recession during our recent disinflation, the potential of phasing out large denomination currency notes, the future relevance of stablecoins, whether America should start a CBDC, Argentina's chances under Milei, who will be the next dominant player in chess, hanging out with Bobby Fischer, drawing out against Magnus Carlsen, and how to save classical chess from excessive computer preparation.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded April 2nd, 2025.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:09.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
0:13.5	Learn more at Mercadis.org.
0:15.7	For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,
0:20.4	visit Conversationswithtyler.com.
0:26.2	Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
0:30.0	Today I am chatting with Kenneth Rogoff, who is one of America's best economists.
0:35.2	He is a professor at Harvard, and he has a new book out called
0:39.1	Our Dollar Your Problem in Insider's view of seven turbulent decades of global finance and
0:45.3	the road ahead. Ken also having extensive experience in the IMF and dealing with various global
0:51.3	crises. Ken, welcome. Thank you. A pleasure to be here, Tyler.
0:56.3	Good to speak to you. Circa, early 2025, the big debate is whether there's such a thing as an
1:03.3	unsustainable international trade balance. So Orrin Kaff says there is, Michael Pettus says there is,
1:09.6	traditional theory is more skeptical or agnostic.
1:12.6	What's your view?
1:14.5	No, there's unsustainable debt.
1:16.7	There's not particularly an unsustainable trade deficit.
1:20.2	I mean, there's good things about having a trade deficit, bad things, but it's a result of many factors.
1:25.8	So, no, I wouldn't agree with Pettus on that.
1:29.2	So what is the mistake he and Oren Kass are making?
1:33.5	Well, the trade balance depends a lot on your savings or your investment, these macroeconomic factors.
1:41.8	If there's an underlying problem, and to be fair, when your trade
	...

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