All In Interview - Andrew Ross Sorkin - October 16 2025
America’s consumer credit boom began in the 1920s. Automakers and appliance companies normalized buying on credit, underwriting was lax, and stocks surged 48% in 1928. With few rules and no SEC, corporations even lent off their balance sheets so people could buy equities. The era’s heroes, from RCA to industrial titans like John Raskob, created a social pressure to speculate. The technology shift to radio amplified the fever. As ever, innovation rode alongside speculation.
Regulatory guardrails arrived only after the crash. The Glass–Steagall framework later separated commercial and investment banking and created the FDIC. That regime wasn’t only about consumer protection. It also corralled the “800‑lb gorilla” of universal banking to reduce systemic risk.
Personalities mattered. Charlie Mitchell, the Jamie Dimon of his day and a NY Fed power broker, pushed for easier money. Senator Carter Glass, more akin to today’s populist skeptics, fought “Mitchellism.” Their conflict shaped the subsequent policy response.
Are we in a bubble now? Maybe. The pattern rhymes: celebrity CEOs, easy capital, hot sectors, and a public eager to participate. Yet even in 1929, the market finished the year “only” down 17%, reminding us that bubbles deflate in stages and narratives outlast price action.
Journalism and markets have always been intertwined. Even without investing directly, commentators can host rigorous conversations that influence how participants think. Today’s cast includes Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, Brian Armstrong, and Vlad Tenev, each channeling different views of risk, innovation, and access.
AI will likely reshape labor and productivity, but the social contract is already strained. In the 1930s, Americans were moving from farms to factories and believed in upward mobility. The modern promise—home ownership, college, rising living standards—feels less attainable, which heightens political pressure.
Calls for a “new New Deal” often miss a key historical detail: the original New Deal coincided with WWII mobilization, which turbocharged spending and production. Today, the imperative may be the opposite—do more with less. The hard problem is building consensus for restraint.
On tariffs and resilience, the core question is optionality. If conflict forces choices, how much redundancy in energy, minerals, and manufacturing is worth paying for now to avoid catastrophic costs later? Strategic independence is expensive, but the alternative may be measured in lives, not basis points.
Bottom line: Innovation breeds speculation, which demands rules that preserve dynamism without courting disaster. Our task is to right‑size risk, rebuild optionality, and keep the ladder of mobility sturdy enough that people believe the future is worth investing in.
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