YouSaid · the spoken record

Ken Rogoff

lines on the record: 113
first: 2025-06-12
most recent: 2025-06-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And 60% of Chinese income is from what they call their tier three cities. I grew up in Rochester. That's like a tier three city in the United States. But you could pick Cincinnati, Liverpool, Ren, I may not be saying it right, in France as an example of a tier three city.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you saw a few of the medium sized cities, and you probably immediately felt at least a couple of them. I'm not sure where all the, at least one of them, I think, is the new tech center, and I can't pronounce it.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, okay, I mean, things were going to slow down. It's not all his fault, but I think he's been reluctant to take risks. And I think it's gotten us to where we are, where I think they're in a lot of trouble. They're overbuilt in infrastructure. They're overbuilt in housing. Have you been to China?”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How you really would compare how an ordinary person lives or their measures, how an ordinary firm gets by. And when you look at those measures, China's growth quite a bit less. So instead of, say, if you go 1980 to 2012, the official growth rate is almost 10%. This purchasing power parity rate, forgive me, you know, for using those words, like just over 7%, then if you look in more recent years, it's really slowed down a lot. Even the official numbers have slowed down. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's like six or seven percent for Xi Shinpeng and maybe only three and a half percent. They're starting from a very low base.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we can look at growth that way. And if you look at growth that way for China, it's been spectacular. It's been very, very good. And it's obviously, you know, they're pulling it out of thin air. But there are these approaches to trying to control for.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's going to change everything. You know, this is really the time we're going to liberalize our markets a bit. We're going to do things that we haven't done. And he didn't that much. I mean, and if you look at China's growth, it actually slowed down quite a bit when he came into power. So there are different ways to measure country's output. Because China produces completely different stuff than we do, and they use their currency and we produce our currency. Nothing's perfect, but one way to do is just say, what do they report their output to be in Chinese currency? What do we report our output to be in dollars? And let's take the exchange rate, and that's how we compare.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Hushentau did it, but they kind of kept it going. So the local government death, that was an innovation put in in the 2010 stimulus, but they kind of left it going and sort of used it as a stimulus program long tangent, but the local governments don't have enough ways to fund themselves, so they were allowed to sell land to start these construction companies and stuff. get revenue and fund themselves and they let it keep going. When Xi Jinping came in, I was told he was going to be Ronald Reagan. I had very good contacts in the intellectual spheres in China, someone who had worked for me when I was chief economist at the IMF, other people I knew who I really trust. They're really smart and connected. And they're still smart and connected. So I don't want to say they're Names, but they were telling me.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm a professor, so people who had a big tech company or finance company or all these businesses, most of the other people, they can't afford to do that. I mean, they just, but, you know, as a professor, and I think they know that when they invite a professor, they can't cut your business. They can stop you from going again. They invited me again, by the way. Although the second time I just talked to a tiny room instead of the big hall. But yeah, no, I mean, I give credit to the Chinese for listening.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I was pretty experienced by that time. I frankly never use notes. So the idea I was going to read my speech didn't come to me and maybe was a little bit spontaneous. But yeah, I mean, I think I certainly felt at that moment, you know, what am I here for? What's the point of coming to this? Why don't I talk about the elephant in the room? Everybody knows this. I don't know if everybody knew it, but it was clear to me. And I'm going to say it.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I'm less impressed by them now, and I'm worried that, let's say we get into a tangle with, let me back up, they get in a crisis, which they're in now. I think they're in a deep crisis still. Or somehow hotter heads prevail between the United States and China, and we get in some kind of entanglement nobody wants. I worry that we're not as competent. I'm speaking about right now. We have some very good people, but the average quality at the very top, I think, has gone down. And China's not as competent. That's a recipe for having bad things happen.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, I'm looking at your housing. I'm looking at your infrastructure. It looks to me like you're going in a classical housing crisis problem. Your catch-up is over. Your demographics don't look good. I gave a list of things. And by the way, it looks like power is becoming very centralized in the economy. I'm a Western economist. You're doing an amazing job. What do I know? But I don't think that would be good for growth. And I have to say after I gave the talk, I just figured, you know, you only live once. You just have to say what you have to say. The couple top leaders came up to me and said, Professor Rogoff, we very much appreciated your remarks. And I was saying, you know, oh no, you know, they're going to put me in jail or something at the end of this.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they had the system for a long time. And when you met Chinese technocrats or even, you know, sort of the mayor of Shanghai, or they were impressive. I'm not saying ours aren't. It's a mix. I mean, I think you know that. And then Xi Jinping has really changed that. So he's been the president since 2013. And he's over time pushed out this system and gone more to loyalists and people who are less technocratic. I actually, probably the most important talk I ever did in China was to the what's called the China Development Forum in 2016. It's this giant hall that had most of the top leaders in the party, a lot of the elite of the tech world, Mark Zuckerberg and many others like that were there.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I first want to be careful to say they listen to everybody. I mean, the Chinese are way better than we are of sort of hearing a hundred different views. Mine would be one of many, many, many, you know, that they heard. So I was very impressed by the competence of the Chinese leaders. So I actually gave a lecture in their party training school where if you're a mayor, you're a provincial governor, any bureaucrat on your way up, you go to this thing, which for them is like Harvard Business School. They really looked for competence. So of course there were various loyalty things, but you meet the leaders. I met a lot of them when I was at the school. I met a whole bunch of people. They actually asked really raw questions too. They said things.”
2025-06-12 · Dwarkesh Podcast · "China is digging out of a crisis. And America’s luck is wearing thin." — Ken Rogoff · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source