GM97: Why Isn’t Anything Breaking? ft. Steen Jakobsen
Top Traders Unplugged
AI's ambiguous effect on productivity
Steen argues AI helps closed-domain productivity but can lower productivity in open-ended tasks and emphasizes data quality.
The global order is shifting in plain sight. In this Global Macro conversation, Steen Jakobsen, inventor of the Outrages Predictions, joins Niels Kaastrup-Larsen and Alan Dunne to examine the slow grind reshaping productivity, debt, currencies, and political stability. From dollar regime risk to state capitalism, from market concentration to commodity repricing, the discussion moves beyond headlines to structural fault lines. Is gold signaling debasement? Can the U.S. sustain its debt path? Does AI lift productivity or hollow it out? Rather than predict collapse, Jakobsen outlines a drawn-out transition where capital reallocates, volatility hides beneath the surface, and political systems are tested long before markets finally react.
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Episode TimeStamps:
01:38 - Introducing Steen Jakobsen
03:45 - From trading floors to outrageous predictions
06:32 - Dollar hedging and regime shift signals
08:06 - Davos as a macro catalyst
12:11 - The K shaped U.S. economy
14:50 - State capitalism and fiscal dominance
17:30 - What could invalidate the bearish dollar view
21:37 - Fed independence and policy credibility
24:49 - AI productivity or structural disinflation
27:56 - The modern Soviet analogy
31:21 - Democracy, debt and slow breakdown
33:18 - What could finally trigger market stress
37:08 - Commodities and tangible asset repricing
47:02 - Gold as a debasement signal
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