This week, I speak with Robin Wigglesworth, editor of FT Alphaville, the Financial Times’ finance blog, which he runs from Oslo with a team of writers in London and New York.
He joined the FT from Bloomberg News in 2008, where he had covered Nordic economics, and went on to serve as the paper’s Gulf correspondent, capital markets correspondent, deputy head of fastFT, US markets editor, and global finance correspondent before taking over Alphaville in 2022. He also co-hosts The Story of Money, the FT’s financial history podcast, with Gillian Tett, and writes the Substack Buy The Dip. His first book, Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever, was the subject of our first conversation in 2021.
We discuss why the bond market, not the stock market, is the real engine of the global economy, and how debt built the modern world, from 12th-century Venice to today’s Treasury basis trades. We talk about why the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is “a miracle of the modern world,” how the market absorbed the Liberty Loans, the rise of the rating agencies, and the invention of money market funds and credit default swaps. We also cover quantitative easing, the Fed, and the question everyone keeps asking: when should we actually start worrying about US debt? Robin’s answer is more nuanced than either the doom-mongers or the dismissers would have you believe.
His new book, “A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World,” was just published to outstanding reviews. (The title comes from Thomas Macaulay, skewering the debt scolds who had repeatedly predicted that Britain’s war borrowing would spell its doom — and were repeatedly wrong.)
A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.
You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Rich Steinmeier, Chief Executive Officer of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: LPLA), the largest independent broker-dealer in the country. 32,000 advisors and $2.4 trillion in brokerage and advisory assets. CEO since October 2024.
Previously:
MiB: Robin Wigglesworth on the Rise of Indexing (November 12, 2021)
Robin Wigglesworth’s Favorite Books
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World by Liaquat Ahamed
Robin Wigglesworth Authored:
A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World (2026)
Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever (2021)
