Are High Interest Rates The New Normal?

A framework for thinking about how structural forces will impact bond yields

The Ideas Lab podcast is now two-years old. I’ve had 27 conversations with authors of new books in economics, investment, technology and the energy transition.

Qualitatively, it feels like certain themes keep reappearing. I decided to see if I could be more systematic in understanding what those themes were and how they are likely to impact the economy.

I used ChatGPT4-o to help me identify and extract common themes from the shows. I then asked it questions like: should we expect future inflation and interest rates to be higher or lower?

It was helpful…to a point. I needed to provide some of my own structure to bring it all together into a coherent message. It was a fun experiment. The result is the presentation below, which I’ve given to groups of pension executives at UC Berkeley this summer.

Do you agree with the conclusions? Disagree?

Please let me know.