Robin Wigglesworth — editor of FT Alphaville and author of A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built the Modern World — joins Jack Farley to unpack the hidden debt fueling the AI buildout. Wigglesworth reveals that off-balance-sheet leverage from hyperscalers like Meta, Google, and Microsoft jumped from roughly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in a single quarter, hidden in lease structures and purchase commitments that never show up as debt — including Google's own $800 billion in disclosed obligations. He argues the NVIDIA-Blackstone-KKR financing wave marks a shift from an equity-driven boom to a debt cycle, a distinction that makes today's AI buildout riskier than the dot-com bust ever was. The conversation moves from private credit's "spray and pray" lending problem to nine centuries of financial history — the Erie Canal boom, the 1873 railway mania, and the 19th-century fraudster who invented an entire country to sell government bonds. They close on whether credit rating agencies can survive the AI era, and why "the language of credit" may outlast every model built to replace it. It's a conversation about debt, leverage, and the patterns that connect 19th-century railroads to trillion-dollar data centers. Recorded August 13, 2026.
“A Fabulous Debt: The Epic Story of How Bonds Built The Modern World”:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/750210/a-fabulous-debt-by-robin-wigglesworth/
“A Fabulous Debt” on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0593719182?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
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