David Solomon on AI, Debt, and America’s Future

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by David Solomon, Goldman Sachs’ chairman of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer, to discuss the path ahead for the firm and the broader economy. He also weighs in on deficit spending, the impact of AI on human capital, and whether deglobalization poses a meaningful risk to the economy. Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 03

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• 1:29Scott Galloway?

  Today's number: $2.9 billion. That's how much US consumers spent on sushi from grocery stores in 2025. A 7% increase year over year. Ed, what did the sushi chef say to the bee? What? What's up, bee?

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Listen to me. Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the world's distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it.

• 1:56Scott Galloway?

  I have to go clean. We got fucking David Solomon. I mean, we've got David Solomon coming on.

• 2:01Ed Elson?

  Darned David Solomon.

• 2:03Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. I had to go dad joke.

• 2:06Ed Elson?

  I love the dad jokes, as you well know. That was pretty good. I actually, that that might have been one of your best. I hate to say it. That was pretty good.

• 2:15Scott Galloway?

  Ah, all right. How are you, Ed?

• 2:17Ed Elson?

  I'm doing very well. I'm excited to hear how things are going. I know you are somewhere special right now. Why don't you tell everyone where you are?

• 2:25Scott Galloway?

  I am in Davos for the first time in 26 years.

• 2:29Ed Elson?

  Woo!

• 2:29Scott Galloway?

  I can't, when I was your age, I got invited here because I was a player. My guess is you're gonna be invited in a couple of years. And then I kinda, pretty much everything in my life went sideways. Moved, divorce, my company went out of business. And what do you know? They didn't invite me back. And now, and then all of a sudden I get invited back. And I thought, oh, my God, I can't wait to go back and be the triumphant MacArthur, like, hero returning to Davos. And I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm not raising, I'm not raising money. I'm not running for office. I'm not selling anything. My life has changed so much since I was last here.

• 3:04Ed Elson?

  Yeah, what are you do, what like, I mean?

• 3:05Scott Galloway?

  Why am I here?

• 3:08Ed Elson?

  What, what does your day look like? I'll get the full rundown on on Monday's episode, but just a quick teaser. What does it look like?

• 3:14Scott Galloway?

  Well, this is supposedly the biggest year in a while because everyone's shown up. Carney spoke today, Trump spoke today, I ran into Gavin Newsom, or Governor Newsom. Everybody's here, quote unquote. And so, it's, it's supposed to be the most crowded it's ever been. What am I doing here? I met the guy who runs BlackRock at another Master of the Universe conference, and he said, I'd really love to host you at Davos. And he's the new chairman.

• 3:36Ed Elson?

  Hmm.

• 3:37Scott Galloway?

  And I got all excited. And I said, great. And they put me on some panels. But mostly, I'm just kinda walking around and trying to avoid eye contact for some young person who wants to pitch me on their AI startup.

• 3:49Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm not doing a whole hell of a lot. And I don't know if you can see this lovely hotel room, but this hotel room can be yours for about 200 euros for 51 weeks a year. And during this week, it's 2,200 euros a night. So I'm excited to be here.

• 4:03Ed Elson?

  Sounds like you're having a great time.

• 4:05Scott Galloway?

  So far, no. So far, no. But since I was last here, I've joined the faculty of NYU, lived in San Francisco, Miami, New York, and now London. Had two boys, had four companies go out of business, had two get to exits. The number one movie in 19, or the biggest movies in 1999 were The Sixth Sense, which is awesome, Phantom Menace and Toy Story 2. And the biggest movies now are Zootopia 2, Avatar Fire and Ice, and Lilo and Stitch, which I think pretty much cements the decline of Western civilization. And back then, we were all sort of optimistic. Clinton was president. It was sort of like,

• 4:48Scott Galloway?

  wow, I want more and I can't wait for tomorrow. Like now we're just like, I hope it doesn't get any fucking worse. Things are different now and things are different. So yes, Ed, I'm in Davos. Where are you?

• 4:58Ed Elson?

  Still in New York, still living it up. It was very good to see you when you were in New York just last week. We had a nice business meeting, set out our growth objectives for the year. 20% growth is the plan for Profiteam Markets. So please, if you're listening to this and you're thinking about sending it to a friend or someone you know, you gotta do it because I need to hit those benchmarks if I'm gonna get a raise. So just think about that every time you're listening. 20% growth for the year. That's what we need.

• 5:24Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, send it to, if there's five of you, send it to one friend. Does that make sense? I guess so. Anyways, but yeah, it was good to see you. And yeah, I got nothing, I got nothing else. Should we get to our interview with the... I'm in a shitty room in the middle of the Alps in this like tier two ski resort, trying to fill this hole of emptiness that if I think if I come to Davos again, that somehow that, then I'll be enough, Ed. Then I will be enough. Tomorrow I'm hosting a fascinating panel on why are we so divided? Oh my God. Okay, Meta, next panel.

• 5:59Ed Elson?

  How many panels are you doing?

• 6:01Scott Galloway?

  I'm doing three. I'm like, this is how it works here. They have, they have global leaders who are like, you know, meetings in the back of shitty restaurants, redrawing the maps of the world. They have CEOs of companies figuring out a way to become trillionaires. And then they have what I would call a small gaggle of intellectual support dogs. And I'm one of those that's supposed to make this whole thing like interesting. So I'm, I'm the intellectual, one of the intellectual support dogs. Like me, Adam Grant, Jonathan Haidt, and like three other academics and some...

• 6:31Ed Elson?

  Yeah, Simon Sinek, cool of the day.

• 6:33Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Speaker 06

  We've got David, guys.

• 6:35Scott Galloway?

  Yep, David's here. David's here.

• 6:39Speaker 06

  Gotta cut you off.

• 6:42Ed Elson?

  Here is our conversation with David Solomon, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs. David, thank you very much for joining us on Prof G Markets. Where does this podcast find you?

• 6:54Speaker 07

  Thank you for having me. The podcast finds me in Florida for the day and then on my way to Davos, where I believe Scott is for the next few days. And so I'll be there. I'll be there tomorrow morning. And certainly should be an interesting week with everything going on in the world.

• 7:09Ed Elson?

  Absolutely. Soon to be partying it up with Scott. We want to bust right into this because we only have you for so much time. So I'm going to get right into our questions. I want to start with your reflections on the past year, 2025. Your company is coming off one of its strongest years in a long time. Stock rose around 50%, 58 billion in revenue, 17 billion in profit. As you look back on 2025, what do you make of the year? What went right? What went wrong? What surprised you?

• 7:44Speaker 07

  2025 was a pretty constructive environment for our business. And I actually think 2026 is going to be a pretty constructive environment for our business, too. There obviously in 2025, there was a speed bump, you know, in April with the launch of the tariff and the trade policy, which slowed things down and certainly sapped investor confidence for a period of time. But the macro setup is pretty good. We can certainly spend some time talking about the macro setup for Goldman Sachs. And Goldman Sachs's performance, we've been executing. We did our first Investor Day back at the beginning of 2020, where we laid out a plan to really grow the firm, to really invest in our core business, the global banking and markets. We pointed to four areas that we thought we really could grow the firm, asset management, wealth management,

• 8:29Speaker 07

  transaction banking, digital consumer banking, and we pledged to run the firm over time more efficiently. And really for the last five years, we've been, we've been executing on that five, six years. We've been executing on that aggressively and making good progress. And you go back. To the end of 2019, when we laid out that plan, the firm was about a $36 billion revenue firm, the market cap was about $70 billion. And as you highlight, you know, we're a $60 billion revenue firm. We've grown our revenues kind of 60, 65%. We've grown our earnings by over 100%. We've really grown the franchise and scaled the franchise in 2025, really saw that all come together. We made some pivots or changes along the way, but we really have got the firm in a

• 9:11Speaker 07

  powerful position with two big businesses that are well positioned to win, leaders in their space, growing nicely. And, you know, I feel quite optimistic about the prospects as we look ahead. But 2025 was a year where we, you could really see the progress very concretely from investments and decisions we've made over the last five, six, seven years.

• 9:30Ed Elson?

  I have here this, this article from Business Insider that was published in 2023. And the headline reads, "RIP Goldman Sachs." And then there's a byline that says, "When I started out at Goldman, it was the most feared firm on Wall Street. Those days are gone." I remember a few years ago, everyone was saying that Goldman Sachs was in trouble. And it is kind of remarkable what's happened in the past one or two years. There's been, at least as an observer, this incredible comeback from the company. I'd love to just get your reflections on what happened in those two years. For those who don't know, like, what were the concerns about Goldman? And then how did you guys come back from that?

• 10:15Ed Elson?

  How could you explain what's happened in the past couple of years?

• 10:18Speaker 07

  I don't think the firm was ever doing so terribly. You know, the press and the media, you know, can be a powerful tool and a powerful amplifier of a small number of voices. But fundamentally, you know, the firm was a private partnership for 130 years, and it went public in 1999. Because the capital markets were globalizing from 1999, you know, through 2007, the firm was growing close to 20% on the top line. And it really ran as a public company in that period exactly the same way that it operated as a private partnership for 130 years. The financial crisis changed everything. It created a new regulatory structure, a new operating structure, reset the firm. It forced the firm to double its capital base.

• 11:01Speaker 07

  And the firm kind of came out of the financial crisis and really stuck to its knitting. And, you know, chugged along through that decade, but really wasn't, you know, operating to grow. And if you look at that decade after the financial crisis, the firm's revenues were pretty steady. Around 34 billion. The earnings were pretty steady, the capital, the balance sheet were all pretty steady. And so we, we entered the end of the decade saying we really had to make some difficult changes to really take this enterprise and grow the enterprise. And whenever you change a big enterprise, you know, there's going to be resistance. People hate change. And 2022 was kind of a tough period. You had the Russian invasion of Ukraine, big markdowns in asset prices.

• 11:45Speaker 07

  It was a slower year for the firm. The firm did just fine. It made 10% on its equity capital in 2022, which is, you know, it's not, you know, it's not a blowout year, but it's not, you know, poor, poor performance. But, you know, I think we had a little bit of internal agitation, given the structural changes we were making. And that created a lot of noise in the media. The media gobbled it up and it became very noisy. We stuck to our knitting. We kept our head down. We knew the changes and the investments we were making were right. And really, over the last few years, you know, that's panned out correctly. Ultimately, performance and execution matter, but change and growth take time. You can't, you can't do it instantaneously. And I, I would say that was a, you know, kind of a bumpy, noisy period for the firm.

• 12:28Speaker 07

  But the firm's on really good forward footing at the moment.

• 12:31Scott Galloway?

  You're in a bunch of different businesses, all related with different, you know, asset management, sales and trading, investment banking, et cetera. If you had to pick one business that you think is going to outperform the others over the next five years, and I, and you're the CEO of a public company, so let me, let me make it more broadly of your sector. Which business do you think is going to outperform the others? Realizing you don't have a crystal ball, but which business do you think is poised to show the greatest returns over the next five years? And is there a new business that you think? You guys will be in, it'll be big in five years.

• 13:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, I don't think over the next five years that will fundamentally be in a big new business. We're going to continue to focus on our core business of investment banking and markets where we're a clear leader. You know, I think in investment banking, the undisputed leader, you know, in markets, you know, one of the clear leaders and the kind of the combination of those two businesses, global banking and markets. I would, um, I wouldn't take anybody's mix. I prefer our mix to anybody else's mix. I think one of the things that's been surprising Scott over the last five years is that business has grown much better than I think we or the market would have expected it to grow. I think the things we did where we outperformed and we took share during that period, but the overall business has had better growth

• 13:43Speaker 07

  for a very, very large mature business than I think the market expected. And I think the world's set up where that can continue. I think the more interesting thing for us is what we're doing in asset and wealth management. And I think there's very, very strong secular growth in asset and wealth management, particularly around our positioning, which on the wealth side is for the ultra wealthy. You know, obviously as asset prices, you know, continue to appreciate, you think about the, the generational wealth transfer from the baby boom generation that's going to go on to the younger generation, my kid's generation, there's some powerful dynamics there and I just think we're very well positioned in that business. So we have a wealth business that, that grows, you know, nicely double digits.

• 14:26Speaker 07

  We have an asset and wealth management business collectively where we've said, we think we can grow the fee-based durable revenue high single digits, but we're growing better than that right now. And so I really think that we're in a long secular, you know, upswing opportunity in wealth and in asset management. There'll be some bumps maybe along the way, but I, I just think we're very well positioned when you look at our portfolio there. And the growth dynamics for those businesses are quite attractive for us.

• 14:55Scott Galloway?

  So just switching to more macro topics, and I'll talk a little bit about AI. I started my career in the two-year analyst program at Morgan Stanley in investment banking. And when I look back on what I did, I'm pretty confident with AI, I couldn't do the same amount of work that I did in two years in three months, but maybe six months. And you just got to think it's going to have a real impact on human capital and hiring and training in these types of businesses like Goldman Sachs. What are your thoughts on the intersection of AI and entry level jobs at a place like Goldman? What are your thoughts around human capital as it relates to AI and these information intensive businesses?

• 15:37Speaker 07

  Technology in our business, you know, professional services, financial business, technology has been increasing productivity and allowing people to, smart people to do more, you know, for decades and decades. And I, you know, just to be anecdotal about it for a moment, I go back to when I started and I first was doing analysis, putting two companies together. I'd go to the library and get the annual reports and on green lined paper, I'd literally write the balance sheets and income statements down. I'd add them together. I mean, it would take me a week to 10 days to actually put two companies together and look at the combined financial results. And then in 1985, somebody put an IBM 286 desktop computer on my desk and gave me Lotus 123 software and something

• 16:20Speaker 07

  that took me 10 days could be done in two hours. And so the productivity game was massive. You obviously here have dynamics where some of the work that analysts have been doing will be automated from this and we will use, we may have less in the short run of those people, but I think the opportunity is to have more people doing more productive things with clients that can't be done simply by the technology. And so, you know, there'll be this shifting dynamic. You know, if you look back at the firm 25 years ago when I joined and you looked at the productivity, when you look at people and revenues, the firm is much more productive today than it was 25 years ago. I bet 10 years from now it'll be much more productive than it is today. But people, relationships, connectivity,

• 17:02Speaker 07

  they're still hugely important in this. And the question is, how do we shift the way people work and therefore free up more capacity to touch more clients, build warm relationships, broaden the footprint? It's, it's not as black and white as people in, people out. So I do think the pace of change is quick. I think you will see, you know, some constraining of some of the entry level jobs in these professional services platforms. It'll be more amplified in certain businesses rather than others. But I don't think it's going to be as disruptive in terms of the need for really smart people to work collaboratively to serve clients as some of the narrative around it. But we're very focused on it. We're giving our people the tools at an accelerated pace. We're reimagining processes very quickly.

• 17:47Speaker 07

  And the reason I'm excited about it is not because it takes people out. It frees up people to allow us to invest in other parts of the business that really do scale with people. You know, for example, ultra high net worth wealth really scales with people. And so, you know, at the end of the day, we've been constrained in some of the places we can invest. We see enormous productivity opportunities and you move people around to different places. The firm today has, you know, 12, 13,000 engineers. If you go back 20 years ago, we had a fraction of that. My guess is we're going to have more leverage for coding and engineering with fewer people. But that will free up capacity to invest in other areas where we still need people to scale some of the work that we need to do.

• 18:30Speaker 07

  So it's, it's, it's a very interesting time with change, but not as binary and linear as I think a lot of people are talking about it.

• 18:37Scott Galloway?

  Well, let me ask a more pointed question. In 36 months, do you think Goldman will have the same fewer or more employees?

• 18:42Speaker 07

  My guess is the growth trajectory of the overall headcount of the firm will flatten for a period of time. So if you want to say 36 months, you know, it'll be a flatter trajectory for the next three years than it's been for any other three year period, you know, going back, you know, three, six, you know, nine years, it'll be flatter. But if you want to take, you know, five, 10 years out, I think we'll have more employees.

• 19:09Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 19:54Speaker 08

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• 20:24Speaker 03

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• 20:56Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. What are some of the biggest risks that you are looking at heading into this year? What are the kinds of things that keep you up at night?

• 21:06Speaker 07

  Well, I think the macro setup is very, very constructive. And I think the things that keep me up or keep me worrying that could kind of set us off with a pretty constructive environment are exogenous things that we don't see. I mean, they can center around things like geopolitics and, you know, events, you know, in the political realm or the policy realm that really change confidence in the short term. You know, an exogenous... Example of it last year was liberation day and the way the trade policy was rolled out. That's certainly, you know, sap confidence for a period of time. Cyber is a big risk that we don't talk about a lot. But a big cyber event in some way, shape or form can sap confidence. But generally, if you step back, the macro setup is very strong. We have enormous fiscal stimulus.

• 21:50Speaker 07

  The big bill last year, a bunch of which comes into impact in 26, puts more fiscal stimulus into the economy. We've got big, big capital investment around AI infrastructure, which is also very stimulative for growth in the economy. We've had monetary easing, about 100 basis points in the policy rate in the last year with an expectation of another cut or two in 2026. That's stimulative. On top of that, we have a more deregulatory agenda, which also is stimulative for capital investment. Plus, you know, we have midterm elections coming up with a lot of focus on affordability, which leads to some, what I'll call idiosyncratic actions that are also stimulative.

• 22:32Speaker 07

  So from an economic growth perspective in the United States, it's a pretty constructive environment.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 07

  That doesn't mean that there aren't big, broad policy issues that have to be wrestled with. But the kinds of things that'll change that economic growth trajectory or sentiment are really more in the short run, exogenous events that we can't anticipate or we don't see. I mean, you've seen it a little bit this morning after some of the noise over the weekend. You know, the markets opened with a little bit more uncertainty this morning. But, you know, that's not, that's not the kind of thing that really derails us.

• 23:03Ed Elson?

  What about the long run? I think from our conversations on this podcast, we agree that in the short run, it looks like it's going to be a pretty good year, or at least not a bad year, based on a lot of the reasons you describe. The fiscal stimulus would probably be the biggest example. But, you know, think like two, three, four, five, maybe even 10 years out. Those are the kinds of things that don't really hold water over the long term. I mean, if we're just going to continue spending, as an example, what that does to the nation's balance sheet, it could become a problem, the debt that we're seeing in the US at large. What are some of the long-term concerns that you have?

• 23:46Ed Elson?

  And is that, I guess, a different story from the short term?

• 23:50Speaker 07

  First of all, I don't think two, three, four years is long-term. I think two, three, four years is a very short period of time.

• 23:55Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 07

  10 years, we're starting to talk about the medium term. And you know, the long term, you know, the next 10, 20, 25 years, we're talking more about the long term. I've said repeatedly in public settings, and I'll say it again, you know, here on your podcast, I'm very concerned about the debt and deficit and our inability on either side of the aisle to control our spending. And I think we've kind of gotten to a point where until we have some sort of a crisis or an event that kind of reframes us, we've really put ourselves on very, very difficult fiscal footing. Now, we have a lot of latitude because of the US economy, the breadth of the US economy, the US dollar, the role of the US dollar in the world. We've got a lot of breadth and we've got headroom

• 24:38Speaker 07

  around that. But ultimately, there will be a significant price to pay if we either don't get the spending and the debt under control in the medium term, or we don't create an economy that's got a higher growth trajectory than the kind of 2% trend we've had. And so, you know, it's very, you cannot, given the spending levels and the debt levels, you can't simply cut spending or drive more revenue. You have to have higher growth to make sense of where we are when you start thinking about, you know, five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, based on the trajectory we're on. We have entitlement programs that don't work structurally. You know, we, we have more headroom to let them run, but ultimately,

• 25:20Speaker 07

  you know, there'll be a point at which we have to wrestle with that. So those are things that with a longer term lens, I'm very concerned about. I think from a policy perspective, they're hard things to get at without some sort of, you know, I don't want to be overly dramatic, but some sort of a crisis or speed bump or something that resets the mindset, creates more of a need for, you know, kind of bipartisan approach to correct. And we're just not in that place at the moment. And so, you know, that, that, that allows us to continue to put ourselves in a position where ultimately the correct, unless we generate higher growth, you know, is more difficult. Now, in the short term, I actually think this year,

• 26:02Speaker 07

  You know, I'm on the over on the growth forecast. I do think inflation will be stickier this year than the consensus, but I think we could see, you know, nominal growth that's higher than what the expectation is, given the confluence of kind of stimulative events I talked about. So even if you wound up with, you know, with closer to 3% inflation, you know, you could have, you know, real growth of three or over 3% this year because you could have higher nominal growth than I where I think the the expectation currently is. So I'm one that's in the camp that that's a possibility. But unless you create that on a sustained basis where you have higher real growth and you control inflation, um, you know, we're setting ourself up at some point for some big speed bumps.

• 26:43Ed Elson?

  Were you surprised by the deficit spending in the the big beautiful bill? I mean, given the fact that it seemed that it was a priority for this administration to balance the budget, or at least that was the stated goal at the beginning of last year. I'm just wondering, you know, from your time as an executive, you know, watching all of this unfold, were you surprised by the amount of spending that actually we are signing up for in 26?

• 27:10Speaker 07

  I'm not surprised on either side of the aisle. Both sides have been poor fiscal stewards. And it continues because the politics, you know, play well until there's real pressure that forces, you know, a different kind of political discipline. So I'm not surprised. Now, if if this administration can marry it with better growth for a period of time, we we might wind up in a place where the overall debt to GDP looks better or more attractive. But the long term trajectory is both sides of the aisle are not showing an ability to show fiscal discipline, and we haven't yet been able to crack the code of higher growth to justify the spending levels and the debt levels. And so, you know,

• 27:54Speaker 07

  these are things that we have to wrestle with. A lot of talk about monetary policy. You know, you'd notice that the policy rate's down 1% in 2025, but the 10 year really didn't move, stayed kind of stuck over the entire year between 4.1 and 4.2%. You'd notice in 2024, you know, we saw interest rate cuts, but you actually saw steepening of the curve and long rates moved up a little bit. So, you know, the market is telling you that, you know, proceed with caution. And, uh, you know, I think in the short run, we have a tremendous Ability because of the headroom we have because of the dollar to be less concerned about this, but ultimately these are issues we're going to have to wrestle with in my my humble opinion.

• 28:36Scott Galloway?

  So, speaking of rates, the buzz here in Davos isn't about income inequality or climate change, it's about, or the vibe, I would say, is how fed up different European states or nations are with the US administration. And one of the ideas that seems to be getting a lot of chatter is the idea that they would, in a concerted way, as a union or a coordinated way, dump a bunch of US treasuries. Do you think the US is susceptible because of the amount of debt that's held, it's actually only thirty, it's seventy percent domestic, but thirty percent of thirty seven trillion dollars is still a lot of money. Do you think the US is vulnerable to a foreign nation coordinating and selling our debt?

• 29:17Speaker 07

  You know, I think at the margin, Scott, you know, you can see moves around treasuries, but vulnerable is a big word, and vulnerable to me, and, you know, correct me if you're if you're not thinking about it, this, when you say vulnerable, the fundamental structure of the world is that for, you know, lots of people in the world that have, you know, excess reserves, you know, there's not a lot of places they can go. We've obviously seen gold rally, but, you know, vulnerable would mean you have very, very significant moves that change the fundamental structure of the way people think about reserves, and the dollar is still, you know, a reserve currency. I think the chance of that getting offset in the short run because of this political

• 29:59Speaker 07

  noise, even though I hear the frustration too, and I think we're going to hear a lot of it this week, Scott, I think the chance in the short run of that getting really set off in a significant way is very, very low. But, you know, I think longer term, if we continue to grow the debt, we are not going to have the same latitude to have everyone around the world finance it. And so ultimately, we ourselves in the United States will have to finance that. You know, to finance that, you have to ask, you know, how does that get attractive? We're savers and investors that have been very, very tied to the equity markets. Think about the fact that the S and P over the last 40 years has compounded by 11 percentage.

• 30:42Speaker 07

  You know, people have been trained to, that are investors and savers to think about equity markets. You know, not, you know, 10 year treasuries or 30 year treasuries of 4 to 5%. You know, at what rate do you start shifting savers and investors from the S and P? You know, the longer treasuries, it's, it's not 4 or 5%. So that can create pressure over time, but I don't think it happens dramatically in the short run. In the short run, it's marginal.

• 31:09Scott Galloway?

  So tariffs threatening to annex other sovereign nations. It feels as if the current administration isn't afraid to kind of run the risk of deglobalization, so to speak. Do you worry that as a global firm that you risk or the administration risks antagonizing other nations and other countries who decide to not only have reciprocal tariffs, not only place more punitive measures on our big tech firms, but decide not to work with US service firms, including Goldman?

• 31:41Speaker 07

  You know, at the end of the day, we compete in a big global world. You know, I, I, I do think at the margin, there can be behavioral changes, but the economy is very globally interconnected. You know, over time, for resilience, for security, people change supply chains, but those shifts, you know, were five, 10 years in the making. Political cycles are shorter and generally, you know, things balance. I hear some noise about some of this stuff too. I don't see it in the facts at this point in time. We watch it carefully, Scott. But ultimately, the economies are very, very interconnected. It's hard to pull them apart and I'm not a big believer in deglobalization. I am a big believer that as geopolitics and policies shift, that there are marginal

• 32:24Speaker 07

  changes in the way people think about, you know, the economic structure of their nation. I think we're at a moment where more nationalism is being bred. I don't think that's great. But when you, when you step back and talk about big structural changes, they're much harder and they take a long time and they certainly outlive what I'll call shorter political cycles.

• 32:44Scott Galloway?

  So the Prime Minister of our largest trading partner, Canada, has said that they are going to structurally shift away from the US, that in some he feels they screwed up being so dependent and integrated into the US. You don't see other, some of the world's largest economies, including China, diversifying from the US as a cyclical issue. I mean, it feels like a structural issue that'll damage us. What do the Goldman chief economists say about this potential structural shift away from trade with the US?

• 33:15Speaker 07

  There is a lot of noise at the moment around these issues. Some of it's still in the construct of an active negotiation. At the end of the day, the economies are massively intertwined. And while there will be changes at the margin, you know, I don't think our economic teams believe that the long-term structural shifts will be real. But at the end of the day, I think people, when you get through the noise, people will do what's in their economic interest and they'll be a more balanced result than some of the rhetoric we're hearing right now. But, you know, watch the space, watch what happens. You know, Canada, for example, a huge trading partner, China, a huge trading partner. I think China's in a place where things are more de-escalated for the next 12 months. We'll see what comes out of that.

• 33:58Speaker 07

  We obviously have a President Trump visit to China, a Xi visit, coming back this way. So there's a roadmap this year to see if there is more progress in that bilateral relationship. We have to watch USMCA and how that progresses. It's easy to talk about the fact that there's a lot of noise, but it's harder to talk about the long-term consequences because to make real changes is more complicated than simply talking or threatening.

• 34:21Ed Elson?

  The follow-up question would be, what is that line, in your view, for where structural change does come about? I think that's something that's been difficult for me to parse out personally, where, you know, we keep pushing up against that line. And, you know, it's, yes, it's just a post that was on social media, but at the same time, it is actually a threat of military action. I guess there's a question as to whether it's serious or whether the threat is real. But I think something that I kind of... I don't know how to think about is what is that line? At what point do we say, oh, no, actually, this is structural.

• 35:04Ed Elson?

  This is long term, and this isn't something that could be reversed based on the election cycle.

• 35:11Speaker 07

  You know, I think you're asking a question that's an interesting question, but I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out where the line is because I don't think any of us, there's not a line. Okay, there's, there's enormous nuance and complexity to the economy. There's enormous nuance and complexity to the, the individual bilateral relationships, and they change and shift based on the lens of what's going on at any moment in time. And so, you know, yes, our norms are the way we see certain things challenged. Absolutely. But there's not, I don't, I think you're looking for an answer that doesn't necessarily exist.

• 35:44Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 07

  There's not, there's not a definitive marker that says, okay, the structural economics of the world are now going to permanently shift in a different direction. Everything's at the margin. Everything's nuanced. And, you know, at the moment, we're, we're at a particularly noisy moment. And I think, you know, one of the things we try to spend a lot of time doing at the firm is thinking about what's noise and what substantively matters. And I just say, and that's, this doesn't mean I like the noise. A lot of what, you know, we're touching on or talking about is noise more than substance. But, you know, the markets have to absorb that. People have to absorb that. And I'm not sitting here saying I have the answers and I know how it plays out. I just think that it's, it's, it's more nuanced, it's more longer term.

• 36:30Speaker 07

  And the swings, because elections, you know, we, we move one way to the other, the swings are probably shorter than what's required to make these, these long structural changes.

• 36:41Scott Galloway?

  What is the same and different about 1999 with e-commerce and 2026 with AI? What do you think? What do you think? Is it different this time? Or does this feel awfully frothy and sort of begging for a correction again?

• 36:56Speaker 07

  I would frame it a little bit differently, just to, to make a point that these things, when you get one of these super cycles, you know, with tech investment, it can feel frothy and they can run for a long time before ultimately you have a recalibration or a significant pullback. And the analogy I would draw is that Alan Greenspan talked about irrational exuberance in markets, and I believe in the fall of 1996, when the NASDAQ was at 1,300. You're now talking about 1999. The NASDAQ ultimately went to 5,200, you know, in March of 2000, and then it retreated 85%, you know, over the next 18 months. So, you know, what I

• 37:38Speaker 07

  would say is, I don't know if we're in 1999, or 1996, or, you know, or in 2000. But when you have these accelerations, you have massive capital formation around forward growth. And by the way, I'm a big bull on the technology, the opportunity, et cetera. At some point, there'll be rebalancing, recalibration. I think one of the things I'm watching closely, Scott, is the pace at which enterprises adopt the technology. Because that's obviously where a lot of the economics to support the investment come, as enterprises adopt the technology. And I think that it's going to be harder and slower for enterprises to adopt. And the perception of how quickly that will come, you know, might actually

• 38:20Speaker 07

  turn out to disappoint a little bit. That could create a recalibration. I'm not suggesting that the recalibration has to look like, you know, the NASDAQ recalibration of 2000 and 2001. You know, and remember also here, a lot of the capital that's getting invested is coming from massive companies that have extraordinary cash flow and earnings. And they might not get reasonable returns on that capital, but that's very, very different. Because that's out of their free cash flow. So when you look at the big hyperscalers, and they, you know, the top four spent, you know, $400 billion last year, you know, it would be a shame if they don't get reasonable returns on that. But the market impact on that is different than what we were looking at when you were looking at, you know, the

• 39:02Speaker 07

  internet expansion. And, you know, all the capital was coming directly from public markets. So similarities, differences. You know, I do think we have a tendency to look ahead with optimism, and ultimately, that requires recalibrations on valuation. I'm sure, you know, there will be some of that around this. But it's hard to say whether we're in 1996, or, you know, or 1999.

• 39:26Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profgmarkets.com/subscribe.

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• 41:15Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. I was going to shift us away from AI and the economy. I want to talk about you, David. You're the CEO of a company that employs 46,000 people, that manages $2 trillion in assets. That is very rare. We don't often interview CEOs like yourself. That's a level of responsibility that that none of us have experienced. Just at a personal level, what is that like? Does that does that weigh on you?

• 41:50Ed Elson?

  What does your day-to-day look like? Do you ever wake up and think, you know, how did I get here?

• 41:55Speaker 07

  I appreciate the question and it's certainly fair to say that there are lots of days, you know, where I've woken up and said, how did I get here? I certainly saw myself as a very unlikely candidate to steward this firm. And I think, I use the word steward because I think it's an important word. The firm's been around for over 155 years. You know, I've been running it, you know, for, I'm in my eighth year. But, but I'm a steward of a great institution and my job is to do everything I can with the broad leadership team to leave this organization stronger than we found it as a leadership team. So the next leaders can steward it, you know, further along. And there aren't a lot of organizations, you know, that make it under one name, you know, for 150, you know, plus years. And so that's a tremendous responsibility.

• 42:40Speaker 07

  I would say these jobs are not easy. I think anyone that winds up in one of these jobs has certain skills and preparation the day they get the job, but they continue to grow and have more skills and better preparation as they go through the fire and, you know, and make mistakes and, and, you know, turn left when they should turn right and, you know, jump up when they should sit down. I mean, it's, you know, you're learning every day and I certainly feel much better equipped to, you know, to, to handle some of the responsibilities today than I did eight years ago. But that's, you know, that's true, I think, with anybody that steps into one of these jobs. You try to surround yourself with great people, you try to listen. I'm blessed to have an extraordinary team at Goldman Sachs, an extraordinary leadership

• 43:22Speaker 07

  team that's been incredibly stable over the course of the last five, six years. We work together to steward the firm and, you know, we try to be as nimble and as flexible to adapt to what the world throws at you. I think one of the things I'd also highlight that's changed over the last 10, 15 years, the visibility of these jobs is very different than it was 15, 20 years ago in terms of the transparency in everything you say, everything you do, you know, the scrutiny, it's a different standard. But I feel very, very lucky to have had this opportunity. I've learned a lot. I feel good about what we're doing. I'm sure there'll be more bumps before I'm done and the board moves on to who's ever next, but it's an incredible privilege.

• 44:07Speaker 07

  You know, 47,000 extraordinary people work for Goldman Sachs. We have access to the most interesting people in the world. You learn every day and it's an incredible organization that I feel fortunate to steward.

• 44:20Ed Elson?

  Something I didn't know before this interview, you actually, and correct me if this is wrong, but I read that you applied to the Goldman analyst program and you were rejected not once but twice. This is when you were just starting out on Wall Street. Supposedly one partner described you as quote, "not Goldman Sachs material." You are now CEO of Goldman Sachs. Just looking back, what do you think you got right? How did you end up in this position? I guess I'm sort of restating the question, but what is there that young people can learn about your rise as someone who was rejected from this company? And now you've, you're running it.

• 45:02Speaker 07

  I applied the first time when I was graduating from Hamilton College and I got a very, you know, quick letter back, "no, thank you." But I got a lot of those. I mean, I think I remember I got, you know, back in the early 1980s when you applied for jobs, you wrote formal letters, sent your resume, applied for a job, you know, you got a rejection letter back. I got a lot of those. I was very fortunate to get a job at the Irving Trust Company in a credit training program in 1984 and that kind of set me down on this path. I was very lucky to be recruited to join Goldman Sachs in 1999. I really thought it was an opportunity to work for the best financial firm in the world. I think I've worked very hard over a long period of time, but the real reason that I'm sitting in the seat is a confluence of things, a big portion of which is just luck and serendipity. I mean,

• 45:47Speaker 07

  one of the things, you know, you might've heard me say before is, you know, if, if, if the leadership of the firm had transitioned at a different time, I wouldn't be running the firm. I mean, one of the things I, you know, I can point to Lloyd Blankfein. I mean, this is well known, you know, Lloyd Blankfein had cancer in 2015 and he stepped back, you know, to deal with his treatments for a period of time. You know, he chose to step back, but to stay at the firm. Someone else might have decided, you know what, I have to deal with this and I'm going to step away. If Lloyd had stepped away in 2015, someone else, probably Gary Cohn, probably would be running the firm. It wouldn't be me. And so, you know, the fact that the transition occurred in 2018, I happened to be one of

• 46:29Speaker 07

  the right people at that moment, at that time, in the right place. But if it had been 2012, if it had been 2015, by the way, if it had been 2022, I mean, it wouldn't have been me either. So it's, you know, these things are a journey of hard work. There are lots of people at Goldman Sachs that are capable of running the firm. And then it's a confluence of, you know, luck and timing that goes with the hard work that, that allowed me to wind up in the seat. But I'm, I'm very cognizant of the fact that a lot of it is luck and serendipity.

• 47:00Scott Galloway?

  Beyond the professional stuff, what advice would you give to your younger self about being, I won't even say being a good friend, being a better friend, being a better partner, and being a better father?

• 47:10Speaker 07

  I, you know, I think the thing you learn as you, you go through life is that, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's never a straight line. Lots of things, you're going to get knocked down and, you know, bumped around. And at the end of the day, there are certain things that I think are true north. For me, true north has always been first and foremost, my family, my two daughters, you know, true, true north, always. It's always been, I can't say that I always got the balance perfectly right, you know, every step of the way, every day. But it's always been true north. And, you know, after that, my friends, I'm very blessed to have an extraordinary group of friends, many of whom I've been friendly with. You know, for, for, you know, 25, 35, 45, 50 years or more.

• 47:56Speaker 07

  Um, and, you know, keeping those people, you know, in your life, investing in those relationships because life gets busy and you go in different directions. Um, but, you know, keeping the compass pointed to true north, taking a long-term view, understanding that you're going to get knocked down, but you get up, you learn from the experience, you dust yourself off and, you know, you just do the best you can do. And life throws a lot of things at you that are out of your control, but be patient, take a long-term view, keep the compass pointed at your loved ones, your family, your friends, and, you know, do the right thing. If you keep that stuff in balance, there'll be ups and downs, but, you know, I think there's lots of joy, you know, that comes out of the, kind of the success of a job

• 48:41Speaker 07

  well done is to do it and to do it well and to have the personal satisfaction for raising a family, for building a career, for having success. And also, when you fail from learning from the failing and being able, you know, to kind of look ahead and, and take the learnings and do even better and constantly try to self-improve.

• 49:00Ed Elson?

  Scott's question is really about how you advise yourself, um, you know, your, your younger self. I'd be interested to hear your advice for young people right now, given the environment we're in. I think one of the biggest things that young people are probably worried about is AI and the potential for AI to take your job. Yes, we'll probably be working with AI, but it could be disruptive in the short term. Um, I think, you know, young people are also worried about affordability issues, uh, the cost of housing, et cetera. What would be your advice to a young person who's just starting out right now, given the environs and the things that we should be thinking about?

• 49:43Speaker 07

  You know, on that question, one of the things I just reflect on that I just think's interesting, you know, when I graduated in 1984, we were worried about affordability. We were worried about getting jobs. I remember when I graduated, a very significant portion of, if I looked at, you know, the, the, the, the people I graduated from school with did not have jobs in the summer after we graduated. You know, we all went out into the world and we figured out. How are we going to make a dollar? How are we going to participate? You know, it wasn't, it wasn't so simple that everybody had jobs and you know, the world was, the world was different, you know, then and the expectations were, um, you know, were different. So, you know, when I, when I look at young people today, I mean, a couple of pieces of advice that are simple. I still think that hard work matters. I still think commitment and sacrifice

• 50:28Speaker 07

  matters. I still think showing up, being present and building connectivity and relationships with people directly matters. I think understanding that nothing comes easy and anything that's worthwhile in life requires hard work, investment, commitment and sticking with it for a period of time. I think all of that matters. So, you know, my advice is as you come out of school and you're looking at the world, find a place where you can get engaged, find a place when you can learn, where you can apply skills that you think you're good at. Understand there are going to be bumps and it's not going to work perfectly, but stick with it. Show up, be present, try to outwork people around you, try to be more committed than

• 51:12Speaker 07

  people around you, compete, um, and compete, you know, to do the best you can, compete to learn, to win. And if you do that and you do it over time, chances are that good things will happen. But these issues that people worry about, we were worrying about them, you know, 40, 50 years ago. I'm not saying they're exactly the same, but it is very natural to come out of school and worry about those things and you've got to go out and look forward. I'm very optimistic about the world. Sure, there are lots of problems. But I do think that it is a wonderful time to be alive and there's lots of exciting stuff that's going to happen in the next, you know, five, 10, 15, 20 years that this generation will play an enormous part in.

• 51:54Ed Elson?

  David Solomon is the chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs. Previously, he served as the firm's president, chief operating officer, co-head of the investment banking division and global head of the financing group. He joined Goldman Sachs as a partner in 1999. David, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

• 52:12Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, David, I'll see you tomorrow. And just to sign off, when I, I wrote a piece on WeWork and I was critical of Goldman and David reached out and said, let's have breakfast. We had breakfast and by the end of the breakfast, I had transferred all of my assets to Goldman Sachs.

• 52:29Scott Galloway?

  David just reeks of credibility and honesty. Really appreciate your time, David.

• 52:33Speaker 07

  Thank you both. Appreciate your having me.

• 52:44Scott Galloway?

  Ed, what'd you think?

• 52:45Ed Elson?

  I think I really like the guy. That's sort of my reaction. Very charming, very likeable, all the things you'd want in a CEO. And, you know, you gotta think that job is just impossible. The thing he said at the end there about publicity and visibility, the fact that everyone is watching your every word. I mean, he comes on this podcast and he knows that if he says anything that is, you know, slightly off color or, you know, too duma or anything that is even remotely hyperbolic, that's just a headline. That's like an article right there. And, you know, I just think that's a crazy position to be in as a human being. Every time you speak,

• 53:30Ed Elson?

  people have their pen to paper, they're waiting for something that you say, and they know that you're just a walking story. So to be personable and engaging and magnanimous despite those circumstances, I mean, maybe I'm just being a starry eye because this is the CEO of Goldman Sachs, but I think it's pretty impressive. What do you think?

• 53:51Scott Galloway?

  Well, first off, they're all likeable.

• 53:52Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 53:53Scott Galloway?

  You have to be. To get to that point, you have to just create allies along the way. And also, there's no upside for him doing this podcast. I cornered him at a restaurant. Like all great CEOs, and I'm a client of Goldman, he pretends to like me. So I kind of cornered him and said, you need to come on the pod and kind of hummed and hawed and looked for an excuse. And he wasn't that quick on his feet. And he said, sure, I'd love to. I mean, I could just tell. It was like, oh, fuck.

• 54:20Ed Elson?

  It's how old meetings start.

• 54:22Scott Galloway?

  But it's a true story. When I had breakfast with him, by the end of the breakfast, I'm like, okay, I'm transferring all my assets to Goldman. He's very smart, very likeable. And being CEO of Goldman Sachs is a little bit like being president of the United States in the sense that, one, it's a very demanding job, but two, you not only have to be the right person, you have to be the right person at the moment. And he referenced this. So many moons have to line up because I know.

• 54:48Scott Galloway?

  I was good friends who was a vice chairman there who was supposed to be the next CEO and didn't get it. I have another friend who was on the CEO track there. Literally, I bet a third of the firm wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror and says, hello, Mr. Or Mrs. CEO of Goldman Sachs. You have at Goldman, you have this alchemy, this concentration of the most ambitious, successful people on the planet, and their career has been nothing but an upward trajectory. And then the pyramid gets very crowded at the top very fast. The thing Goldman does really well, that McKinsey does well, is they clear out a lot of senior people. They have a compensation schematic where it almost becomes lucrative

• 55:29Scott Galloway?

  to leave, and they like that because they want to create enough upward mobility for young talent such that they don't get stuck and think, oh, you know, Bob's, the only reason Bob's here is because he's been here 30 years. At Goldman, there's very few people that are, that are very senior, just because they've been there a long time. They are very good at clearing out kind of the dry wood, if you will. They also have this other interesting, at least, I don't know, I assume they still do. They have a lot of co-heads of things because they want to make sure nobody has that much leverage. They have co-heads of Europe, or they used to anyways, used to have co-heads of investment banking. That way, when Lisa walks in and says, you're fucked without me, they're like, no, Lisa,

• 56:11Scott Galloway?

  Bob's also the co-head of Europe, and we're going to be just fine. But it's an incredible firm with an incredible culture. And to kind of be the CEO there, you're just, you're in, I would imagine his inbox is never empty. It's, you know, Jamie Dimon, I don't know who the CEO of Morgan Stanley is right now, but Todd Pegg, right? Yeah. And then, very impressive woman runs city. Jane Fraser, yeah. You would find, we could have any of them on, they're all super impressive and all super likable. That's just, that's just, you know, kind of like I said, kind of like us.

• 56:44Scott Galloway?

  I've got a question for you. Yeah. Uh, would you want to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs? Not in a million years. Really? Yeah, I'd like the money. I'll take that. Here's the thing about running a services company. I've run much smaller services companies. And once we have someone who's a CFO or someone in HR, I, I, I make someone else the CEO.

• 57:03Scott Galloway?

  The services companies, Goldman's in the business, but Goldman's a services company. They're outstanding companies to work, uh, to manage and lead, except for two things. The employees and the clients. Other than that, they're outstanding places to lead.

• 57:24Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shlon, Isabel Kinsel, Chris No Donahue and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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