Season 1. Episode 24. Unscripted with Erik Britton

Most economic forecasts come from people with something to sell. Erik Britton is a rare exception. He began his career inside the Bank of England, went on to help lead Oxford Economics, and now runs Fathom Consulting in London, one of the few genuinely independent macro shops in the world, where governments, global asset managers, and pension funds go for analysis that sits where economics, geopolitics, and markets meet. In this conversation, Erik makes a call most people in the AI conversation won’t make out loud: either this is the most transformational technology in human history, bigger than electrification, the computer, or the jet engine, or it’s a bubble. He takes the bubble side, and walks through the arithmetic behind it. We get into: - Why current AI capex implies returns that would require a 10 to 15 percent increase in US GDP - The difference between a dot-com bubble and a 2008 bubble, and why hidden debt in shadow banking, private equity, and venture capital makes this one closer to the second - Why AI displacement is hitting the top of the skills distribution instead of the bottom, and what that does to the apprenticeship path into senior roles - How a central bank should classify AI: positive supply shock, negative demand shock, and financial stability risk, all at once - How Erik actually uses AI in his own work, and why he hasn’t embedded it in Fathom’s analytical workflow - What China’s dual circulation strategy is really optimizing for, and why it isn’t making its own people rich - Why every forecast critic is already running a forecast, whether they admit it or not - His direct advice for leaders building a 2027 plan: expect to get punched in the guts, and start anyway A conversation for CEOs, CFOs, and revenue leaders who have to commit to a number in an environment nobody can model cleanly. Read the companion article: https://www.pedowitzgroup.com/blog/its-a-bubble-or-its-the-biggest-thing-that-ever-happened-erik-britton-on-planning-for-2027 Learn more about Fathom Consulting: https://www.fathom-consulting.com #Unscripted #AIBubble #MacroEconomics #B2B #RevenueMarketing #AIStrategy #ThePedowitzGroup