Odd Lots

Raghuram Rajan on Surging Gold and Growing Risks to Financial Stability

The perspective of a former central banker

Raghuram Rajan, the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Spring meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, April 25, 2025. The International Monetary Fund sharply lowered its forecasts for world growth for this year and next, warning the outlook could deteriorate further as US President Donald Trump's tariffs spark a global trade war.Photographer: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg

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By Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway

October 20, 2025 at 8:00 AM UTC

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Gold has been surging. Risky assets (with a few minor hiccups) have also been surging. And yet, central bankers (most notably the Fed) are in rate cutting mode. Why is this? And what kind of risks are being conjured up? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Raghuram Rajan, a professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, as well as the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Rajan famously was one of the first to raise alarms prior to the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. We discuss why financial markets are doing what they're doing and whether central bankers are sufficiently attuned to the growing risks.