The idea of a “K-shaped economy” has become one of the most persistent themes about the US economy: While some households continue to thrive, in particular the wealthy ones, everyone else falls further behind. On this episode of Trumponomics, host Stephanie Flanders, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi and Bloomberg Economics’ Andrew Sacher explore whether that narrative is simply another way of describing that longer-term American phenomenon of inequality — or whether it points to a deeper vulnerability.

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A Gallup poll reported last year that just 15% of Americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in big business, a record low. Since then, fear of artificial intelligence has made matters worse. So why is big business increasingly unpopular in Donald Trump's America? What does it tell us about the state of the nation and the long-term strength of the world's largest economy?

On this week's Trumponomics, host Stephanie Flanders explores those questions with Bloomberg Opinion global business columnist Adrian Wooldridge. He says the root of this malaise may be a US corporate culture that's shifted from genuine risk-taking entrepreneurship toward a mix of oligarchic tech elites and bloated bureaucracies, fueled by market concentration and declining competition. Later, Flanders and Wooldridge explore whether AI will in turn disrupt these dominant firms or further entrench their power — and what the backlash against tech could mean for politics, capitalism and American democracy.

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Across developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. As Opinion columnist and senior markets editor John Authers puts it, the phenomenon is truly global. Authers and Robin J. Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, join host Stephanie Flanders to explain why investors have turned sharply against government bonds across the world’s major developed economies — and how the fallout could affect us all.

Read John Authers's column here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2026-05-19/the-great-bond-car-wreck-in-slow-motion

And find Robin J. Brooks's substack here:
https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/liz-truss-bond-market-blow-ups

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