Andrew Ross Sorkin

October 22, 2025

When bestselling author and financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin stepped onto the Altria Theater stage Wednesday night, he opened with a question that hung in the air: “How many of you think we’re in an economic bubble?”

The audience’s hesitant laughter set the tone for an evening that felt less like a history lesson and more like a warning. Sorkin’s visit, just one week after the release of his new book, “1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History,” was the fourth stop on his national tour and a major coup for The Richmond Forum, which brought the high-profile conversation to a local stage.

Drawing vivid parallels between the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties and today’s economy, Sorkin described how the rise of credit transformed American culture in the 1920s. “Debt was once considered a moral failing,” he said, noting that General Motors and Sears changed that by encouraging consumers to buy on credit. By 1929, stock prices had soared 90 percent in less than two years, and CEOs had become celebrities.

He warned that the same forces, speculation, leverage, and political paralysis, are once again converging. “Debt is the match that lights the fire of every financial crisis,” Sorkin told the crowd, citing the explosion of private credit funds and corporate borrowing that now occur largely outside traditional banks. “We are moving against the guardrails we built,” he added.

The evening’s second half featured a lively Q&A with Jeffrey Lacker, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, who helped steer the Fed through the 2008 crisis chronicled in Sorkin’s “Too Big to Fail.” Together they explored how confidence, politics, and the pace of innovation—today driven by artificial intelligence—shape economic risk. “If we took out spending on AI,” Sorkin said, “our economy would be flat.”

Asked about tariffs and trade wars, he reminded the audience that protectionist policies were the “first domino” in 1929’s collapse. “They may look different now,” he said, “but the logic is the same.”

As the program closed, Sorkin revisited his opening question: were we in a bubble? This time, more hands went up.

Proceeds from the event supported The Richmond Forum Speech & Debate Initiative, which helps local students develop the confidence to speak and lead, perhaps preparing the next generation to ask their own hard questions before the next crash arrives.

Sorkin called tariffs in 1929 “the first domino” in the crash. How do current trade policies compare, and can economic nationalism coexist with a stable global market?

How might artificial intelligence reshape financial markets, for better or worse, in the next decade?

Sorkin cautioned that we’re living “in a moment of silence,” when few leaders are willing to speak hard truths. What qualities should define leadership in the next financial crisis?

The 1920s saw credit and stock ownership “democratized.” Are today’s investing trends (crypto, retail trading apps, private credit funds) continuing that democratization or repeating the same mistakes in a new form?

Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and leading voice on Wall Street, corporate America, and global finance. He serves as a columnist for The New York Times and co-anchors “Squawk Box”, CNBC’s flagship morning program. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, the Times’ pioneering online financial news platform, which he launched in 2001.

Sorkin is the author of the 2009 bestselling book “Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves”, widely regarded as the definitive account of the 2008 financial crisis. The book spent more than six months on The New York Times bestseller list, was named the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award winner for Best Business Book, and was a finalist for both the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. The HBO Films adaptation of “Too Big to Fail”, which Sorkin co-produced, garnered 11 Emmy nominations.

His latest book, “1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History”, released in October 2025. It explores the decisions, delusions, and dramatic collapse that defined the 1929 stock market crash—and the striking parallels to today’s financial world.

Beyond journalism, Sorkin is the co-creator of the Showtime drama series “Billions“, starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis. He has several additional television and film projects currently in development. In 2024, he won the Emmy Award for “Outstanding Live Interview,” recognizing his incisive, long-form interviews with influential figures such as Elon Musk, Hillary Clinton, LeBron James, and Kim Kardashian.

This fall, Sorkin will host a new streaming interview series for NBC, airing on NBC News Now and available on Peacock, YouTube, NBCNews.com, and major platforms including Roku, Fire TV, and Samsung TV Plus.

Over the course of his career, Sorkin has broken major financial news stories, including Chase’s acquisition of J.P. Morgan, Hewlett-Packard’s purchase of Compaq, and IBM’s landmark sale of its PC division to Lenovo. He led The Times’s coverage of Vodafone’s $183 billion bid for Mannesmann—the largest takeover in history. His reporting during the 2008 crisis covered the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the A.I.G. bailout, placing him at the forefront of business journalism.

Sorkin has received multiple honors, including three Gerald Loeb Awards and two Society of American Business Editors and Writers Awards for breaking news. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

He is co-chair of The New York Public Library’s Business Leadership Council and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Remarkably, Sorkin began writing for The New York Times before graduating from high school and is a graduate of Cornell University.