Name: IIF’s Tim Adams: Rejecting Enron, Building Afghanistan’s Central Bank & Today’s Debt Dilemma
Uploaded: 2025-11-20T17:59:45.000Z
Duration: 36 min 52 s
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We all have to make big decisions in our lives, decisions that define and influence our professional and personal journeys.

If you reflect on them, some are good, of course, and some I'm sure you definitely regret.

In my nearly three decades as a financial journalist, I've interviewed literally thousands of CEOs, politicians and market voices and they all had to make choices to get where they are today.

In this podcast I hear about those decisions, as well as the moments of doubt, of risk and conviction that impacted our guests journeys and the people they lead.

This is Executive Decisions with me, Steve Sedgwick.

You can run up your balance sheet for a long time, but

We're not learning the need to think long term, to invest long term.

Tim is the CEO of the Institute of International Finance.

One of his most pivotal decisions happened early in his career.

He was offered the job of a lifetime at Enron, the kind of role that young executives dreamed of.

It was an epiphany moment and I just thought, this feels too good to be true.

There's something in my gut that said, this isn't for you.

That instinct didn't just save him from scandal, it charted a path that would lead him to the US treasury and ultimately make him one of the most influential voices sounding the alarm on a looming global debt crisis.

This is a problem that will at some point explode, but

that's a subject we'll dig into later in the conversation.

First, the choices that changed everything.

These are Tim Adams, executive Decisions.

Tim, one of the reasons why you and I first started speaking and why I've been such a big fan of your work at the IF is your debt monitor, and

it's the most sent email I probably send out on a yearly basis.

I send it to the team on a regular basis and they know when the debt monitor comes in, they know they're going to get an email from me as well.

Do you think that defines your mission at the moment, that debt monitor?

Do you think the debt monitor is the most important piece of work you put out?

Forty years ago we were founded in the Latin America debt crisis.

And so we were founded as a creditor committee, which didn't exist.

You know, Walter Wriston famously said governments don't go broke until they did.

And I think it's a really compelling story.

I think it's going to be a huge story at some point.

we are levering up our public balance sheets at a pace which we've not seen before.

But the thing is, the origins of the IAF are the financial community, the central banks, more latterly, the hedge funds, all these financial institutions, they just weren't talking to each other.

They weren't discussing what the big risks were out there as well.

They weren't looking at the big problems as well.

But one thing I would say is that since 1983, in the 42 years of the IIF, we keep repeating the same mistakes.

Yeah, we don't learn them, I guess, or at least we've become very short term in nature.

But this is a problem and you're rightfully aware of it, that will at some point explode and I don't know, next year, next month, 20 years from now.

You can't keep continuing levering up your balance sheet at this pace and at some point.

We need to invest for a variety of different reasons.

We've got defense spending which is going to go through the roof.

And the more that you and I and others can go out and make the case that something needs to be done, eventually someone will pay attention.

Corporations will load up as much debt as they possibly can.

The consumers having to load up more and more debt just to stay afloat at the moment as well.

When this breaks, this could be enormous this time, couldn't it?

And to just restructure all our balance sheets at the public, corporate and household level and do it simultaneously we haven't done before, certainly maybe not since the 1930s.

There are some amazing formative stories that I have about you and I wouldn't mind expanding a little bit more on some of those.

And there's been some key decision points in your life, but

perhaps the most important decisions we make are when we're younger and we become path dependent.

Tell me a little bit about the key decision you made.

I think you were about the age of 17 and your father and you just had to think about where you want to go in life.

I grew up in a very small town in rural Kentucky.

I mean, maybe that's redundant to say, but a wonderful little town.

And When I was 17, my father was a union welder, and

he took me down to the Union Hall, Union 184 in Paducah, Kentucky, and

And I said, you know, dad, thank you very much.

You put dinner on our table our entire lives.

A lot of books to read, a lot of things to learn, a lot of people to see.

And I'm going to go, you know, put my knapsack over my shoulder and go see what's over the hill.

Why did your father want you to follow in his footsteps?

And why did you decide you didn't want to?

Well, maybe every parent wants their child to follow their.

You know, they came out of the Great depression, World War II.

He learned his skill in the factories in Detroit During World War II, building things, you know, armaments for.

And he was very proud of his profession, and he wanted to share that pride.

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IIF’s Tim Adams: Rejecting Enron, Building Afghanistan’s Central Bank & Today’s Debt Dilemma

approach

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