Does the fate of the US economy now hinge on one company?

The NVIDIA stock chart. | Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images

As the price of almost everything has increased, and American workers’ wages have all but stalled, politicians like President Donald Trump have tried to ease our minds by telling us that the economy is “doing great” and that the stock market is booming. “Record high, record high, record high,” Trump said at an event earlier this month in Florida.

Key takeaways

The world’s most important company, Nvidia, is driving the entire growth of the US stock market to an extent that no single company has in recent memory.
If it falters, there’s a fear it will take the entire US economy down with it — and there are signs that it might.
The shock waves of Nvidia falling would be devastating and far-reaching — from tech startups and cloud computing to construction, land development, and steel — because of the AI supply chain.

Still, despite what has been a good year for the stock market, it’s hard to find a day in which a podcaster, influencer, or economist isn’t warning that the AI boom that’s powering the economy could be a bubble — one that is about to burst.

The company that’s driving Wall Street’s positive movement is Nvidia, the most valuable company on the planet. And that’s because the recent rash of data centers popping up across the country are filled with Nvidia’s graphic processing units, or chips.

So why did the health of this single company become an outsized force in the economy? And why does its health scare so many people? Today, Explained co-host Noel King asked economic commentator, educator, and author of In This Economy? Kyla Scanlon.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Recently, the markets have been a rollercoaster. And when you ask why, the answer broadly is because of Nvidia. Why is the world holding its........

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