Available for over a year

America’s national debt recently hit a new milestone of $40 trillion. It is estimated that interest payments on the national debt are now the second largest expense in the US government budget, trailing only social security. How was the US able to borrow so much and for so long? One answer, according Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, is the US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

In this episode, Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, explains how the US dollar came to enjoy this hegemonic status, what being the world’s reserve currency actually means in practice, and why he believes the dollar is now in decline.

(Photo: An Asian-American man passes by the passes by the National Debt Clock in New York City, US, 19 August, 2026. It is a digital display screen that shows the National Debt figures 39, 393, 882, 535, 284 against a background of dollar notes. Credit: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

Producer: Valerio Esposito, Aron Keller and Lucy Pawle

Executive producer: James Shield

Sound engineer: Travis Evans

Senior news editor: China Collins

Programme WebsiteShow less

NEW YORK — Olympic figure skater Amber Glenn and Paralympic track and field champion Ezra Frech will compete on the new season of “Dancing with the Stars,” joining a 16-celebrity field announced Wednesday on “Good Morning America” and giving the long-running ABC series its first pairing of an Olympic gold medalist and a Paralympic gold medalist in the same season.

Glenn, 26, will dance with professional partner Pasha Pashkov. Frech, 21, is paired with Daniella Karagach. Season 35 is scheduled to open with a two-night premiere on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 8 p.m. Eastern on ABC and Disney+. Episodes are set to stream the following day on Hulu.

The announcement puts two of the most decorated young American athletes of the current Olympic cycle onto a ballroom floor that has long favored gymnasts, skaters and other competitors with elite body control. It also creates a calendar problem for Glenn, who is still listed on the fall Grand Prix figure skating circuit, and a high-visibility platform for Frech as Los Angeles prepares to host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

In the official reveal package, Frech put the ambition in a single line: “I won the gold and hopefully the mirror ball.” Glenn, introduced as the skater who might take a triple Axel from the ice to the studio, answered, “Wait until you see my flare.”

A dream Glenn has talked about for years

Glenn is not arriving as a reluctant celebrity booking. Months before the cast reveal, she said the show had been on her list since she watched ice dancer Meryl Davis win Season 18 in 2014.

“I would love to do ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Oh my God, it’s been a dream of mine since I saw Meryl do it in 2014,” she said on the “House of Maher” podcast hosted by rugby Olympian and former contestant Ilona Maher. She told Maher she could talk “all day” about the sets, music, makeup and costumes.

“I just have so much respect for it, and it’s so beautiful,” Glenn said. “I’ll listen to songs, and I’ll just see it in my head. Like ‘This would be perfect for that,’ and ‘This would be perfect for this.’”

After the Milano Cortina Games, she was asked about a post-Olympic bucket list. Her answer was immediate.

“‘Dancing with the Stars’ for sure,” she said. “I just love everything about it. The costuming, the set design.”

On the same podcast, she floated Alan Bersten or Ezra Sosa as possible partners and said she was open to a same-sex pairing. Maher told her Pashkov was “hilarious.” She landed with Pashkov.

What Glenn brings from the ice

Glenn, from Plano, Texas, won the last three U.S. figure skating titles and made her Olympic debut in 2026. She helped the United States win team-event gold and finished fifth in the women’s individual competition. She is one of the few women to land a triple Axel in competition and became the first U.S. woman to land three triple Axels at a single Olympic Games.

She is also the first openly LGBTQ+ U.S. women’s figure skating champion and has used that platform to talk about visibility, inclusion and mental health. A free-skate program to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” drew a personal note of praise from Madonna during the Olympic season.

Figure skaters have a strong record on the series. Kristi Yamaguchi won Season 6, Davis won Season 18 and Adam Rippon won the all-athletes Season 26. NBC Sports noted that Glenn could become the fourth skater to take the Mirrorball. It also noted a difference: the 10 previous figure skaters who competed on the show had finished their elite careers, even if some had not formally retired. The last skater in the ballroom was Johnny Weir in 2020.

Glenn has not said how the series will affect her skating calendar. In April she said she did not want to stop competing “as long as my body keeps going and is healthy.” In June the International Skating Union assigned her to Saatva Skate America and NHK Trophy in Japan, Grand Prix events scheduled for November. Recent “Dancing with the Stars” seasons have run into late November or early December for couples who reach the final four.

Frech’s path from the track to the ballroom

Frech is a Los Angeles native born May 11, 2005, with congenital limb differences. He was born without most of his left leg and without several fingers on his left hand. He received his first prosthetic as an infant and later had surgery to amputate the lower portion of the left leg. He competes in the T63 classification.

At the 2024 Paris Paralympics he won gold in the 100 meters and the high jump. He also competed at the Tokyo Paralympics as a teenager and is aiming at the 2028 Games in his hometown. He has competed for the USC Trojans and works as a model, motivational speaker and disability-rights advocate.

He is co-founder of Angel City Sports, which provides adaptive sports training, equipment and competition in Southern California and hosts the Angel City Games. In a 2024 interview with the Los Angeles Times he described that work as a responsibility.

“I feel I have the beautiful burden to share my story and inspire the next generation because this community means the world to me,” Frech said.

He is the first Paralympian on “Dancing with the Stars” since alpine skier Danelle Umstead in 2018 and only the second Summer Paralympian and Paralympic gold medalist after swimmer Victoria Arlen in 2017. Snowboarder Amy Purdy, a Paralympian, reached the Season 18 finale.

Karagach, his partner, was a Season 34 standout with Dylan Efron. Adaptive athletes have succeeded on the show when choreography is built around a prosthetic, a sit-ski background or a different center of gravity rather than treated as a limitation. Frech’s events — sprinting and jumping off a blade — reward timing, air awareness and explosive power, traits producers have sold for years as transferable to Latin and ballroom.

A crowded Season 35 field

Glenn and Frech are two names in a large cast that mixes athletes with actors, reality television personalities and working dancers.

The full lineup announced Wednesday includes Jenna Dewan with Val Chmerkovskiy, Julia Stiles with Ezra Sosa, Harry Shum Jr. with Jenna Johnson, Tatyana Ali with Jan Ravnik, chef Giada De Laurentiis with Alan Bersten, Hanson singer Taylor Hanson with Britt Stewart, “Bachelorette” alum Tyler Cameron with returning pro Sharna Burgess, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez with Witney Carson, Savannah Bananas player Jackson Olson with Emma Slater, “Summer House” star Ciara Miller with Brandon Armstrong, “Love Island” and “The Traitors” personality Maura Higgins with Mark Ballas, comedian Connor Wood with Rylee Arnold, “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” personality Conner Leavitt with new pro Adele Zaikman, and Sarah Jane Nader with newly promoted pro Hailey Bills in a same-sex pairing.

Dewan and Shum Jr. arrive with professional dance credits. Stiles starred in “Save the Last Dance.” Ali’s sitcom run overlapped with co-host Alfonso Ribeiro’s. That depth of performance experience is why athletes are rarely automatic favorites after Week 1. Judges score technique, timing and characterization, not medals.

Olympians have still been a constant on the series since Season 1. Speedskater Apolo Ohno, gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Laurie Hernandez, and several figure skaters won the trophy. Last season, gymnast Jordan Chiles reached the finale. Rugby player Ilona Maher became one of the show’s most-watched recent athletes. Glenn has already said she studied that lane.

What the booking signals

For ABC and Disney, the pairing is a straightforward ratings play: a freshly minted Olympic champion and a Paralympic star from Los Angeles, announced 13 days before premiere week. For U.S. Figure Skating and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, it is another prime-time window in a non-Games year.

For Glenn, it is the entertainment project she has described in public for months, slotted against a Grand Prix season she has not abandoned. For Frech, it is a national stage between Paris and Los Angeles, consistent with the advocacy he has done since childhood.

Neither has to win for the booking to matter. The Mirrorball is decided by judges’ scores and viewer votes. History says skaters can go far if they translate edge work into footwork. History also says a 16-couple season is long, unforgiving and often kinder to contestants who can act a story than to contestants who can only jump.

The first live scores arrive Sept. 15. Glenn will be judged on whether ice quality becomes ballroom quality. Frech will be judged on whether a sprinter and high jumper can make a prosthetic and a partner look like one instrument. Both already said, in different words, that they came for more than a cameo.

The Dutch central bank (DNB) has confirmed that billions of dollars in gold has been taken out of north America and relocated to London, citing “increasing geopolitical unrest”.

DNB said on Wednesday that 86 tonnes of gold had been removed from the US and Canada in a complex operation that took several months. It is now being held by the Bank of England, where the precious metal can be traded more easily “in a crisis situation”.

Bank president Olaf Sleijpen said the move was “necessary to strengthen our resilience and preparedness”.

The decision comes amid an ongoing trade dispute between the US and Canada, with both countries announcing fresh tariffs on each other after failed trade talks.

DNB said the transfer, which took place between March and August, saw 27 tonnes of gold bars moved from New York and Ottawa to Zeist in the Netherlands.

A similar quantity and quality was then moved to London, with no need to melt the bars down.

Exactly how so much gold was transported across the Atlantic Ocean has not been revealed.

The rest of the transfer was carried out by selling the gold in New York, and repurchasing it in London, the bank said, external.

“Combining the processes of buying and selling and physical transport has allowed DNB to spread the risks associated with such a complex physical gold relocation,” the statement said.

DNB did not confirm what it was referring to with its mention of “geopolitical unrest” but the US economy remains in an uncertain position due to the country’s ongoing war with Iran, which has impacted global trade.

Canada, meanwhile, has been hit hard by US tariffs on its key sectors of steel, aluminium, lumber and automobiles as well as an additional 50% levy on about C$28bn ($20bn; £15bn) of Canadian goods announced in August.

DNB said that gold that is held with the Bank of England “is regarded as the world’s most easily tradable gold,” and therefore more readily available in a crisis than if it was still in the US or Canada.

Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, the DNB held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa. This has now fallen to 18.5% in both countries.

The total Dutch gold stock was 612.4 tonnes at the end of 2025 and has been valued at €72.2 billion, DNB said.

The bank’s share of gold in London has increased from 18.1% to 32.1% after the move, while it still holds 30.8% of its reserves in the Netherlands.

Skip To Content

NEW YORK — Shares of Pfizer Inc. climbed further Wednesday morning, trading at $29.09, up 54 cents, or 1.89%, as of 10:02 a.m. ET, matching a fresh 52-week high the pharmaceutical giant first touched earlier this week amid a wave of positive news for the company.

Pfizer’s stock has now gained approximately 20% since the start of the year, marking a significant recovery for the drugmaker as it works to move past two years of declining COVID-related revenues and reposition itself around a broader portfolio spanning oncology, cardiometabolic disease and vaccines.

The stock’s climb this week has been driven by a combination of factors, including a landmark drug pricing agreement with the Trump administration, a stronger-than-expected second-quarter earnings report, and the resolution of a major legal settlement tied to one of the company’s contraceptive products.

Pfizer was among the pharmaceutical companies that reached a new drug pricing deal with President Donald Trump’s administration as part of the White House’s push to align U.S. drug prices with those paid in other developed countries, a policy the administration has branded “most-favored-nation” pricing. Under the agreement, Pfizer said it would voluntarily align prices for its drugs in Medicaid programs with those charged internationally, while also offering medicines directly to consumers at steep discounts through a new government-run website, TrumpRx.gov.

Pfizer said the majority of its primary care treatments and certain other brands, including the rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz, the dermatitis treatment Eucrisa and the post-menopausal osteoporosis medicine Duavee, would be offered to patients at average savings of around 50%, with some discounts reaching as high as 85%.

In exchange for the pricing concessions, along with a commitment to invest $70 billion in U.S. research and manufacturing, Pfizer secured a three-year grace period from potential pharmaceutical tariffs, a provision that removed a significant source of policy uncertainty that had weighed on the sector for much of the year.

The White House said the Trump administration has now reached similar drug pricing deals with 26 pharmaceutical companies in total, including Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, building on agreements first struck with major drugmakers last year and expanded this week to include nine additional midsize firms.

Alongside the pricing news, Pfizer’s stock has also been buoyed by a strong second-quarter earnings report. The company posted adjusted earnings per share of 77 cents, beating analyst expectations of 68 cents, while total revenue reached $15.03 billion, ahead of the $14.42 billion Wall Street had anticipated and up 2.6% from the same period a year earlier. Trading volume surged past 8.3 million shares in the session following the report, well above the stock’s typical activity levels, reflecting heightened investor attention to the results.

Following the earnings beat, Pfizer raised its full-year 2026 adjusted earnings guidance to a range of $2.80 to $3.00 per share, with Wall Street analysts currently projecting the company will land near $2.98 for the full fiscal year. The company also lifted the midpoint of its 2026 revenue guidance by $500 million, to $61.5 billion.

Also contributing to the stock’s momentum this week was the resolution of a major legal matter facing the company. Pfizer reached a confidential settlement covering more than 6,000 federal lawsuits alleging a connection between its contraceptive injection Depo-Provera and intracranial meningioma, a type of brain tumor. While the company did not disclose specific financial terms of the settlement and maintained that it had not engaged in any wrongdoing, resolving the litigation removed a lingering legal overhang that had weighed on investor sentiment surrounding the stock.

Pfizer has also continued to expand its regulatory and clinical pipeline in recent weeks. The company and its partner BioNTech announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved their updated 2026-2027 Comirnaty mRNA COVID-19 vaccine formulation, tailored to the XFG variant, for use in adults. Separately, Pfizer reached a settlement extending the effective U.S. patent expiry for its cardiovascular drug Vyndamax to June 1, 2031, subject to the outcome of other related litigation, a development that helps push back one of the looming patent cliffs the company has faced in its cardiovascular portfolio.

Insider activity at the company has also drawn attention from investors in recent weeks. Pfizer’s chief executive was reported to have made a $1 million purchase of company stock following the second-quarter earnings report, a move some market watchers have pointed to as a signal of management’s confidence in the company’s direction even as broader concerns about long-term growth persist.

Despite the recent rally, analysts covering the stock remain cautious about Pfizer’s longer-term growth trajectory. Concerns center on a series of upcoming patent expirations across the company’s product portfolio, along with the pace at which its oncology pipeline, which includes drugs such as Ibrance, Xtandi, Padcev and Adcetris, can offset revenue pressure from products losing patent protection in the coming years. Pfizer has also announced plans for roughly $2.5 billion in productivity-enhancement savings between 2027 and 2029, part of a broader effort to control costs while continuing to invest in newer areas of its pipeline, including obesity, autoimmune disease and additional oncology programs.

Short interest in Pfizer shares currently stands at roughly 161.5 million shares, representing about 2.8% of the stock’s public float, according to data tracking short positions in the stock. While that figure has increased significantly since last September, the overall level remains relatively low, suggesting limited bearish sentiment toward the stock even amid ongoing questions about the company’s long-term growth outlook.

With shares now trading at the top of their 52-week range and above key technical moving averages, investors will likely continue watching closely for further details on Pfizer’s expanding pipeline of obesity, oncology and autoimmune treatments, along with any additional developments tied to the broader wave of drug pricing agreements reshaping the pharmaceutical industry’s relationship with the Trump administration heading into the final months of 2026.