Former Goldman Sachs Banker Kei Tanaka Looks Back on the News of 2025: Social Media and Elections, the Takaichi Government's Economic Management, Japan-China Relations, and Ichiro and Ohtani

The video opens with remarks that appear to have been taken from the career discussion in the second half. Citing Einstein, Tanaka quotes the line "Compound interest is the greatest invention of mankind," and explains that if you improve by 1% over the previous day, every day, you will be 37.8 times better after a year. Habits such as reading Wikipedia for five minutes every day are run not on motivation but entirely as routine. Human willpower is the weakest force there is, so there's no point relying on it. Instead, design your environment so you have no choice but to do the thing, and make a commitment to yourself, to others, and to society. That is Tanaka's advice.

Okui introduced themself as having worked as an announcer at NewsPicks from 2019 to 2023, and now, as a freelancer, hosting business programs on online media such as ReHacQ.

Tanaka revealed that they had already eaten before the event and downed about three highballs, and said they wanted to keep things casual. As for their background, Tanaka joined Goldman Sachs straight out of university and worked in investing for 17 years. The scope was broad: investments in private companies, real estate, distressed debt, and infrastructure such as roads and power plants. Tanaka eventually became co-head of the investment division in Japan before leaving the firm. Tanaka now manages around 100 billion yen entrusted by wealthy clients, and with leverage, runs a portfolio of about 200 billion yen.

Tanaka stressed that people often mistake them for someone who has achieved FIRE or who just runs all day, but in reality Tanaka goes to the office every day, works nine to five, and attends business dinners: a "salaryman move." On top of that, Tanaka wakes up at 3:45 every morning, exercises for two to three hours, and travels to run in African deserts and the European Alps. Tanaka also works as a radio personality on CROSS FM in Tokyo and Fukuoka, fulfilling a dream from their twenties. Tanaka calls this collection of roles a "mysterious ecosystem." Since first appearing on ReHacQ in January 2025, their life and career have changed dramatically, Tanaka said, and it became an opportunity to rethink how they live.

Okui pointed out how much media exposure Tanaka has gained in just a year to a year and a half since leaving the firm around last summer. According to Tanaka, other Goldman alumni appear in the media too: Mai Shin, a former colleague from the same intake who served as president of GENDA; Manabu Tauchi, whose book There Are People Beyond Money reportedly sold around one million copies; and Makiko Kawamura, a senior colleague. Tanaka said the "Goldman" brand carries a lot of weight for all of them, but in their own case, other factors came together.

The first was the direction of the times. Tanaka had been saying they wanted to do radio even as people called both TV and radio "dead media," and then this year, businesspeople started appearing on YouTube and launching podcasts. On YouTube, too, more shows have become "video podcasts," which have visuals but work just as well if you only listen to the audio. In Tanaka's view, the times simply happened to line up with what they had been doing. The second factor was waking up early. Getting up at 3:45 is a "gap" in the market, a blue ocean with no one else in it. Tanaka said a hardcore fitness influencer once told them, "If you can rack up that many impressions just from waking up early, I should have done it too."

When Okui mentioned the growing interest in financial education, Tanaka agreed. Japan, after 30 years of deflation, has begun to experience inflation, creating a sense of crisis that cash left as is will lose value in relative terms. Then the new NISA came along. Tanaka also touched on widening inequality. Over the past ten years, the number of people with financial assets of 500 million yen or more has risen by 150%, while the group earning 5 million yen or less a year, in other words, the group that has gone without assets, has roughly doubled. The middle class is shrinking. It was a year in which a great deal of attention was paid to whether you know or not, and whether you act or not. Tanaka's own explanation is that the media momentum, financial literacy, and life hacks such as morning routines and habit-building "all hit at once."

The first news story was President Trump's return to office and the Sanseito party's surge in the House of Councillors election. Tanaka said social media was what separated the winners from the losers, and that the older generation had underestimated it, seeing it as an entertainment tool for young people.

Tanaka explained it this way. In the first election, Trump used Facebook for micro-targeted marketing, so that each person received different news. At times it was also turned against Trump by young people. Young people who disliked Trump called on each other via TikTok to fill up the seats at a rally with reservations, then cancel at the last minute, leaving 60% of the venue empty, an act of harassment. The second time around, Trump appeared on podcasts with tens of millions of subscribers, such as The Joe Rogan Experience. The strategy was for a presidential candidate to talk at length in long-form video. The Harris campaign, by contrast, put out the message that populism and demagoguery are bad and that stamping out fake news is what matters. In Tanaka's view, this is what decided the outcome. Logical thinking and correct facts alone don't move people's hearts. Whoever generates empathy, even if extreme and even if brief, wins the era. Tanaka's assessment is that this is what ended up happening.

On the Upper House election, Tanaka recalled that until now people, including Tanaka themself, had paid little attention, but this year a lot of people were watching closely. The parties that gained ground were Sanseito and the Democratic Party for the People. Tanaka cited figures on the share of party members using X: only 82% for the Liberal Democratic Party and about 58% for Komeito, while 100% of those in the parties that gained were on X.

For Tanaka, too, social media was merely a means to the goal of becoming a radio personality. But the strength Tanaka built there proved useful in many areas of life. Used wrongly it can be dangerous, but used correctly it can be powerful enough to change your life. So anyone thinking about their career or their brand as a businessperson should have a dedicated account, separate from one for browsing hobbies. Tanaka says we are now in an era where this is essential.

Asked by Okui what one should do to grow an account, Tanaka answered, "Post every day." Tanaka created their X account this year after being told it was necessary when they started appearing on YouTube, and at first didn't take it seriously. In April, when the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun ran a story about an actor with the same name, Tanaka posted a single line saying "That's not me," and within about two days the account had around 20,000 followers. Tanaka laughs that they got "quite a head start." Starting from those 20,000, Tanaka squeezed out something to post every day from May 18, putting it up around 7 a.m. In about six months and a week, the account reached about 110,000 followers.

Once you pass 100,000, Tanaka says, the way people treat you changes. Tanaka doesn't send many DMs, but the number of DMs coming in changed. Tanaka doesn't accept PR deals, but offers that had been around 100,000 yen started coming in at around 1 million yen the moment the account passed 100,000 followers. Seeing that, Tanaka felt how different this world is.

On the launch of the Takaichi government in October, Tanaka spoke about the economic impact from the perspective of an investor. Raising interest rates cools the economy, so Prime Minister Takaichi wants to avoid raising them as much as possible. Fiscal stimulus normally fuels inflation, but the government is pushing ahead with spending anyway. Signaling that stance at the outset sent stock prices sharply higher. But within about two weeks, Tanaka thinks, things have started to look shaky.

What concerns Tanaka more is whether rising stock prices, fiscal stimulus, and monetary easing are really making people better off. Honestly, not at all, in Tanaka's view, and Tanaka listed several structural causes.

• Corporate retained earnings stand at around 650 trillion yen, up about 160 trillion yen over the past five years. Japanese companies, having been through repeated shocks, are afraid and hoard cash, so the labor share doesn't rise.
• Wage increases lag behind inflation. Inflation is around 3%, yet wages are rising only about 2%.
• Non-regular employment, such as part-time work, accounts for about one-third of the workforce, and these workers can't join labor unions, which are open only to regular employees.
• Managers take their employees for granted. Strikes don't happen in Japan. Job-hopping is said to have become easier, but that applies only to a segment such as startups; employees at traditional Japanese companies (JTCs) don't quit so easily. So there's no sense of urgency that people will leave unless wages are raised to keep them.
• There are income thresholds, so even in dual-income households, the dependent spouse holds back on how much they work.

Tanaka went on to explain that expansionary fiscal policy induces inflation, and if monetary easing keeps rates low, the interest rate gap with the United States widens. As a result, the current steep depreciation of the yen shows no sign of easing, and the weak yen prolongs inflation through rising import prices. Tanaka said they are worried that there's no sign of this structural problem being solved, and have a vague anxiety about whether next year will be okay.

Asked about Japan's economy in 2026, Tanaka answered, "It's hard." Stock indexes are rising overall, but only because a handful of AI companies are driving them. While saying it's hard to say whether AI is a bubble, Tanaka explained that the top five or so companies account for about 78% of the gains, and the rest have actually fallen quite a bit. In a winner-take-all structure, if a clear pecking order emerges among AI companies too, the others could crash the moment the No. 1 is decided. We are in the middle of that game of chicken right now, so Tanaka doesn't see a bright future.

As an example, Tanaka pointed to moves over the past few days. A new version of Gemini came out, and people said it "may have surpassed ChatGPT." OpenAI isn't listed, so it has no share price, but the shares of SoftBank, which had bet heavily on OpenAI, plunged. Stocks of companies worth trillions of yen are moving 5% or even 10% in a single day, and the Nikkei average as a whole is moving 5%, like "Bitcoin." Tanaka says that's how difficult the market is.

Even so, what Tanaka has long been saying is that unless you participate in the capital markets, you won't understand any of this. A gap will open between people who nod along to this kind of talk and people who may not invest in stocks. If you're on the inside, you know where to plant your feet even in a difficult market. Not participating is the bigger risk, Tanaka argued.

The deterioration of Japan-China relations was also taken up as a topic tied to remarks by Prime Minister Takaichi. According to Tanaka, about 22.5% of Japan's exports go to China, its largest export destination. That means a great deal can be controlled at China's discretion.

The biggest concern is rare earths. China is said to account for 80–90% of global production, and if it halts exports, materials such as neodymium, used in car motors and home appliances, will stop coming in. Efforts are under way to secure mineral resources outside China and to recycle, but Tanaka thinks that pace won't be fast enough. Next is the issue of imports. When China stopped importing Japanese seafood over the release of treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the fishing industry took a heavy hit, since China accounted for about 50% of seafood exports. The same thing could easily happen with food and everyday goods, Tanaka said.

Tanaka also touched on tourism, citing news from the day before the recording. Until then, the Chinese side had only been warning people to refrain from traveling to Japan, but the day before, the Chinese government reportedly pressured airlines to cut flights to Japan. Prefacing that some people may welcome this out of anti-China sentiment or frustration with overtourism, Tanaka pointed to the scale of the impact. Of about 40 million total visitors to Japan, about 6 million come from China, and they also spend the most per person. Japan would lose a large portion of the 5 to 6 trillion yen it earns from tourism.

There's also the problem of China no longer buying Japanese exports. Tanaka cited the boycotts during the 2012 Senkaku Islands dispute as an example. Toyota's sales fell by about 48% year on year, and another automaker's dropped by about 36%, Tanaka said.

Laughing that all this gloomy talk was making them drink more, Tanaka stressed that people should pay attention to all of it. If you understand what's going on, there are things you can do. With stocks, there's even the option of "starting from the sell side." When Okui asked, Tanaka explained short selling: you sell a stock you know will fall first, then buy it back after it drops. But Tanaka added that it's a difficult technique.

Even if that's too specialized, the possibility of a decline is also an opportunity for people entering the market from now on, since there's also the issue that stock prices had been too high. If you know where the bad news is coming from and when prices might fall, you won't panic when they drop, because you'll think, "I knew this would happen," and you can change how you act. That's what Tanaka said. Okui responded that it's important to engage with this kind of information every day.

For the final piece of good news, Okui brought up Ichiro's Hall of Fame induction and Shohei Ohtani. According to Tanaka, Ichiro was the first Japanese player to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same season, and only the second in the world. Ichiro received about 99.7% of the votes for the Hall of Fame, the second-highest ever after Mariano Rivera, who was elected unanimously, Tanaka noted. As for Ohtani, Tanaka said that being able to throw a 163 km/h pitch after two surgeries is incredible in itself.

Tanaka portrays the two as contrasting types. Ichiro is "Mr. Stoic." Given a plan, Ichiro breaks down technically what needs to be done and keeps doing exactly that every day. Ichiro eats curry for lunch and sticks to the same menu. Tanaka shared a quote from Ichiro, noting it wasn't exact. The gist was: when you overcome something painful, it gets more painful; when you get past that, your heart starts to ache; you overcome that too, and in the end it was a little fun. When Okui laughed, "What does that mean?", Tanaka also laughed, "I have no idea what he's saying." Still, Tanaka explained that Ichiro is someone who feels joy only when accomplishing something. Ohtani, on the other hand, is the type to say that even after losing a game, they were glad to be on the field, and happy that their body is healthy and they can play baseball again tomorrow, someone who enjoys the process.

Tanaka says it's not a question of which is better. People tend to assume Tanaka lives the Ichiro-style life, but in reality Tanaka enjoys the process, and finds it fun to spend every day doing things nobody else understands. Their approaches to conditioning are opposites, too. Ichiro's policy was to avoid building muscle in order to maintain flexibility, speed, and springiness. Ohtani, who also needs to handle two-way play, builds muscle instead. The world is full of dichotomies, but you can become the best in the world by going all the way in either direction. There isn't just one right path to becoming somebody or one right form of achieving something. You just need to find your own way up the mountain. That, Tanaka said, is the takeaway from this year's good news. Okui responded that while Japanese people may be at a physical disadvantage, the fact that there are many ways up the mountain, including building habits, is a lesson worth learning. The subtitles cut off here, and the planned career discussion and audience Q&A are not included.