Rebecca Patterson
Rebecca Patterson is a macro investor and researcher who studies where politics and policy collide with markets, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-host, with Sebastian Mallaby, of its weekly podcast The Spillover. Across more than twenty-five years she has sat in most of the seats that matter to that question: chief investment strategist at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund; chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, where she oversaw some $85bn; and, before that, fifteen years at JPMorgan running the private bank’s global currency and commodity desk and serving as chief investment strategist in its asset-management arm. She is an independent director at Vanguard and, like her co-host, came to finance from journalism.
That trader’s-eye background is what she brings to the show: where Mallaby argues from the history of institutions and technology, Patterson reads the tape — how a given piece of news actually moves bond yields, currencies, and credit spreads, and which market plumbing is most likely to crack under stress.
In the wiki
- The AI Bubble, the Productivity Paradox, and India's AI Summit — with Mallaby on whether the AI trade is euphoric, the productivity-measurement puzzle, and India’s bid for a place in the race (The Spillover, February 2026)
- Private Credit's Black Box and Why It's Not 2008 But Still Risky — her market-plumbing read on the private-credit wobble: redemption gates, mark-to-model, and where the run risk actually sits (The Spillover, March 2026)
- The Modern Oppenheimer, Demis Hassabis, and the Quest for Superintelligence — she interviews Mallaby on his Hassabis book, then answers a mailbag on the dollar as reserve currency, the euro, and stablecoins (The Spillover, April 2026)
- The Dollar Hedge Debate, Gold's Track Record vs. Bitcoin's Potential — her evidence-led case for gold over Bitcoin: a return is not diversification (The Spillover, July 2026)
- Sebastian Mallaby — her co-host on The Spillover