Almost whichever way you measure it, the US has a lot of debt. And, with the Trump administration recently proposing a budget that would see US debt levels swell even further, it doesn't look like this issue is going away any time soon. In this episode, we speak with Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and the author of the new book, How Countries Go Broke . We talk about how he thinks about debt cycles, the catalyst for when high levels of debt become an ...
Mar 03, 2025•56 min
A week from today we will get the February jobs report and there are growing concerns that the US labor market is slowing. Already, the number of sectors adding jobs in this economy is on the decline. Meanwhile, the housing market continues to struggle. Add in the Department of Government Efficiency and worsening fiscal conditions in the state and local sector, and the government may prove to be a drag on employment. To talk about this and other macro developments, including possible tariffs, we...
Feb 28, 2025•18 min
The first month of the Trump administration has been noisy and novel by basically any measure. But perhaps the biggest shockwaves have been in the realm of geopolitics. Europeans were caught off guard by a recent speech given by Vice President JD Vance in Munich, calling into doubt the future of the Trans-Atlantic partnership. Meanwhile, when it comes to tariffs, the Trump administration has actually been tougher on Mexico and Canada than it has been on China. Then add into all of this the anxie...
Feb 27, 2025•51 min
The so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord” has suddenly become a hot topic on Wall Street, with some investors and analysts starting to take the idea more seriously, holding meetings with clients and publishing research notes about the rumored plan. A riff on the 1985 Plaza Accord — named for the hotel where it was devised — the idea is that the Trump administration could achieve its economic aims through a reordering of the financial system that would include a conscious effort t...
Feb 25, 2025•29 min
People love listening to stories about making it big, and there are no shortage of success stories in the world of global business. There's TSMC, which has grown to become the most important producer of semiconductors. There's Hermès, which has been a power player in luxury consumer goods for over a hundred years now. Or how about Starbucks, Berkshire Hathaway, Renaissance Technologies, or Ikea? The list goes on and on. But what actually makes a company great? And why do some businesses s...
Feb 24, 2025•44 min
Hedge funds are notorious for making big and sometimes risky trades. Banks, meanwhile, are supposed to be a lot more boring by comparison — for obvious reasons. But in recent years, we've seen banks like Silicon Valley Bank make some pretty bad bets themselves. Elham Saeidinezhad, an assistant economics professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, argues that banks have been turning into giant "synthetic hedge funds" by blending traditional lending activities with advanced financial ...
Feb 21, 2025•38 min
The US is a dominant force in a number of important industries, but it's been lagging behind in one crucial area: shipbuilding. Today, there are about 80 US-flagged ships involved in global trade, compared to more than 5,500 China-flagged vessels. The worry is that the US has been falling behind in this important component of international commerce, and that the country's entire economy could be at risk of being choked off. The SHIPS for America Act is a rare bipartisan proposal that aims to add...
Feb 20, 2025•46 min
For a long time, the world of derivatives trading was a niche thing, largely occupied by professional investors who used them for hedging purposes. During the pandemic and the Robinhood boom, the retail masses started discovering them, and activity exploded. Since then, the use of options, swaps and other levered positions has grown among both individual traders and the big professionals on Wall Street. There are countless influencers on social media promising "guaranteed" returns from various o...
Feb 17, 2025•51 min
The price of gold is basically at record highs. But what is it about gold that people love so much? Why have people always craved a metal that has no real industrial uses? And what does owning or wearing gold represent? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Maksud Agadjani, the founder of TraxNYC, a jewelry store based in NYC's Diamond District. You may recognize Maksud from the movie Uncut Gems, where he played a character similar to himself, working in the fast-moving world of precious...
Feb 14, 2025•47 min
We all know that the Federal Reserve tries to stabilize the economy by raising or cutting interest rates to balance inflation and unemployment. But the central bank’s mandate actually goes beyond monetary policy. The Fed is also responsible for reviewing and distributing billions of dollars in cash to banks all over the US. In this episode, we go deep inside the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to see how physical money actually gets moved around. Chicago Fed President Austan ...
Feb 13, 2025•27 min
The Trump administration has come into office with big ambitions to lower the size of the US deficit. So far, a number of small items have been identified as possible waste. But to meaningfully bend the curve on spending, there's widespread agreement that we'd have to look at things like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense. This is hard stuff to cut and it's something that governments around the world have long struggled with. How do you pull back on a prior commitment that your cons...
Feb 10, 2025•39 min
There's a pretty widespread recognition that the EU is facing a bunch of economic challenges right now. Growth has been slowing and, as in many places, there's been post-pandemic inflation. But there are other issues too, including a sense that Europe is falling behind when it comes to key technologies like AI and semiconductors. There's also an ongoing energy crisis and the recent threat of tariffs from the US. So how is the European Central Bank evaluating and responding to these cyclical and ...
Feb 07, 2025•46 min
This week, we saw shares of software maker Palantir soar after reporting earnings and describing demand for AI as being "untamed." But what does Palantir do, and what do they actually sell to the federal government? More importantly, how does the government actually spend money on things related to security and national defense? Last year, Palantir's CTO Shyam Sankar published a document called "The Defense Reformation," containing 18 theses about arms procurement and how it should be changed. W...
Feb 06, 2025•48 min
Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have gained access to a unit within the Treasury Department called the Bureau of Fiscal Service. But what does this unit actually do? How critical of a role does it play in the operations of government, and potentially, financial markets? On this episode, we speak with Nathan Tankus, the author of the Notes On The Crises newsletter. He explains both the technical aspect of this office, as well as the legal questions surrounding impound...
Feb 05, 2025•29 min
Over the weekend, President Trump announced that he was following through with his plan for aggressive tariffs. Imports from Canada and Mexico will now be hit with a 25% tariff, while China will get a 10% tariff. Although aggressive action was promised during the campaign, the news still rattled global financial markets, sending futures tumbling and the dollar spiking. Then, on Monday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that after a discussion with Trump, the tariffs aimed at her coun...
Feb 03, 2025•21 min
Marko Kolanovic was one of the biggest names in markets, earning the nickname 'Gandalf' for some eerily prescient calls over the years. But last July he left his role as JPMorgan's chief global market strategist and co-head of global research, after missing out on a pretty epic rally. Since then, stocks have climbed higher with valuations increasingly stretched. So what does Marko think of the market now? In this episode we talk about his outlook the market, the impact of AI including the new De...
Feb 03, 2025•49 min
Everyone knows by now that MicroStrategy looks a lot like a giant Bitcoin ETF. Its founder, Michael Saylor, is a huge supporter of the cryptocurrency and his company has been snapping up billions of dollars worth of the coins. The strategy has so far proved successful. In fact, MicroStrategy is trading at a market cap that's worth more than the value of its entire Bitcoin portfolio. How does this happen? And how long can it keep going? In this episode, we speak with Bloomberg Opinion's Matt Levi...
Jan 31, 2025•15 min
One of the primary drivers of elevated inflation — and the high cost of living in general — is the price of shelter. Whether you're buying or renting, housing is very expensive. Thankfully, over the last year, some of the increases we've seen in rent prices have slowed significantly, and we're not too far away from the pre-Covid pace. The bad news is that this might not last. A confluence of factors is coming together that may cause yet another shock to housing affordability. On this...
Jan 30, 2025•35 min
On Monday, the stock market tanked, seemingly in reaction to the emergence of DeepSeek, an open source AI model developed in China. Nvidia, the semiconductor giant that has been the largest winner of the AI boom, erased $589 billion in market cap, for the biggest one-day wipeout in US stock-market history . Other chipmakers and big tech giants also swooned. So how did DeepSeek do it? Is it a big threat to the American AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic? What does this say about export restricti...
Jan 28, 2025•21 min
The run-up in Big Tech stocks and all the hype over AI has put a bunch of investors on "bubble watch." One of those is Howard Marks , the co-founder and co-chair of Oaktree Capital Management. Howard is one of the most famous credit investors in the world, but he has experience in stock market bubbles too. Back in early 2000 — right before the Nasdaq peaked — he pointed out the frothiness in equities in a famous note titled "Bubble.com." So how does he actually spot a market bubble? ...
Jan 27, 2025•54 min
There's a lot of talk right now about concentration risk in US equities. For instance, the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 currently account for 38% of the total index, compared to just 17.5% a decade ago. And all the big winners have been tech companies like Apple, Nvidia, Meta, etc., prompting questions about whether investors are getting overly-enthused about AI. For some, it's also bringing back memories of the dotcom bubble. So just how concentrated is the US stock market right now? What e...
Jan 24, 2025•36 min
In theory, all of this AI spending has to deliver some kind of return. Companies (or other end users) will have to get tangible value from its outputs in order to justify the billions spent on research, chips, energy, and more. So what's actually happening at the corporate level? On this episode, we speak with Eric Glyman, who is the co-founder and CEO of Ramp, which helps corporations manage their expenses. As such, he has front row visibility in terms of what's actually being spent and who is ...
Jan 23, 2025•44 min
Tariffs, crypto, deregulation, tax cuts, protectionism, are just some of the things back on the table when Donald Trump returns to the Presidency. To help you plan for Trump's singular approach to economics, Bloomberg presents Trumponomics, a weekly podcast focused on the Trump administration's economic policies and plans. Editorial head of government and economics Stephanie Flanders will be joined each week by reporters in Washington D.C. and Wall Street to examine how Trump's policies are shap...
Jan 22, 2025•2 min
We all know that the new Trump administration is likely to be more friendly to the crypto industry than the Biden administration was. And we know that the industry has generally been rather supportive and enthusiastic about the change at the White House. But what's actually coming next? What does being favorable to the industry really look like in practice? What does the crypto industry actually want to see in terms of changing regulations under a new administration? On this episode, we speak wi...
Jan 20, 2025•42 min
Odd Lots has been exploring the history of the eurodollar market in a special three-part series hosted by Columbia Law School's Lev Menand and the New York Fed's Josh Younger. But why should we care about the origins of this market at all? How do eurodollars fit into the global financial system right now? And what role do they play in maintaining the dollar's reserve currency status? In this episode, we bring back Lev to give an update on the modern eurodollar market. We discuss why some policym...
Jan 17, 2025•34 min
In this special three-part series, Odd Lots is exploring the history of the eurodollar market. By the 1970s, eurodollars are hitting the headlines — and not in a good way. While this new form of money initially acted as a pressure valve for the Bretton Woods system, many now think the eurodollar market has spun out of control. What happens next — including Richard Nixon's decision to take the US off the gold standard — will not only shape the ultimate contours of today's eurodo...
Jan 16, 2025•38 min
In this special three-part series, Odd Lots is exploring the history of the eurodollar market. As we enter the turbulent 1960s, the eurodollar market has grown big enough to catch the eye of regulators. The Federal Reserve mounts a fact-finding mission to better explore this rapidly-expanding market. And soon, policymakers have to decide just how helpful eurodollars can be when it comes to solidifying and expanding the greenback's role in international finance at a time when the gold-backed doll...
Jan 15, 2025•43 min
At more than $10 trillion outstanding, the eurodollar market is one of the biggest forms of shadow banking activity out there. It's also one of the most interesting markets in existence, allowing non-US banks to hold and lend offshore dollars that effectively sit outside of the Federal Reserve's control. But where did eurodollars actually come from? Why did the US allow these "shadow dollars" to exist at all? And what do eurodollars mean for the greenback's role in the global financial system? I...
Jan 14, 2025•34 min
Regardless of your political ideology, it's easy to agree that government should work well; that it should be able to hire talented officials, and build things in a timely, cost-effective manner. Of course, what that means in practice is open for debate, and different people will have different priorities. But at the moment, there are reasons to believe the public sector isn't operating optimally. Things move incredibly slow in many cases. Software systems are often old and extremely costly, and...
Jan 13, 2025•48 min
In the 1950s, a businessman, looking for a new way to settle his lunch tab, sparked a payments revolution and paved the way for today’s cashless economy. Now, the growing use of stablecoins like USDC is leading businesses and consumers to an era of digital payments that’s even faster and cheaper than a credit card. This episode is sponsored by Coinbase. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 12, 2025•17 min
