There are lots of famous debt crises in history, but the story of Iraq's government debt build-up in the 1980s and subsequent restructuring in the early 2000s is probably one of the most unusual. Iraq transformed from a net creditor to a net borrower in a single decade, tapping a bunch of unusual sources (including funds linked to the CIA) for money to finance war against Iran. All that borrowing eventually culminated in one of the biggest debt restructurings in history. On this episode of the O...
Mar 02, 2020•53 min
Apple's recent revenue warning reminded the world of how exposed the company is to China, and in particular its factories. As the coronavirus continues to shutter huge swaths of the Chinese economy, this is a potential risk for numerous companies beyond just Apple. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Dan Wang, a China tech industry analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics about how this, along with pressure on Huawei, are putting extraordinary pressure on the Chinese supply chain. See omnystudi...
Feb 26, 2020•38 min
One of the best recent movies was Uncut Gems, in which Adam Sandler plays a Diamond District jeweler with an addiction to gambling and risk. It turns out, one of the workers in Sandler's shop was played by an actual, real-life jewelry dealer. On this week's episode, we speak with Maksud Agadjani, the founder and owner of TraxNYC, which sells a range of items, from traditional bracelets and necklaces to highly customized, 3D-printed items for celebrities. Agadjani talked to us about the movie, th...
Feb 24, 2020•44 min
Back in 2017, the World Bank issued the world's first pandemic bonds. The bonds are meant to shift some of the financial risk of a global pandemic on to investors, but they've been criticized for having 'triggers' that are too tough to generate payouts. Now, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, it's worth looking at how these bonds are structured and what they can tell us about the future of public-private partnerships in finance. In this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Olga Jonas...
Feb 17, 2020•29 min
Over the last decade or so, we've seen an incredible rise in so-called passive investing. While definitions differ over what this means, we've seen more and more money poured into index funds (which own every stock in a given basket). Meanwhile, money has been yanked away from money managers who attempt to select individual stocks. One school of thought argues that this is a positive, in part due to lower fees. But is there a dark side? On this week's episode, we speak to Mike Green of hedge fun...
Feb 10, 2020•45 min
There's a growing consensus that governments need to act more aggressively in using fiscal policy to stave off the next recession, and that monetary policy simply isn't powerful enough. But how do you actually go about it? What do you spend the money on, and how do you get politicians to disburse it in a timely manner? On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist who is now at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, on ways to systematize and automate an early ...
Feb 03, 2020•59 min
Even to this day, there are economists who don't understand money or don't think that money is an important aspect of the economy. They see the world as still operating essentially under a barter system, with money only there as a means of lubricating transactions. But this is precisely the opposite way you should be looking at things, according to this week's guest. Perry Mehrling is a Professor of International Political Economy at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, and he...
Jan 27, 2020•49 min
At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, there was a lot of talk about the need to change the world's energy usage in order to address climate change. While it's easy to get cynical about business leaders and politicians talking about sustainability on a mountaintop in Switzerland, it turns out that a lot is already happening right now. On the latest Odd Lots episode, we speak with journalist and analyst Gregor Macdonald, the editor of The Gregor Letter, about what's actually happening on th...
Jan 24, 2020•40 min
What's the connection between low global interest rates, Korean retail investors, and the U.S. options market? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we discuss the fascinating world of Korean structured notes with Benn Eifert of QVR Advisors. He explains how a very exotic type of investment sold to Korean retail investors could, through a series of hedging requirements, end up causing massive volatility in the market for S&P 500 options. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jan 20, 2020•51 min
Iran's stock market is one of the most unfamiliar equity markets in the world. With Iran under stringent U.S. sanctions, it's hard to even find data on where Iranian stocks are trading. Then there's geopolitical risk. This month the U.S. killed Iran's top general Qassem Soleimani and Iran retaliated by firing missiles at U.S.-Iraqi air bases, sparking a sell-off in global markets. So what happened to Iranian stocks in this time period? On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Maciej Woj...
Jan 13, 2020•36 min
Americans are paying more and getting less for their health care than ever before. On the new season of Prognosis, reporter John Tozzi explores what went wrong. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 09, 2020•2 min
From Argentina to Chile to Lebanon, we're seeing a high degree of political and economic uncertainty among emerging market economies. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Paul McNamara, a veteran fund manager at GAM Investments. McNamara explains why this moment is so turbulent, and what it will take to settle these economies down. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 06, 2020•32 min
The severity of the Great Financial Crisis took economists by surprise, particularly the ones who believed that markets were largely stable and self-regulating. So why did so many eminent thinkers get it so wrong? On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Lord Robert Skidelsky, an economic historian who is known for being the pre-eminent biographer of John Maynard Keynes. Skidelsky is the author of the new book “Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics”, and he tells us why...
Dec 30, 2019•42 min
When people think about Bitcoin, they often think about neo-goldbugs who hate inflation and the Federal Reserve. But beyond the financial case for it, there's a moral, human rights case as well. On this week's podcast, we talk with Alex Gladstein, the Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He explains why he sees Bitcoin as an essential tool in his fight for human rights all around the world. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 23, 2019•43 min
By this point, everybody knows that online dating is a massive phenomenon, reshaping the social habits of the young and the single. But perhaps people are still not appreciating the significance of it. On this week's podcast, we speak with Dan McMurtrie, a hedge fund manager, who has done significant research on the impact of online dating. Through his work, he has found huge potential ramifications in terms of family formation, economic development, commerce, and more. See omnystudio.com/listen...
Dec 16, 2019•49 min
Many people like to claim that the Federal Reserve is responsible for the high degree of leverage and speculation in the economy. But the mechanism via which this happens is often misunderstood. On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Srinivas Thiruvadanthai of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center about how the Fed's goal of inflation targeting contributed to a massive buildup in private debt. As he explains, the approach to minimizing the volatility of inflation at a low level created a...
Dec 09, 2019•32 min
For years, defaults were few and far between in China's corporate bond market. Most investors thought that the Chinese government would never let companies — whether they be state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or private businesses — actually default on their debt. But times have changed. Defaults by private companies have been rising and there's even a question mark over the implicit government guarantee in debt sold by SOEs. One state-owned enterprise in Tianjin has proposed a 64% haircut for bond ...
Dec 02, 2019•33 min
How do Millennials view investing and spending? How do the rising costs of healthcare, education, and housing affect their economic outlook? How does fear of climate change affect one's long-term life choices? These questions are crucial for understanding the perspective of Millennials as they increasingly enter middle age. On this week's episode, we speak with freelance writer Karen Ho about her perspective as both a member of this generation and a journalist who has covered their attitudes abo...
Nov 25, 2019•36 min
According to the website The Hendon Mob, the top tournament poker player of all time is the American Bryn Kenney, who has won a staggering $55.5 million. In fact, he got there in just the last six months, having won $20.5 million at a single tournament! So how did a former Magic: The Gathering player vault to the top of this leaderboard? On this week's episode of Odd Lots, Kenney explains how it all came about. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 18, 2019•35 min
Back in September, chaos erupted in short-term funding markets, as the cost for financial institutions to borrow reserves soared. Immediately a major debate broke out over whether this represented a systemic problem for the financial system or merely a technical problem with the "plumbing." Things have quieted down since September, but the debate hasn't stopped. And there's still no permanent fix. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we spoke with Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse, who has a reputation...
Nov 11, 2019•55 min
Where did the notion come from that the obligation of a company's management is to maximize shareholder returns, even if it means pain for workers? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Karen Ho, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, who can answer the above question. Unlike your typical anthropologist, she did her field work inside a Wall Street bank to discover how the specific culture of finance bled through to the real economy. See omnystudio.com/listener for p...
Nov 04, 2019•44 min
You probably haven't thought much about the Taiwanese life insurance industry. Why would you have? But they're among the most fascinating entities in the financial world. And for a long time they've been a source of incredible mystery. They've built up a gigantic position in foreign, US-dollar denominated assets in order to fund domestic liabilities denominated in Taiwanese Dollars. But how do they hedge this currency mismatch? Nobody has figured it out until now. On this week's podcast, we spea...
Oct 28, 2019•51 min
Bloomberg's Travel Genius podcast is back! After clocking another hundred-thousand miles in the sky, hosts Nikki Ekstein and Mark Ellwood have a whole new series of flight hacking, restaurant sleuthing, and hotel booking tips to inspire your own getaways—along with a who's who roster of itinerant pros ready to spill their own travel secrets. From a special episode on Disney to a master class on packing, we'll go high, low, east, west, and everywhere in between. The new season starts Nov. 6. See ...
Oct 25, 2019•1 min
Can the U.S. economy have a recession without it turning into a crisis? In the old days, such garden-variety recessions were fairly common. These days, less so. But why is this? And can we go back to the old-style soft recessions? The issue, arguably, is that private sector balance sheets (both debts and assets) have grown so large relative to incomes, that the value of financial assets swamp effects from changing incomes. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with David Levy of the Jerome Levy Fore...
Oct 21, 2019•43 min
It's well known that Japan has (until recently) been mired in years of mediocre economic growth. And policymakers and economists use Japan as a warning for how developed economies can enter into prolonged slumps. But has anyone learned the lessons of Japan? In our latest episode, we talk to Richard Koo of the Nomura Research Institute, about his concept of the "Balance Sheet Recession" and why developed economies with lots of debt don't behave the way they do in textbooks. He explains how the le...
Oct 14, 2019•41 min
On September 19, 2019, Odd Lots hosted its first-ever live event at the WNYC Greene Space in downtown New York City. With an all-star lineup of guests, the show featured convicted white-collar criminal Sam Antar, a panel on sovereign debt with Lee Buchheit and Brad Setser, and a discussion on MMT with Stephanie Kelton. We even had a surprise guest, SPY kid Kevin McGrath, not to mention two musical acts: country-singing economist Merle Hazard and a performance by Joe himself. Be sure to check out...
Oct 07, 2019•1 hr 45 min
Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics, returns to bring you another season of on-the-ground insight into the forces driving global growth and jobs today. From the cosmetics maker in California grappling with Donald Trump's tariff war, to the coffee vendor in Argentina burdened by the nation's never-ending crises, Bloomberg's 130-plus economic reporters and economists around the world head into the field to tell these stories. Stephanomics will also look hard at the solutions, in the le...
Oct 01, 2019•2 min
For years, China has experienced blistering growth. Driven by an investment-heavy economic model, this growth has limited household income while subsidizing business. This system worked extraordinarily well for years, but the system has recently been hitting its limits. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with Michael Pettis, a longtime China expert who serves as a finance professor at Peking University as well as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment. He explains why China must rebalance i...
Sep 30, 2019•41 min
History is littered with collapsed civilizations ranging from the Maya to Angkor Wat. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing business in it?. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing business in it? On this episode, we speak with previous Odd Lots guest, archaeologist Arthur Demarest, often described as the "real Indiana Jones" and who is also Ingram Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. Demarest has recently been applying business management con...
Sep 23, 2019•44 min
For years, people have been predicting the demise of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Although the U.S. economy has been shrinking as a share of the world's GDP, the dollar continues to grow ever more dominant. Yet its strength is increasingly cited as a factor behind economic problems around the world. On this week's Odd Lots, the economist David Beckworth, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, explains the dollar's persistent and growing strength. See omnystudio.com/listener...
Sep 16, 2019•33 min
