If the combination of inflation, Russia’s war on Ukraine and a surging dollar don’t send the world into recession, disastrous policy mistakes surely could. That’s the increasingly gloomy outlook among some who gathered in Washington this week for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the Institute of International Finance. One pessimist, Martin Wolf, a longtime columnist at the Financial Times , predicts a deep downturn in Europe, one that includes the UK. That country has been dragged...
Oct 13, 2022•36 min•Season 9Ep. 2
The UK's politics and policies have always been a bit quirky. But international investors have long trusted that the country would, in the words of prominent British economist Malcolm Barr, see itself from point A to point B. Lately, those investors could be forgiven for calling that premise into question. A series of unforced errors by new Prime Minister Liz Truss and her financial team have shaken confidence in Britain's leadership at a time when its public is reeling from soaring energy and m...
Oct 06, 2022•31 min•Season 9Ep. 1
Young people unable to buy homes because of stratospheric price increases are cheering the downturn in some housing markets around the world. But they'd better be careful what they wish for: Frothy housing prices, empty office buildings and even a refusal to pay mortgages by many Chinese have the potential to turn a global economic slowdown into something much worse. In this season's final episode, we explore the confounding real estate market, where prices in many countries have reached unsusta...
Jul 28, 2022•38 min•Season 8Ep. 17
Despite all the highfalutin advances in automation and just-in-time inventory, Covid-19 has still managed to upend the world's supply chains. But all this pandemonium may be a dress rehearsal for future chaos, courtesy of challenges such as political unrest and the climate crisis, warns one author who's tracked the global flow of goods. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the problems plaguing the retailers, warehouse operators, truckers and shippers who labor to get widgets from factory f...
Jul 21, 2022•31 min•Season 7Ep. 16
Dispirited by pandemic lockdowns and a massive real estate crisis, today’s young Chinese workers are dreaming less about becoming super-rich entrepreneurs and more about the workaday lives of bureaucrats. Their new distaste for private-sector jobs has caught the attention of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which is trying to change opinions and recruit for private-sector manufacturing jobs that are going begging. In this week’s episode of “Stephanomics,” reporter Tom Hancock discusses the un...
Jul 14, 2022•29 min•Season 7Ep. 15
The global appeal of Italy’s fashion, food and sports cars long ago proved that the country’s businesses have few equals when it comes to marketing abroad. But selling Italians themselves on the merits of the nation’s economy has been a bigger challenge. Italy’s politicians, central bankers and academics contend the global capital of style can’t reach its full potential until it persuades more of its own citizens to seek employment. In this week’s episode of “Stephanomics,” reporter Alessandra M...
Jul 07, 2022•30 min•Season 7Ep. 14
The US Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn the federal right to an abortion will have profound effects on American women. And while prime ministers and presidents of the UK, France, Belgium and New Zealand criticized the ruling as a setback for women’s rights, it’s actually part of what observers call a global retrenchment when it comes to gender equality. In this week’s episode we explore the economic and societal fallout of the end of Roe v. Wade , the landmark 1973 ruling holding t...
Jun 30, 2022•28 min•Season 7Ep. 13
As the US, UK and other wealthy nations grouse about the prospect of stagflation and risk of recession, people in some emerging nations are facing more perilous questions about how to find medicine to stay alive. A financial crisis gripping Sri Lanka’s 23 million people threatens to spread across the developing world and sweep up hundreds of millions more. This week, we explore profoundly different economic climates. The first are emerging markets exemplified by Sri Lanka and burdened with pande...
Jun 23, 2022•26 min•Season 7Ep. 12
US inflation is at a 40-year high and the UK is effectively in recession as demand slows for Chinese-made goods. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, though addressing the British economy, could have been speaking for the whole world when he said in a recent interview that “we’re going to have a difficult period, and we’ve got to be absolutely clear with people it is going to be difficult, and the government cannot solve every problem.” On the heels of a massive interest ra...
Jun 16, 2022•25 min•Season 7Ep. 11
Much of the appeal of McDonald’s comes from the chain’s consistency. A cheeseburger in the US or a McSpicy Chicken in India should taste the same every time. But what if a business had wildly different outcomes depending on which leader was making decisions? Renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this variability “noise,” and suggests controlling it is key to ensuring the best decisions get made. In this week’s episode, Stephanie interviews Kahneman, a best-sel...
Jun 09, 2022•27 min•Season 7Ep. 10
It seems like things could hardly get worse for President Joe Biden, who faces 8.3% inflation, a baby formula shortage and, according to the latest Gallup poll, a 41% job approval rating. Not to mention managing a global face-off with Russia. But now it looks as though another crisis is forming in his backyard. The US is hosting the Summit of the Americas next week in Los Angeles, and Mexico and a few other Latin American nations are threatening to boycott, and even block any progress it might y...
Jun 02, 2022•29 min•Season 7Ep. 9
While the world's multimillionaires and billionaires (and multibillionaires) ponder inflation and supply shortages in the Swiss Alps, they might get a better view from the dusty landscape of Midland, Texas. Residents of the oil town have lived through inflation around 10% or higher for six months. Even worse, the forces driving up prices there may take months or even years to unwind. Bloomberg reporter Katia Dmitrieva takes listeners to that West Texas boom-and-bust community, home to the highes...
May 26, 2022•41 min•Season 7Ep. 8
Touted as a potential prime minister not long ago, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak's star has been falling fast of late. Some of the blame can be placed on inflation hovering at a 40-year high and embarrassing headlines about his rich wife's taxes. To resurrect his political career, Sunak may want to help Britons out of their financial funk while persuading them he's not disastrously out of touch. Sunak tells Stephanie how the UK government is trying to alleviate the pain inflicted...
May 19, 2022•32 min•Season 7Ep. 7
The old axiom about the sins of the father being visited upon their children got a shocking rebuttal this week, when Ferdinand Marcos Jr. won a landslide victory in the Philippines's presidential election. Whether Marcos will embrace progressive economic and social values or take after his father, the late dictator and kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos, is anyone's guess. Singapore-based Bloomberg Opinion columnist Daniel Moss explains how the younger Marcos deftly sidestepped press interviews a...
May 12, 2022•33 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Persistently higher inflation and interest rates are probably in the offing as the world transitions to a greener economy. That’s hardly a selling point for politicians pushing climate-friendly policies, but it’s one they’ll have to cozy up to, says Isabel Schnabel, an executive board member of the European Central Bank. Unfortunately, she adds, before politicians will show enough urgency toward the threat of global warming, “it really seems that bad things have to happen...
May 06, 2022•38 min•Season 7Ep. 5
It’s hard to imagine a more chaotic world than the one we’re in right now—what with Russia’s war on Ukraine, a Covid-19 pandemic that won’t quit and the lockdowns spreading across China as a result. Now, add to the mix a debt crisis that’s threatening to cripple emerging markets. In the words of a former International Monetary Fund official earlier this month, “We can see this train wreck coming towards us.” Washington-based reporter Eric Martin ex...
Apr 28, 2022•21 min
When visiting El Salvador, be sure to bring sunscreen, a long-lens camera to memorialize its bountiful biodiversity and … Bitcoin. But have some U.S. dollars on hand just in case local merchants don’t accept it. On this week’s episode, we dive into the disparate ways in which global leaders approach digital currencies, from the Salvadoran embrace to the tentative exploration by central banks. Tiny El Salvador, population 6.5 million, was the first country to make Bit...
Apr 21, 2022•29 min•Season 7Ep. 3
Last year, Larry Summers famously shot down one of the Federal Reserve's favorite buzzwords, "transitory." This year, he's taking aim at "soft landing." The Harvard University professor, former Treasury secretary and paid Bloomberg contributor says a combination of high inflation and low unemployment historically has spawned a recession. So, he's skeptical that the Fed can chart a path that will see the country out of its inflationary funk without causing an economic downturn. Once again, Summer...
Apr 14, 2022•32 min•Season 7Ep. 2
We may live in a global economy, but beyond the war in Ukraine, what's front-of-mind for policymakers in the U.S., Europe and China is very different. For China it’s Covid-19; for Europe, it’s the price of energy; and for the U.S., it's inflation. In the first episode of the new season, Stephanie Flanders takes us on a tour of the world economy, opening a window on the top concerns in all three regions. Bloomberg Chief Economist Tom Orlik reveals what’s behind his growth forecasts and how geopol...
Apr 07, 2022•37 min•Season 7Ep. 1
With his poll numbers falling, U.S. President Joe Biden is under pressure to do something—anything—to get inflation under control. That’s led his administration to scrutinize the prices you pay at the grocery store, even if some critics argue alleged price-gouging by consumer products giants is a convenient bogeyman. This week’s episode dives into the debate around corporate consolidation and whether it’s giving too much power to those companies. First, Bloomberg editor Molly Smith visits a New ...
Jan 27, 2022•28 min•Season 61Ep. 17
When facing an economic crisis, the Fed's playbook normally skews toward juicing the economy too much rather than too little. After all, in the last go-round in 2007, being too stingy might have helped trigger a depression. Fifteen years later though, America's central bankers face the opposite problem: they need to move fast to cool inflation. That's one of the takeaways from a panel discussion among economists this week, moderated by Stephanie. With U.S. inflation at 7%, the Fed needs to do mo...
Jan 20, 2022•30 min
Closed schools. Empty shelves. Workers out sick. Almost two years after Covid-19 overturned the U.S. economy, "it's like deja vu all over again,'' in the words of baseball great and eminent wordsmith Yogi Berra. This week, we dive into how the omicron variant is likely to disrupt plans across America this winter. But we also explore how another country is bouncing back, as Stephanie chats with French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire about his nation's robust economic comeback. But first, senior r...
Jan 13, 2022•33 min•Season 6Ep. 15
With shortages at the grocery store and not enough people willing to work, 2022 is starting to look a lot like 2020. But beneath the ugly exterior, the world's economies have learned to cope with Covid's fallout, and the supply chain debacle in particular. One country is even thriving. In the first episode of the new year, we offer two fairly optimistic assessments. Bloomberg Senior Editor Brendan Murray shares with Stephanie Flanders how companies are adapting to the fast-spreading omicron vari...
Jan 06, 2022•29 min•Season 6Ep. 14
While still recovering from a coronavirus-induced recession, the U.S. may be rushing into a new downturn, this time thanks to inflation. Its economy faces no shortage of potential peril in 2022, Bloomberg chief economist Tom Orlik says, with the Federal Reserve looking set to raise interest rates to fight rising prices, and as Congress seems unlikely to pass any more big spending bills. That's one of the takeaways from the Stephanomics global preview of 2022, in which Stephanie and a panel of ex...
Dec 30, 2021•40 min
Economically at least, this holiday season feels a bit more like it belongs to Ebenezer Scrooge than Santa Claus. Amid a resurgent pandemic, there are shortages at the grocery store and the highest inflation in almost 40 years. So who better to sum up 2021 and forecast 2022 than Larry Summers, whose contrarian warnings about inflation have, at least at this point, largely proven accurate. On this special holiday edition of Stephanomics, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary shares with host Stephan...
Dec 23, 2021•24 min
The so-called great resignation that’s confounding businesses in the West has a counterpart in a most unlikely place: China. This week, we offer a double dose of China’s “lie flat” movement, which is challenging the nation’s historic industriousness, as well as a glimpse into how America’s massive pandemic bailout juiced spending, especially among historically disadvantaged groups. First, Hong Kong-based economics reporter Tom Hancock explains why many Chinese workers are suddenly whiling away t...
Dec 16, 2021•32 min•Season 6Ep. 11
It seems nothing can hurt the world's billionaires, not the worst pandemic in a century or a global recession. On this week's podcast, New York-based reporter Augusta Saraiva shares how the wealthiest only added to their fortunes as Covid-19 killed millions and flattened economies. Indeed, the super-rich accumulated $4.1 trillion just as 100 million of the planet's less fortunate fell into extreme poverty, according to estimates by the World Bank. Two years into the pandemic, some 2,750 billiona...
Dec 09, 2021•30 min•Season 6Ep. 10
Initially, Jerome Powell said the highest inflation in decades was going to be "transitory." This week, the world's most powerful central banker said the nebulous term should be retired. Such is the high-stakes guessing game going on at the Federal Reserve and the world's central banks, which risk losing public confidence should inflation continue to prove less, well, transitory than expected. This week, Stephanie delves into the messaging strategies of both central bankers and American corporat...
Dec 02, 2021•29 min•Season 6Ep. 9
This week we unpack two very different challenges facing global leaders: the climate crisis and domestic violence. First, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry joins host Stephanie Flanders to share why he thinks the Glasgow Climate Pact is more than just words on paper. Among other achievements, Kerry notes that countries representing most of the world’s gross domestic product agreed to cut methane emissions by 30% this decade. Such cuts to this dangerous greenhouse gas (if the...
Nov 25, 2021•33 min•Season 6Ep. 8
As if rising sea levels and fiercer cyclones weren't enough to worry about, the climate crisis is already cutting crop yields and could lead to widespread food shortages. That's the grave warning from the United Nations, which cautions that farmers won't meet a projected 50% increase in food demand by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions stay high. In a special episode, Stephanie Flanders tackles how to feed almost 10 billion people, the projected population of the planet in three decades. She turne...
Nov 19, 2021•30 min•Season 6Ep. 7
