Odd Lots
Episodes
This Is How New York City Gets Its Produce
04 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Certain people claim that New York City has a reputation for... not having the best fruits and vegetables. This is a controversial point and not every...
Hyun Song Shin on the New Financial Stability Risks
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At Jackson Hole, the Kansas City Fed's annual gathering for economists and central bankers, there's a lot of focus on the short-term path of monetary ...
Adam Posen Has a Warning on the Danger of Bidenomics
30 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Biden administration has undertaken an aggressive effort to revitalize domestic manufacturing, particularly in areas like semiconductors and green...
Barry Eichengreen on the New Era of High Government Debt
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, the absolute level of government debt around the world has risen dramatically. The Covid emergency unleashed a huge wave of public-se...
Darrell Duffie On How to Fix the World’s Most Important Market
28 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the global financial system, US Treasuries play a special role. They’re basically as close to cash as a financial asset can get and their yields ...
This Is What We Just Learned In Jackson Hole
26 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave his much-anticipated speech at the Kansas City Fed Monetary Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyom...
BONUS EPISODE: Bloomberg Surveillance in Jackson Hole
25 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Bloomberg Surveillance comes to the Odd Lots podcast! Listen for a special edition of Bloomberg Surveillance from the Federal Reserve's annual sympo...
Why Tractor Supply Is One of the Most Interesting Retailers On the Planet
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tractor Supply Co. has grown from a small mail order business set up in the 1930s into the biggest farm and ranch retailer operating in the US. Along ...
The Four Big Structural Forces Holding Back China's Economy
21 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese economy is in a slump. Industrial production is down. Retail sales are down. The property industry continues to struggle. The People's Ban...
Here's How the New Weight Loss Drugs Could Change Everything
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's a new class of weight-loss drugs in town. GLP-1 medications including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro were created to treat diabetes but have sin...
How Economic Complexity Explains Which Countries Become Rich
14 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why do some countries become rich while others stagnate? And can you predict which countries become wealthy in advance of them actually increasing the...
Paul Krugman on UFOs, AI and Room Temperature Superconductors
11 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There have been a number of news stories lately that seem straight out of science fiction. We've heard claims before Congress that the government is s...
The Two Strikes That Ground Hollywood to a Halt
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Movie and TV productions have come to a nearly complete stop in Hollywood. Both the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America are on strike...
What the UAW Wants From Its Fight With the Big Three
07 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On September 14, the contract between the United Auto Workers and the Big Three carmakers (GM, Ford and Stellantis) is expiring — and the possibilit...
The Chinese EV Maker That's Selling More Cars Than Tesla
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the US, Tesla remains far and away the dominant maker of electric vehicles. But on a global scale, the situation is much more competitive. Over the...
DOJ's Jonathan Kanter on the Bidenomics Approach to Antitrust
31 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A key plank of the Biden administration's "Bidenomics" involves stronger antitrust enforcement and we've seen the White House empower agencies like th...
The Massive Shift Underway in the US Banking System
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Silicon Valley Bank imploded, there was a lot of talk about the future of regional and community banks in the United States. Can they compete wit...
Are We About to See the Shortest Housing Cycle Ever?
24 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, as the Federal Reserve hiked rates to the highest levels in decades, there were lots of warnings about an imminent collapse in the US housi...
How to Build the Ultimate GPU Cloud to Power AI
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial Intelligence is all the rage right now and most of the investor excitement has so far been focused on the companies providing the hardware ...
Josh Wolfe on Where Investors Will Make Money in AI
17 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're in the midst of an AI mania of sorts. In public markets, investors are placing bets on the companies perceived as being the winners of this new ...
Understanding the Real Fight Over Water in Arizona
14 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Arizona recently announced new constraints on housing development in the areas around Phoenix. At issue is water rights and scarcity, which have been ...
An Arizona Farmer on How to Grow Alfalfa in the Middle of the Desert
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Due to a combination of drought, climate change and booming growth, Arizona is facing looming water scarcity. But for all the sprawl and population in...
Richard Koo on China's Risk of 'Japanification'
10 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Koo literally wrote the book on balance sheet recessions, or the idea that large levels of debt can weigh on future growth for years and even ...
What It Really Takes to Convert an Office Building Into Apartments
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Big cities like New York have two real estate problems. Housing is scarce and office buildings are empty (or at least under-utilized.) So there would ...
Jared Bernstein on the Next Stage of Bidenomics
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Biden recently made it clear that what we're seeing play out in the economy now is the result of "Bidenomics." The current expansion has def...
Bridgewater's Greg Jensen on AI, Inflation and What Markets Are Getting Wrong
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Every industry is trying to figure out just how AI or Large Language Models can be used to do business. But Bridgewater Associates, the world's larges...
Zoltan Pozsar on His Next Big Move and the Coming Monetary Divorce
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zoltan Pozsar has built a reputation for covering the intricacies of money markets. For the past eight years, he published those insights as a strateg...
What Ben McKenzie Learned When He Started Investigating Crypto
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When the pandemic struck in 2020, the actor Ben McKenzie (who you might know from The OC and Gotham) had a lot of time on his hands. And like a lot of...
James Montier Explains Why Corporate Profits Keep Going Up
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
More than a decade ago, GMO strategist James Montier published a paper predicting that corporate profit margins were destined to come down from "noseb...
Why Saudi Arabia Is Spending Millions on Soccer Stars
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Saudi Arabia has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars snapping up international soccer stars in recent months, including legendary players li...
This Is How Finance and Banking Worked Before Computers
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're used to thinking of modern finance as practically synonymous with computers. Banks are basically just big collections of Excel spreadsheets, kee...
Josh Younger on the Surprising Origins of Eurodollars and Petrodollars
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
De-dollarization is all the rage right now, with lots of talk about whether the US currency will be able to maintain its dominant status in the global...
Steve Eisman on Banks, AI and His Next Big Bet
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Eisman is known for having bet against the housing market prior to the Great Financial Crisis in a trade immortalized by Michael Lewis in The Bi...
The Eyeball-Scanning Plan Designed to Save Us From AI
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There are all kinds of societal concerns emerging out of the rise of artificial intelligence. Will it put us all out of work? Will fraudsters be able ...
This Is What Happens When Governments Build Software
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of frustration about the government's ability to build things in the US. Subways. Bridges. High-speed rail. Electricity transmission. Bu...
Brad Setser on How World Trade Changed In the Last Three Years
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A lot has happened since we last spoke to Brad Setser in April 2020, towards the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. For a start, Setser was appointed...
Isabella Weber on the Big Rethink of Inflation
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, Odd Lots talked about the idea of companies taking advantage of bottlenecks and other disruptions to raise their prices. Since then...
Jim Grant Sees an Era of Higher Rates That Could Last For Years
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you think interest rates seem high right now, you might be operating with too short of a perspective. For a longer-term perspective, you'd want to ...
Counterfeiting Scandals Keep Slamming the Commodities Market
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, it emerged that the London Metals Exchange had been holding a bunch of bags filled with stones instead of the nickel needed to back...
This Is How We'll Know If the CHIPS Act Is Working
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The US government is spending billions of dollars to build out state-of-the-art domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity. But spending money is n...
Slack Founder Stewart Butterfield on AI, Software, and the End of the Tech Boom
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Stewart Butterfield has been at the forefront of two epochal turning points for tech. First, he was the co-founder of the photo sharing site Flickr, t...
On the Debt Ceiling, the White House Is Doing What It Said It Wouldn't Do
24 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, then-Vice President Biden had a front row seat to a bruising debt ceiling standoff between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boeh...
What Needs to Happen for the Renminbi to Seriously Compete With the Dollar
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of discussion these days about de-dollarization and whether the US dollar will lose its standing as the world's sole reserve currency. G...
We're In the Midst of Trucking Bloodbath 2.0
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A couple of years ago, it was an amazing time to have a truck or be a trucker. The goods economy was absolutely booming. Prices were booming. Supply c...
CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam on the Fight to Regulate Crypto
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're still in the middle of a "crypto winter" with the price of coins well off their highs from back in 2021. But debates over how to regulate them a...
The CME's Terry Duffy on the Big Risks He's Seeing Now
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Terry Duffy is the chairman and CEO of CME Group, the world's biggest derivatives exchange and a trading behemoth whose name is synonymous with Chicag...
Introducing - Spellcaster: The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Coming soon: When nerdy gamer Sam Bankman-Fried rocketed to fame as the world’s richest 29-year-old, he pledged to donate his billions to good cause...
Ben Smith on the End of an Era for Digital Media
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 2010s saw the rise of a number of digital media startups like BuzzFeed News, Gawker Media, Vice, Business Insider and others who were set to usher...
The Fed Hiked Rates Rapidly and Housing Is as Broken as Ever
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Reserve has hiked rates rapidly over the last 18 months, and yet inflation remains surprisingly high. Perhaps what's most surprising is th...
Inside the Battle for Chips That Will Power Artificial Intelligence
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nobody knows for sure who is going to make all the money when it comes to artificial intelligence. Will it be the incumbent tech giants? Will it be st...
Care Work in the United States Has Been Broken for Years
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Disruptions caused by the pandemic have revealed deep flaws in our supply chain for physical goods. Certain market failures that have been left to fes...
The White Oak Shortage That Could Ruin the Bourbon Industry
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Some supply chain crises are acute. A bottleneck at the ports. A shortage of semiconductors. These can get fixed, to some extent, with concerted polic...
Why the Desire to Move Away From the Dollar Is Getting Real
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There's been a lot of discussion about the possibility of "de-dollarization," or the idea that the world could move away from using the dollar as the ...
Here Are the Signs of a Slow-Moving Credit Crunch
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The big headlines from March's banking crisis have receded and balances at some of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending facilities, like the discou...
Pot Lots Part 3: Righting the Wrongs of the Past
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Marijuana has been legalized in a number of places in the US now, but what New York is trying to do with its legal weed market is somewhat unique. Not...
Pot Lots Part 2: The Business of Big Cannabis
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In some respects, selling legalized cannabis should be like many other consumer goods business. You make a product people recognize and then sell it t...
Pot Lots Part 1: Birth of a Marijuana Market
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
New York City has long been seen as a holy grail for the legal weed industry, with millions of potential customers. And last year New York state start...
So Much of the World Economy Has Been Going in Reverse
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over time, we expect the world to get richer. Yes, there are disruptions and setbacks (and we have seen several large ones in the last few years) but ...
Eight Months In, What Is Happening With Biden's CHIPS Act?
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In August of last year, the White House signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a bipartisan effort to bring more advanced semiconductor manufacturi...
What Commercial Real Estate Stress Means for Banks and Bond Funds
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the last month or so, two macro risks have become top of mind for investors. One is the stability of regional banks. The other is the weakness in t...
Nassim Taleb on What Bitcoiners, Anti-Vaxxers and Deadlift Maxis All Get Wrong
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nassim Taleb has never been shy about expressing his viewpoints on a wide range of topics. But lately he's been getting into verbal tussles with peopl...
The NYC Landlord Who Says the "Golden Age" of Being a Landlord Is Over
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the most part, being a landlord, particularly in a major city, has been a good business to be in. Rents historically just go up — as do property...
Matt King Sees a $1 Trillion Liquidity Drain Heading for Markets
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the big mysteries in markets right now is why risk assets rallied so strongly into the new year even as policymakers were adamant that they wou...
Betsy Cohen On Tech Investing and How SVB Failed Banking 101
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The tech world is in a precarious moment. Valuations are down. The IPO window seems shut. SPACs are a thing of the past. And the industry's pre-eminen...
Is It Time For Public Checking Accounts at the Fed?
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Silicon Valley Bank failed, the government stepped in and guaranteed that all accounts — even those well above the FDIC threshold for deposit i...
Where Stress Is Showing in the $20 Trillion Commercial Real Estate Market
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Markets are suddenly on edge due to strains in the financial system. But banks aren't the only source of stress. Pockets of the commercial real estate...
What the Dramatic Boom in Zero-Day Options Means for Stocks
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zero- and one-day options give investors the ability to bet on the daily moves of the S&P 500. In recent months, both big institutional investors ...
The Regulatory Blunder That Gave Us the Silicon Valley Bank Disaster
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever a major financial institution collapses and needs a bailout, it's easy to say, "Where were the regulators?" But that's only a useful question...
Dan Davies On What Brought Down Silicon Valley Bank
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Silicon Valley bank collapsed at record speed. And the world is still trying to figure out what went wrong? How did a bank with a strong history, a st...
How the Federal Reserve Grew More Powerful Than Anyone Ever Imagined
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the short term, the Federal Reserve's job is straightforward. Raise or lower interest rates in order to meet its employment and inflation targets. ...
Companies Are Telling Us the Real Reason They're Still Raising Prices
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The persistence of inflation is a bit of a mystery to economists. Many of the shocks of the last few years have faded. And the Fed has raised rates ag...
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the Two Big Challenges Facing Crypto
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Crypto is facing two distinct, yet related problems. First, a bunch of people have lost money due to the decline in coin prices and the collapse of ma...
How Empty Land in the Arizona Desert Gets Turned Into Homes
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Homebuilders have experienced major whiplash over the last few years. The pandemic originally caused them to slam the brakes on new development. Then ...
Why We Don't Build More Apartments for Families
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The vast majority of urban apartments in the US are geared towards single occupants, couples without kids or maybe young professionals with roommates....
Why Interest Rates on Savings Accounts Are Still So Low
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Reserve has been raising benchmark borrowing rates at the fastest pace in decades, but the interest rate paid out to millions of people wi...
A Former CIA Official on One Year of Russia's War in Ukraine
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine in an event that set off a chain reaction of both geopolitical and economic consequences. So what have...
Brian Deese on the Legislative Legacy of President Biden's First Two Years
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
President Biden came into office with an incredibly slim legislative majority. And yet despite just 50 Democratic seats in the Senate, the first two y...
This Is What Happens if the US Actually Hits the Debt Ceiling
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The US is in the middle of another debt ceiling fight. The expectation is that it will get lifted before we hit the so called "drop dead" date — but...
What Happens Now to All the Laid Off Tech Workers?
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The US labor market looks rock solid. The unemployment rate is at its lowest level in 50 years, while layoffs continue to trend downward. But there's ...
Jan Toporowski Explains Why Capitalists Dislike Full Employment
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, the work of John Maynard Keynes experienced a revival, as people sought answers to the problem of sluggish ...
Introducing: Foundering - The John McAfee Story
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The new season of Bloomberg's Foundering podcast retraces the life and gruesome death of John McAfee. In the 1980s and ’90s, the McAfee name was syn...
Fabio Natalucci on How to Think About Financial Risk Right Now
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the fastest pace in decades in 2022. But despite the rapid shift in borrowing costs, not much in the fina...
Steve Eisman on the 'Paradigm Shift' Happening in Markets Right Now
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After a decade of dominance, 2022 saw tech stocks badly underperform the rest of the market. However, so far in 2023, tech stocks and other speculatio...
Viktor Shvets Declares Victory for Team Transitory and the Soft Landing
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It was looking bad there for awhile for Team Transitory. Anyone who had previously even uttered the word "transitory" in regards to inflation was regr...
The "Big Shift" That's Finally Causing Rents to Fall
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rent inflation went wild in 2021 and 2022, turning it into one of the most substantial drivers of overall inflation. But good news: it seems pretty cl...
Why Corporate America Still Runs on Ancient Software That Breaks
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Southwest Airlines had a disastrous holiday season, thanks in part to a software bug that left crews out of place and grounded thousands of flights. B...
What The Heck Is Happening With the Price of Eggs?
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The price of eggs rose 60% in 2022, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Meanwhile, wholesale egg prices are up 300% in the last year, creating a ...
The 'Widowmaker' Crypto Trade That Helped Blow Up an Industry
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last year, numerous things have gone wrong for the crypto industry. (Too many to list.) But one thing we've learned is that there's an incred...
Isabella Weber On a New Way to Think About Inflation
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In economics, there tends to be two dominant ways of thinking about inflation. Either you agree with Milton Friedman, who described inflation as alway...
Ex-Logger Aims to Beat Elon Musk in Electric Trucks
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While electric vehicle use is growing rapidly, the internal combustion engine remains completely dominant in the world of heavy trucks. At some point ...
Why Banks Are Suddenly Borrowing From the Fed's Discount Window
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The discount window at the Federal Reserve allows banks to borrow money at an above-market rate in exchange for high-quality collateral. The facility ...
Neil Dutta and Conor Sen on the Chances of a US Soft Landing
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The most recent jobs report has revived talk that the US economy might pull off the fabled "soft landing." Jobs are still growing nicely and the unemp...
What Truckers Already Know About the Future of Electronic Worker Surveillance
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to work from home, and other trends, workers are being electronically monitored by their bosses like never before. But some industries have had...
Flexport CEO Says a ‘Great Recession’ Is Here for Global Shipping
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Back in early 2021, Ryan Petersen was one of the first people we spoke to on the Odd Lots podcast about supply chain snarls and high shipping costs. T...
The AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer All Your Questions
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this special episode, Tracy and Joe reach into the mailbag and take some questions about Odd Lots, and the things regularly covered on the show. We...
Odd Lots Revisited: Our First Episode with Tom Keene
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Odd Lots is seven years old now, having started in late 2015. When it began, we really didn't know what the show was going to be or be about. To end 2...
Why the Price of Plastic Is Crashing After a Record Surge
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic is in almost everything and prices of polypropylene, polyethylene and a host of other polymers went nuts in 2021, surging to record highs. Now...
What a Bakery Can Tell Us About the Economy Right Now
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot about macroeconomic trends on the podcast. What's happening with inflation? Is the labor market too hot? Will there be a recession next ...
Where Things Stand Now With Inflation and the Fed
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week was a big one. On Tuesday, we got a CPI report that came in substantially cooler than expected. Then on Wednesday, the Fed hiked 50 basis po...
Younger and Menand Explain How We Got the Modern Banking System
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The US financial system today is pretty much taken as a given. We have the Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates and provides various liquidity b...