Big Take

Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, US-led sanctions have incalculably changed its economy – but haven’t ended the war. Treasury’s chief sanctions economist says US efforts are working. But one analyst, who was at Russia’s central bank until he fled in 2022, says Russia’s economy is very much alive. In this episode of the Big Take DC, we find out about Russia’s “brain drain,” how its economy w...

The US and other countries say a deeper connection has been forged over a new arms trade between Russia and North Korea. They accuse North Korea of providing Russia with ballistic missiles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition – supplies Russia desperately needs to continue its war in Ukraine.  Both North Korea and Russia deny that an arms trade is underway. But as Bloomberg’s Jon Hers...

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur just after midnight on March 8, 2014. Aviation officials lost contact with the flight less than an hour later. MH370 never made it to its destination, and the 239 people on board were never found. Ten years later, what happened to the plane is still aviation’s biggest mystery. In the wake of the accident, regulators proposed a key safety chan...

For years, it seemed like Papua New Guinea was on a course to stamp out malaria. In 2010, the total number of suspected malaria cases in Papua New Guinea was 1.7 million. By 2015, the number had been cut nearly in half. Experts believed the country could see a malaria-free future as soon as 2030. But then, something changed—and cases started climbing again, as quickly as they had fallen.  In today...

Bill Ackman has had a big year. His constant posting and vocal condemnation of antisemitism on college campuses has won him over a million followers on X (and more than a few critics). Meanwhile, his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, has netted him $610 million in earnings.  Where Ackman’s online strategy is loud, Bloomberg wealth reporter Tom Maloney says the hedge fund manager’s fi...

America’s use of sanctions has grown by almost 1,000% since 9/11. So why isn’t Congress giving the office in charge of them more resources? Today on the Big Take DC podcast, host Saleha Mohsin talks to John Smith, a former director of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, and Bloomberg National Security editor Nick Wadhams about OFAC’s scrappy operation and why lawmakers aren’t giving it more t...

The commercial real estate market has been upended by changing office habits and rising interest rates. For years, lenders and global investors did not have to confront these plunging building values. But with deals picking up again, the reality can no longer be ignored. On today's Big Take podcast, Bloomberg real estate reporters Natalie Wong and Patrick Clark share how these losses may ripple ac...

American voters are so disillusioned by their options in the presidential election that pollsters have come up with a term for it: “Double-hater.” These are people who don’t like President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, who leads the race for the GOP nomination. And yet, when asked by the Big Take DC podcast if an outsider candidate could break through in 2024, Ralph Nader, who ran fo...

The US power grid has long been under pressure. But now, aging infrastructure is facing more extreme weather, more electricity usage and more renewable energy coming online. These strains on the grid mean dangerous power surges could potentially flow directly into people's homes. In today's episode, Bloomberg's Naureen Malik takes us inside the realities of electrification. See omnystudio.com/list...

For years, the true price of health care in the US has been the result of negotiations between providers, insurance companies and government agencies. But for the patients, companies and taxpayers who pick up the tab, it's often been a mystery. That's led to hospital pricing that’s all over the map. In today’s episode of the  Big Take  podcast, Bloomberg reporter John Tozzi explains how patients a...

China’s economy has been in rough shape, and the government is trying to address it. But there’s another threat on the horizon: the US election. During their presidencies, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump backed policies that drove the US and China further apart.   Now, they're both campaigning for re-election on continuing on that trajectory. In this episode, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway from...

This Sunday in Nevada, the Kansas City Chiefs will face off against the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII. Both teams, like lots of others in the league, have been owned by the same family for decades. But with soaring valuations for NFL franchises, and owners getting older, the NFL's long standing family ownership model is facing new threats . As the football league debates potential rule c...

The meltdown at FTX scared a lot of retail investors away from crypto. But many big banks have doubled down, and are pushing cryptocurrency more into the mainstream. In today’s episode of the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg senior crypto reporter Olga Kharif explains how traditional financial institutions have gotten behind the technology underpinning crypto and what it means for the rest of the indus...

In September 2022, a tanker called the Queen Majeda was stopped by authorities in Albanian waters, stuffed to the gills with $2 million worth of marine gas oil. The ship was coming from Libya’s port of Benghazi. And according to the Albanian authorities, the oil they were carrying was being smuggled out of the country illegally. The Queen Majeda was just the tip of the iceberg of Libya’s $5 billio...

The seemingly vast profit potential of artificial intelligence has helped buoy the stock prices of tech behemoths like Alphabet, Apple and the rest of the Magnificent Seven. But last week’s earnings showed that for many of these companies going all-in on AI, lofty investor expectations are hard to meet. As advanced as AI applications like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot may seem, it’s an open question...

When the US borrows money, just like any borrower, it needs to pay its loans back with interest. The national debt right now is $34 trillion and rising. Soon, America will need to spend more each year paying interest on the debt than it spends on national defense. Today on Bloomberg’s Big Take DC, host Saleha Mosin talks to Bloomberg reporter Liz McCormick and Phillip Swagel, director of the Congr...

Nayib Bukele has brought violent criminal gangs to a heel in El Salvador, transforming the country into one of the safest in Latin America. That’s made him extremely popular, even as human rights groups have condemned mass arrests and what they say are other abuses of civil liberties. Marcelo Rochabrun, one of Bloomberg's bureau chiefs in Latin America, tells us how Bukele’s success in fighting cr...

The UK is in the midst of a green energy transformation, with more than 40% of its electricity coming from wind power as of December. But wind can be unpredictable and the grid can’t always handle the power wind turbines generate on blustery days — and so to protect the grid, operators sometimes pay wind farms to power off.  After Bloomberg’s investigations team received a tip about troubling inac...

Microsoft recently cut 1,900 jobs from its gaming division and among the layoffs were many at the recently acquired video game developer Activision Blizzard. Blizzard Entertainment’s President Mike Ybarra and co-founder Allen Adham are both departing. The tech giant also announced the cancellation of a Blizzard game, called “Odyssey,” that was already six years in development. Today, Microsoft rep...

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has been in the news almost nonstop for successfully negotiating a new contract for union members and, most recently, endorsing President Joe Biden for re-election. But that endorsement is at odds with many rank-and-file union members who support Donald Trump. And Fain's next industry battle could be much harder. In setting his sights on electric vehicle ma...

Bloomberg’s Big Take DC podcast looks into how the US managed to avoid a recession — and whether the Federal Reserve’s decisions were based on reliable data. Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin talked with Claudia Sahm, an ex-Fed economist, and with Odd Lots podcast hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway. Get this episode and Big Take DC episodes a day earlier by subscribing to Big Take DC. See omnystudio.c...

The multi-billion dollar weight-loss drug market has ballooned in the past few years. And the two pharmaceutical companies currently duking it out for market dominance, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, have a century-long rivalry. Bloomberg News health reporter Madison Muller breaks down how Eli Lilly developed Zepbound, a new drug that can help patients cut more than 20% of their body weight — and why...

The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Jan. 19, for the first time in two years. It was the start of a winning streak. In today’s Big Take episode, Bloomberg markets editor Chris Nagi joins the show to discuss why Wall Street’s somewhat pessimistic expectations for this year’s stock market were blown out of the water. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For two months, Houthi militants have been launching surprise attacks on civilian ships in the Red Sea. Repeated rounds of retaliatory strikes by the US and its allies haven't stopped the assaults. Now, these tensions are threatening not only trade routes, but the broader global supply chain. The Big Take spoke with Bloomberg News reporters Enda Curran in Washington, DC and Mohammed Hatem, who rep...

Over the last few decades, Israel has transformed itself from a relatively poor agrarian economy to a global startup haven. Its per capita GDP now exceeds that of France, the UK and Japan. But with Hamas’ attack on Israel – which killed 1,200 people and claimed more than 200 hostages – and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, that economic trajectory could be at risk.   Some 360,000 Israeli reser...