Odd Lots

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 if you can pinpoint the specific regulatory choices that led to any particular situation. So what caused Silicon Valley Bank to implode? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Columbia Law School professor Lev Menand, who discusses the defang...

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 strong brand, and a fairly conservative investment portfolio go belly up so fast? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Dan Davies, a Managing Director of Frontline Associates, who previously worked as a bank analyst. He explains why the bank's...

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. But over the years, it has evolved to do a lot more than just set the price of short-term bank borrowing. With each successive crisis, the Fed has taken on new powers and responsibilities to stabilize finance, markets and the broader economy. And wit...

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 aggressively, with seemingly only a modest impact. So why are companies still raising prices? If you listen, they actually explain a lot of their reasoning on corporate conference calls. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Samuel Rines, manag...

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 major firms, such as FTX. At the same time, regulatory scrutiny is also increasing. And of course, the reason that scrutiny is increasing is in part due all the lost money. So how is the industry dealing with all this? On this episode of the podcast, w...

Homebuilders have experienced major whiplash over the last few years. The pandemic originally caused them to slam the brakes on new development. Then the housing boom happened and they raced to catch up and build — but then they ran into supply-chain constraints. Then in 2022, the interest rate shock put the market into a freeze. But before that building can begin, how do developers find completel...

The vast majority of urban apartments in the US are geared towards single occupants, couples without kids or maybe young professionals with roommates. It's hard to find apartments with the kind of layout that would fit families. Anyone who's gone looking for that type of space is probably familiar with bedrooms that look and feel like closets, or if you do find an apartment that has multiple good-...

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 with bank accounts is still stuck at almost zero. According to data from Bankrate, the average interest rate on savings accounts is just 0.23%. So what's going on? Why have many banks so far avoided raising what they pay out to depositors even as the F...

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 we learned from the past twelve months? And what is the future of this ongoing conflict? On this episode, we speak with Robert Papp, a retired senior executive at the CIA about what to watch when it comes to the weeks and months ahead. Before joinin...

President Biden came into office with an incredibly slim legislative majority. And yet despite just 50 Democratic seats in the Senate, the first two years of Biden's Presidency saw the passage of some extremely ambitious laws. The potential exists for the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act to reshape the economy in ways that we haven't seen in a long time. Brian De...

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 if Congress does not authorize more debt financing? What are the options for the government? Does this automatically lead to default? And if the US does default on its debt, what does that mean for the financial system and the real econom...

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 one glaring exception and that's the tech industry. Nearly every major tech company has announced layoffs in the last few months, which is exactly the opposite of how things played out over the last decade, when the sector was a bright spot in an oth...

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 growth. In this cycle, sluggish growth isn't the problem. If anything, you hear business leaders and central bankers talking about the labor market being "too hot," and the need for the unemployment rate to rise. So what explains the current dynamic?...

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 synonymous with computer antivirus software, and he helped establish the modern cybersecurity industry. But afterward, his life took a strange and dark turn. He was accused of murder, an allegation he denied, and then went on the lam. He sought to reinven...

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 financial system actually 'broke.' Stocks and other risk assets went down, but aside from a few issues like the gilt market drama in October, we didn't see a big systemic event. On this episode of Odd Lots, which was recorded live at the Credit Market St...

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 speculations have surged again. According to Steve Eisman, what we're seeing is the natural process by which a "paradigm shift" is playing out in stocks. Eisman, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, won big betting against CDOs during the Great Financial C...

It was looking bad there for awhile for Team Transitory. Anyone who had previously even uttered the word "transitory" in regards to inflation was regretting having used it. But lately the term is creeping back in, particularly as inflation decelerates while the unemployment rate remains low. So was the transitory perspective right all along? And is the fabled "soft landing" actually here? Macquari...

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 clear that rents are now finally falling. Private sector measures, from companies like Apartment List and Zillow are starting to show a clear decline. So what's changed? How hard could rents drop? And could a renter in a place like New York City actual...

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. But Southwest isn't alone in having software in the headlines lately. The New York Stock Exchange recently had a software error that caused weird pricing on stocks and the FAA had its own computer issue that grounded planes earlier this month. So what...

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 chart that looks almost parabolic. So what's going on? And is there any relief in sight? On this episode, we speak with Glenn Hickman, president of Hickman's Family Farms , an Arizona egg farm with roughly 10 million chickens. Glenn explains why egg...

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 incredibly high degree of interconnectedness between various firms, all borrowing and lending from each other in a way that created a tremendous amount of fragility. A key entity in all this is GBTC, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which was one of the first...

In economics, there tends to be two dominant ways of thinking about inflation. Either you agree with Milton Friedman, who described inflation as always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon (the result of too much money printing). Or you're more of a New Keynesian who thinks that higher prices are all about the relationship between demand and capacity. In a new paper inspired by Odd Lots and the se...

While electric vehicle use is growing rapidly, the internal combustion engine remains completely dominant in the world of heavy trucks. At some point in the future, Tesla has a plan to commercialize an electric semi, but nobody really knows when. Meanwhile, other entities are looking to compete in the world of industrial vehicles. Chace Barber is a former trucker in the logging industry, which has...

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 is always available to use, but typically nobody does. Not only is the borrowing costlier, there's also a "stigma" associated with its usage, since the perception is that if you use it your institution might be in some kind of financial distress. So...

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 unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. But wages are decelerating and there are reasons to think that inflation is rolling over as well. So can Jerome Powell & Co. smoothly land the plane, so to speak? On this episode of Odd Lots we speak with Neil Du...