There's probably nobody better at synthesizing massive events like Columbia professor Adam Tooze. His book Crashed, which came out in 2018, was probably the definitive take on the Great Financial Crisis. Later this year he has another book coming out on the Coronavirus crisis, and the political and economic lessons therein. On this Odd Lots, we speak with him about the extraordinary year, what it's meant for the U.S., China, Europe, etc., and the change in the economic landscape.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's not often that lumber becomes a national obsession. But this year it has. Thanks to a combination of factors, including diminished sawmill capacity, a renovation boom, and then a homebuilding boom, the price of finished wood has soared to never-before-seen heights. On this episode, we speak with Stinson Dean, a lumber trader at Deacon Trading, to explain why the market has gone so wild, and how the market is structured.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a huge question mark at the moment about whether markets are at some sort of important turning point. For instance, we've seen big amounts of fiscal stimulus in the U.S., sparking concerns that inflation might finally return and overturn a decades-long bull run in bonds. So how can investors protect against that scenario and other major inflection points in markets? On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak to Chris Cole, the founder of Artemis Capital Management. He walks us through his recent research, in which he recreates 100 years of the most popular financial engineering and portfolio structures to identify what works best.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's a weird moment for the markets. The big stock indices are near all time highs. And yet there have been some high profile meltdowns and blowups. There was the collapse of the vendor financing firm Greensill. And there was the wipeout of the Bill Hwang fortune. Meanwhile, numerous SPACs and other speculative stocks have been getting clobbered. So we talked to short seller John Hempton, the CIO and co-founder of Bronte Capital, for an explanation of what's really going on.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Whenever the government is engaging in fiscal or monetary expansion, people like to invoke the history of Weimar Germany and how soon we might all go around transporting dollars in wheelbarrows. But what really happened with Weimar and how did it come about? On this episode, we speak with Zach Carter, the author of the best-selling book “The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.” He explains how the story of collapse of the German currency was less about money printing and more about domestic political collapse and the destruction of the country's productive base.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When GameStop shares skyrocketed earlier this year, numerous pundits were quick to ascribe political significance to the whole thing. Was it a rebellion? Was it class warfare in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street? On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who argues that the episode was significant and radical, but not in the way most people appreciate. We also talked about algorithmic trading, WallStreetBets, the pandemic, and what's next for the future of capitalism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The U.S. Treasury market is the biggest, most liquid market in the world. Its smooth functioning is also crucial to the economy and the financial system. Yet it keeps experiencing bizarre, seemingly inexplicable bouts of volatility. We saw it in February. We saw it big time last March. And we saw it multiple times in recent years before then. On this episode, we speak with Yesha Yadav, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School, who argues that these episodes can be explained by the inadequate patchwork of regulations governing this market.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the modern age, we expect to be able to turn on our computers, enter in a ticker, and know the actual price of a financial instrument, such as a stock or a bond. But this is easier said than done, especially with bonds, and especially with bonds that are infrequently traded. Sometimes, in fact, bond pricing is a matter of opinion. At least that's the contention of Maciej Kowara and Eric Jacobson, analysts at Morningstar, who published a report earlier this year titled “Bond Pricing: Agreeing To Disagree.” They explain why there can still be disagreements about what a bond is actually worth from one firm to another.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The crypto market has come a long way in recent years. But it's still far less efficient than your typical established market. To understand more about crypto market structure, we spoke with Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam is a former international ETF trader at the prop shop Jane Street Capital. Now he's building a crypto empire with his hedge fund Alameda Research as well as his own exchange called FTX. He talks us through his path into the industry and how it works more broadly.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Ever Given has been freed from the Suez Canal. But the whole situation was indicative of a broader issue in global supply chains: increasingly large ships are contributing to logistical bottlenecks. This was true long before the latest issue on the Suez. On the latest episode of Odd Lots, we speak with economist and historian Marc Levinson, the author of the book The Box, to discuss the rise of extremely large ships and the stress they place on ports, canals, and other parts of the global trading infrastructure.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.