What the Berkshires Learned by Launching its Own Currency
"Buy local" is a mantra that has appeal across the political spectrum. Small communities have preached this gospel for a long time. Our current president advocates a version on a national scale. So ho...
24 Mar 201729min
How the Biggest Bull Market Could Go on for a Whole Lot Longer
A few weeks ago on the Odd Lots podcast, we talked to Paul Schmelzing, a Ph.D candidate at Harvard, who explained how the bull market in U.S. Treasuries could come to a screeching halt. This week we e...
10 Mar 201729min
The Incredible True Story of the Real Life 'Trading Places'
If you have any interest at all in finance, then it's mandatory to have seen the 1983 movie "Trading Places." You remember, right? Two wealthy Philadelphia commodity brokers bet on whether anyone, eve...
3 Mar 201736min
Could Buddhism Save The Global Economy?
There's a widespread sense that something remains broken in the global economy. Despite a comeback in official measures of economic performance, like GDP and the unemployment rate, there's a widesprea...
24 Feb 201728min
How Poker Explains the Battle of Passive and Active Investing
Among the biggest trends in the world of markets is the rise of passive investing. Rather than pay high fees to active mutual fund managers (who often fail to beat the market), people are pouring mone...
17 Feb 201729min
Why It's Really Hard to Create a New Currency in a Revolution
Creating a new form of money is always tough. Will it hold its value? Will people trust it? Will people use it? All these challenges are even tougher if you're in the middle of a political chaos. On t...
10 Feb 201728min
Why Negotiating a Ransom Is the Trickiest Trade in the World
There are all sorts of reasons why markets break down. A lack of trust. Incomplete information. Divergent incentives. A lack of experienced actors. So it's hard to imagine a trickier market than kidna...
3 Feb 201730min
64: Stay in School, Even if You're Planning to Join the Mob
It's almost a truism that better-educated people earn more money. But suppose you're not interested in a normal job? What if you want to go into the mafia? Well, it turns out that you should still sta...
27 Jan 201726min
