Odd Lots

Ricardo Hausmann is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director of Harvard's Growth Lab. We've talked to him multiple times in the past about the necessary preconditions for economies to grow and thrive. But in addition to his academic work, Hausmann was previously a policymaker in Venezuela, including a stint at the country's central bank prior to the election of Hugo Chavez. In this conversation, we talk about how Venezuela went from being the largest oil exporter in the world (even larger than Saudi Arabia for a time) to becoming the ultimate economic basket case. We also talk about the huge challenge the country will face in reinvigorating its economy, and why he believes that will be impossible as long as the remnants of the Maduro government remain in charge.

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In less than three years, the amount of tokenized real-world assets has grown eightfold, to more than $30 billion across equities, fixed income, private assets, real estate and more. And that’s just the start of the tokenization revolution, experts predict, because of four main drivers: Increased liquidity for illiquid assets, broader investor access, operational efficiency, and global distribution and interoperability.
This episode is sponsored by Coinbase.
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This week has been a pretty wild one in markets. Some of the most popular trades of recent years — like going long software, crypto, or gold — suddenly collapsed. Of course, there are plenty of things you can point to as the proximate cause of the selloff. AI is now an existential threat to SaaS. Bitcoin has seen some unflattering headlines. The nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair stalled the debasement trade. But the way the market functions has also changed enormously, arguably leading to faster and more violent moves. On this episode, we catch up with Charlie McElligott, cross-asset macro strategist at Nomura, who explains just how much market mechanics have shifted, and talks about the flows and positioning he's seeing right now.
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The nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve obviously has big implications for markets. But it also comes with some interesting sociological questions too. What role does the Fed chair actually play in setting monetary policy? How do they communicate -- and influence -- members of the Fed board? How do they communicate to markets? What happens when someone who's been advocating major regime change at the central bank is now running it? And how do they balance independence with politics? In this episode, we speak with Richard Clarida, former Fed vice-chair and now global economic advisor to Pimco. We talk about what a Fed chair actually does and what we know about Warsh's policy stances so far, as well as why Clarida thinks there may be more volatility in the bond market as a result.
Read more:
Bonds Rally as Job-Market Angst Backs Fed Rate-Cut Outlook
Bessent Declines to Draw Line on Removing Fed Member for Policy
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China's dominance of the rare earths market is well known. This not only creates potential vulnerabilities for companies, should access to those rare earths ever get cut off, it also gives China significant leverage in trade negotiations right now. Of course, the issue is not that China is naturally endowed with more of these materials, but rather that, over the decades, it's built up an industrial ecosystem to mine and process them. So, is there any prospect of the US entering the arena in a way that's actually competitive? Our guest says yes. Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomics Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Earlier in her career, she was the US State Department's first chief economist. For the CFR, Heidi has undertaken an extensive study of the US position with respect to rare earths and developed a broad set of suggestions for how the US can actually compete. She discusses the resources we have right now, and the technologies and policies that could make the US competitive in this arena.
Read the report here: https://www.cfr.org/report/leapfrogging-chinas-critical-minerals-dominance/
Read more:
Why China’s Grip on Critical Minerals Is So Hard to Break
EU to Offer US Critical Minerals Partnership to Check China
Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots
Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter
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