We talk a lot about the US shale boom. And we talk a lot about OPEC. But one of the most exciting stories in the global oil industry is the incredible rise of Guyana, which has seen a massive amount of oil discovery over the past several years. This oil boom has made the South American country one of the fastest growing economies in the world. So what does history say about the emergence of a new oil superpower? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with oil historian Gregory Brew about the Guyana story, and what happens when so much new oil is being produced outside of OPEC.

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The surge in gas costs in Europe threatens to impose massive pain on households and cripple energy-intensive heavy industry. So there has been a lot of urgency on the part of governments to figure out a way to ease the pain. Of course, when the problem is a scarcity of energy itself, you can't just throw money at the problem. You can't print more gas molecules. On this episode, we speak with Isabella Weber, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has been serving on an independent government commission in Germany to formulate a plan to ease the burden. We discuss her work and how price controls in energy play out in practice.

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There are a bunch of historical analogies that people like to reach for in order to describe some of the economic trends we're seeing today. There's obviously the period of high inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s, or the disruptions caused by the Spanish Flu pandemic around 1918. But there's also a single year -- 1953 -- which not only contains some eerie similarities to today's economic environment, but also ended up having far-reaching consequences that reverberate all the way to 2022. On this episode, Josh Younger, JPMorgan's global head of asset and liability management research and strategy, tells the origin story of the decisions made in 1953 that helped create the vast repurchase or repo market. At a time when there are plenty of concerns over the stability of the market for US bonds, we go back in time to explore the reasons why repo exist at all.

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After years of basically printing money, the big online Internet behemoths are starting to stumble for various reasons. There's the macro slowdowns. New competition. And just basic threats to the way they do business. One major change has come from Apple, which has used its device dominance to curtail how apps can collect information on users, making targeting harder than it used to be. On this episode we speak to Bloomberg reporter Mark Bergen, the author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination, about the difficult challenges facing the industry. 

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It's no secret that a strong US dollar causes the rest of the world pain, but the impact of this year's rally is shaping up to be a bit different than previous episodes of dollar strength. Hyun Song Shin is the Economic Adviser and Head of Research for the Bank for International Settlements, which has just published a bulletin outlining why this particular dollar cycle is so unique. Shin has also done a ton of previous academic research on this exact topic — examining what happens to global trade and business investment when the dollar hits its highs. In this conversation, we talk to him about the impact of the dollar rally, what could stop it and what policymakers around the world can do to cope.

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The Midwest has been gripped by drought this year and water levels on the Mississippi River have fallen to their lowest marks in decades. That's bad news for farmers growing crops and for anyone trying to actually move those crops down the river to buyers. On this episode, we speak with grains expert and president of Ostebur & Associates, Ben Scholl, about the latest supply chain snarl in the US. We also speak with Mercury Group CEO Anton Posner and President Margo Brock about the important role that the Mississippi plays in the global supply chain. They walk us through the potential impact on a number of commodities — including steel, coal and other vital resources — and why the disruption might reverberate for some time to come.

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When people think about the so-called 'gig economy' they probably first think about Uber. But truck drivers are arguably the original gig workers. And driving a truck is one of the biggest professions in the US. So how should laws designed to protect the rights of gig workers apply to the trucking industry? And what do truck drivers actually want? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Rachel Premack, the editorial director at Freightwaves and the author of the MODES newsletter, to understand the legal ambiguities and how they relate to deregulation efforts that are multiple decades old.

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US mortgage rates have jumped to a two-decade high, with the average 30-year home loan now running above 7%. Of course, this makes sense. The Federal Reserve is raising benchmark interest rates and that's supposed to translate into a tightening of financial conditions, which includes housing credit. But the jump in mortgage rates far exceeds the increase in benchmarks, with the difference between average mortgage rates and the yield on equivalent US Treasuries at its highest on record. So what's going on? On this episode, we speak with Guillermo Roditi Dominguez, managing director at New River Investments, about what's happening deep in the market for mortgage-backed bonds to make rates surge this much. As he describes it, a sea change is helping to keep borrowing rates extra high.

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Earlier this month, the Biden administration unveiled a new set of restrictions on exporting semiconductors and related technology to China. The actions are seen as a significant escalation of an ongoing effort to constrain China's domestic chip ambitions. But semiconductor diplomacy and limitations on their export have existed almost since the industry was born. So what are the effects of these new actions? How severe are they? And to what degree do they actually set back China's efforts to develop its own technology? On this episode, we speak to Chris Miller, a professor at the Fletcher School and the author of the new book Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology. He explains the significance of the move and puts it into historical context.

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Alberta is one of Canada's most conservative provinces, with an economy and culture that might be compared to Texas. However despite this lean, the Alberta NDP, a social-democratic party, has been able to find electoral success. That may be owed to where the party deviates from other left-of-center parties — namely its more friendly stance towards the oil and gas industry, which is crucial to the Alberta economy. In this episode, we speak to party leader Rachel Notley, who served as Alberta premier from 2015 through 2019, before returning to the opposition. She talks about how the party views the oil and gas industry and how it fits in with maintaining climate commitments.

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