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In recent weeks, the White House has attempted to make a greater effort to improve the functioning of supply chains. One effort includes getting the Port of Los Angeles, and the various companies who operate there, to operate 24/7. But this is going to be a herculean task. On this episode we speak with Craig Fuller, the Founder and CEO of the information and data company FreightWaves to talk about the ports, trucking, and why it's so difficult to modernize these markets.

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Official inflation measures in the U.S. remain elevated and so, of course, this has a lot of people thinking about the 1970s. Not only was this the last time the U.S. had a sustained period of high inflation, it was the period during which many of today's policymakers really started to form their views about managing the economy. On this episode, we speak with Dan Alpert, a managing partner at Westwood Capital, and a fellow at the Cornell Law School, about his new report on inflation risks, and what he sees as false comparisons to the 1970s.

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Bitcoin just hit an all-time high and crypto mania is in full swing. One of this year's big winners has to be Axie Infinity, a blockchain-based game, whose token AXS has surged over 200x just since the start of the year. Axie is a pioneer of what's come to be known as a "play to earn" model, whereby participants who play the game can actually make money. Its popularity, for example, has exploded in the Philippines, where numerous people are making a living from it. But how does it work? And is it sustainable? On this episode we speak to the game’s co-founder Aleksander Leonard Larsen about how it all works.

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Back in January, we spoke with Jeff Currie, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs. At the time, he was bullish on the commodities complex for several reasons. Since then, of course, we've seen several markets go on an absolute tear and to a degree that's taken even him by surprise. The bad news for commodities consumers? We still haven't hit max pain. On this episode, we speak again with Jeff about what's driving prices higher and why he sees stronger price increases over the next several months.

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We've been covering global supply chain pressures almost since the beginning of the year on Odd Lots. And with each episode the question is "ok, so when will things normalize?" But basically, not only have things not normalized, things have gotten much worse. So why can't the system stabilize? On this episode, we speak again with Ryan Petersen, the CEO of the logistics firm Flexport, on how supply chain pressures have gotten even worse since the last time we spoke with him in the spring.

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The implosion of Evergrande continues. And nobody knows exactly how the losses will be distributed. What will be the impact on creditors or people who have put down payments on homes that haven't been built yet? And what will the ripple effects be on other credits? In addition to the financial fallout, there's also a macro angle. Real estate is extremely important to the Chinese economy for all kinds of reasons. And what happens in China has effects on all of its trading partners. To explain what comes next, we spoke with Peking University Finance Professor and Senior Carnegie Fellow Michael Pettis.

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On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to treat symptoms that last for months and potentially years. It has changed the way hospitals work and forced healthcare officials to prepare for the next pandemic. Covid has also opened the door to revolutionary technology: messenger RNA vaccines. It’s a technology that never could have been proven so quickly outside the crucible of that first pandemic year, 2020, and it holds big implications for the future of medicine. Breakthrough launches on Oct. 19. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Federal Reserve has a lot on its plate at the moment. Not only are "transitory" inflation pressures proving to be more stubborn than expected, but unemployment remains relatively high even as the U.S. economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, there are also technical challenges that the central bank now faces as it gets closer to tapering its asset purchases. Finally, there's the possibility of an imminent U.S. debt crisis as Washington continues to wrangle over raising the limits on federal borrowing. On this episode, we speak with Joseph Wang, a.k.a "Fed Guy," to talk about all the difficulties facing the Fed right now. Wang is a former trader on the Fed's open market desk and has first-hand experience in how debt ceiling brinkmanship can affect money markets. He gives his thoughts on what would happen if there were a technical default, how we should be thinking about U.S. Treasuries right now, why crypto may have changed everything, plus insights into how the central bank actually makes its decisions.

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Every few years, people are reminded of the weird law the United States has: the debt ceiling. Congress has to vote affirmatively to raise the total outstanding legal stock of debt the country can take on. If Congress fails to vote in favor of it, you could see a theoretical debt default, with devastating consequences. Sometimes the vote is routine and easy. Sometimes it's contentious, as it was in 2011. But arguably there's an easy solution that could avoid these fights altogether: A provision in the law which gives the Treasury Secretary the unilateral right to create platinum coins of any denomination. While this sounds like a joke, there's a serious argument that it offers a robust legal path out of the problem. On this episode we speak with Rohan Grey, a professor at Willamette University College of Law and one of the foremost experts on the legality of the coin maneuver, on how it works in practice and in theory.

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