Open Exchanges

Open Exchanges is the new podcast from Floyd Zadkovich, a global law firm focused on international trade.

For our first episode, partner Ed Floyd talks to Tina Fordham, Wall Street’s original Chief Global Political Analyst, founder of Fordham Global Foresight and author of Mad World.

Their starting point is a simple question: is the world actually going mad, or does it just feel that way?

From there, the conversation tackles some important issues, from the unwinding of Pax Americana to the return of great-power competition and exactly why geopolitical risk has been building for much longer than any single election cycle.

Mad World shows that geopolitical risk events tripled between 2010 and 2024, while tariffs and sanctions increased tenfold. We talk about what that means for businesses that grew up assuming globalisation would keep moving in one direction.

We also get into energy, supply chains and the growing importance of geographical choke points. The Strait of Hormuz is an obvious example, but the bigger question is what happens when the infrastructure that global trade depends on becomes contested.

And then there’s the question of Black Swans. Tina’s argument is that most of the things that really matter to businesses aren’t Black Swans at all. They’re risks that were visible, discussed and sometimes even predicted, but which organisations chose not to take seriously enough to prepare for.

That leads to one of Tina’s main concepts: PQ, or Political Quotient. Not another way of predicting the future, but a way of getting better at thinking about what might happen next. And we talk about populism, regional supply chains, the role of lawyers in a more contested world, and whether, if we are lucky, more of these disputes will end up being fought in courts rather than on battlefields.

We also discuss the Mad World Spotify playlist, and why the music - and particularly the nostalgia behind it - resonates with many of today’s C-suite leaders.

Read Mad World, by Tina Fordham here: https://bit.ly/4AM2vvq