Jenny Schuetz is a scholar of the housing market, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has a new book out called Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing System. 

In her research and in her book, Jenny considers the housing market in all of its complexity, the reasons it’s broken for so many people, the entrenched barriers to fixing it – and some ideas that just might work. She and Cardiff cover all of this in their chat. 

Related links:

• Jenny Schuetz’s expert page at the Brookings Institution
• Jenny’s book, Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing System

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Glamour is a misunderstood concept. A lot of people associate it with glossy pictures of movie stars and celebrities in ritzy settings, or with other concepts like charisma or dazzle. Glamour is something a little different. It’s mysterious and concealing. It’s an illusion and it can be deceptive, sometimes so in problematic ways.  

But whether we’re talking about a glamorous object or a glamorous person, glamour also provides a canvas on which people can project their own desires and longings. So when you find something glamorous, that something is also revealing what you yearn for in life. 

This nuanced understanding of glamour is the subject of a book by one of Cardiff’s favorite writers, Virginia Postrel. It’s called The Power of Glamour, and in the book, Virginia defines glamour and provides specific examples of how it applies to our own lives. She talks to Cardiff about all of this, as well as the ways in which glamour influences our economic decisions. 

Links from the episode:

• Virginia’s books and writing at vpostrel.com
• Virginia’s “Unglamorous background on the red carpet” Pinterest collection

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Erich Schwartzel joins Cardiff to discuss his new book, "Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy". 

For the past couple of decades, the emergence of a huge middle class in China has become an incredibly attractive, and maybe even a necessary, market for Hollywood movies.

But the Chinese government carefully censors what kinds of movies can be shown in China. So if you’re a Hollywood studio and you wanna get your movie shown in China, you have to go along with the criteria that the Chinese censors give you.

And Hollywood studios have done just that, often imposing restrictions across the entire creative process of making a movie, starting with the script itself. As Erich explains in the chat, this has fundamentally changed Hollywood’s entire business model, and the kinds of movies it makes.

The deeper story here is about the messy realities of globalization. Deepening economic engagement between nations mostly leads to more prosperity, rising standards of living, and more choices for what people can do with their lives. But it can have bad side effects, especially when the economic engagement is between two countries with different political priorities.  

“Red Carpet” is all about understanding the real-world nuances of how trade with China has sometimes led to a clash of values. On the one side are things like free speech, artistic integrity, the ability to express oneself fully, through movies and other cultural objects, without fear of censorship. And on the other side are the deepening commercial ties between two countries. 

Understanding this clash in all its subtlety is the aim of Erich's book, and of his chat with Cardiff. 

Related link: 

Red Carpet book page

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Jacob Goldstein, author of "Money: The True Story of a Made-up Thing" and host of the new podcast "What's Your Problem?", joins Cardiff to discuss the surprising origins of money, and why now is a great time to start a podcast about solving problems.

Related links:

• Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing
• What's Your Problem?

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Today’s episode is about something you might have noticed just by looking around you. Especially if you’re old enough.

The economy has been shifting away from the material and towards the intangible -- things like data, design, personality, research, ways of expressing ourselves. The importance of these things has grown, reflected in the investments that businesses have made. More money now goes to branding, and research and development, training, and software, and the tech we love to use for pleasure and for work. 

Today’s episode is all about the profound and subtle consequences of this shift. And it’s about why the economy and society have lagged behind it.

Joining Cardiff to explain it all is Stian Westlake. Stian and his co-author Jonathan Haskel wrote a book a few years ago called “Capitalism without Capital”, that chronicled the trend towards the intangible economy. And they have a new book out now called “Restarting the Future”, which explains how people and businesses and policymakers can finally catch up to the trend -- and harness it to make the world better.

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At first it was just Bitcoin. Now when someone refers to crypto, they might be talking about ethereum, NFTs, ICOs, smart contracts, DAOs, and a whole bunch of other technologies too numerous to mention. 

Stacy-Marie Ishmael, managing editor for crypto at Bloomberg, joins the show to un-befuddle Cardiff and explain the implications of this suite of technologies. 

Among other topics, they discuss: 

• How a novice can begin learning about crypto
• Whether crypto goes too far towards decentralization
• The inflexibility of smart contracts and algorithms 
• The correlation between cryptocurrencies and risky asset classes
• How crypto can evolve in societally beneficial ways 

And more!

Related links: 

• Stacy's page at Bloomberg
• Bloomberg's Crypto page

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John Kemp is senior market analyst at Reuters, where he specializes in oil and energy systems. Having covered these systems for the past quarter-century, John now publishes a newsletter, which happens to be Cardiff's favorite way to keep up with trends in global energy markets.

This episode, recorded on the morning of Monday, February 28th, does touch on the astonishing and fast-moving events in Ukraine and Russia, but it is not principally about them. Nor is it mainly about the economic sanctions against Russia by the US and Europe, or their likely effects. The episode is about the latest trends and possible futures for the markets in oil, gas, renewable technologies, and other parts of the energy landscape.

But the chat also couldn’t avoid talking about geopolitical events like what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine because one of the themes of this episode is how energy markets have increasingly globalized in recent decades. What’s happening in Russia has big effects on what’s happening in Europe, which itself has a big effect on what’s happening in American energy markets. And what happens in East Asia, in Africa, and Latin America – especially in developing nations in those regions – also affects energy markets everywhere else. 

Related links: 

• John Kemp’s newsletter 
• John Kemp on Twitter

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Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap are the authors of the book The Caesars Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Power and Greed of Wall Street. 

And the story they tell in the book is intense. Back in the mid-2000s, a private equity firm called Apollo bought Caesars, the company that owns casinos and hotels all over the country, like Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The deal to buy Caesars was a leveraged buyout, also known as an LBO. Which just means that Apollo borrowed money through loans and bonds to buy it. And then after the deal, Caesars itself was on the hook to pay back those loans and bonds. This is all quite normal -- it's just how these deals work. 

But the timing was awful. Soon after, the financial crisis of 2008 collapsed the economy. Caesars really struggled because people weren’t gambling anymore, and because its customers were no longer booking big conventions and events in its hotels. And so it was inevitable that Caesars would struggle to pay what it owed on all that new debt. 

And so a bunch of distressed debt investors, including the hedge funds Oaktree and Apaloosa, bought the Caesars debt from the investors who owned it before. So now Caesars owed them the money. So those are the two sides... And they ended up waging an utterly brutal fight in the legal system for control of Caesars, the company. 

This is a story that raises all kinds of fascinating questions about how finance actually works in the real world. Whether this kind of antagonistic, adversarial system is in the best interest of the capital markets, the economy, society. And whether it’s the best way for all these brilliant financiers and lawyers and others to spend their time. But also, if you have any interest in finance, it’s just one helluva suspenseful tale.

Related links:

• The Caesars Palace Coup (Amazon page)
• Sujeet Indap and Max Frumes on Twitter

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Logan Mohtashami is the lead analyst at Housingwire, where he writes about the housing market and the US economy. And before that, he spent a few decades as a senior lending officer at a real estate company. 

Well before the pandemic, Logan was arguing that during the years 2020 to 2024, housing prices in the US would climb to troubling levels, the result of various coinciding trends in the economy. And that is exactly what's happened. In his chat with Cardiff, Logan explains the forces that have been driving up home prices, and what might happen in the next few years. And he and Cardiff also talk about the ways that housing is such a different, even unique, kind of asset -- and why policies towards housing are so often full of contradiction.

Related links:

• Logan Mohtashami's author page at Housingwire

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Tara Watson is an economist and the co-author, with Kalee Thompson, of a new book, “The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear”. 

The "border within" refers to how immigration laws are applied to undocumented residents already living inside the country. And it also refers to how immigration laws, and how these laws are applied and enforced, can also create borders between people. Between neighbors. Between residents. Even between husband and wife, between parents and their children.

In her chat with Cardiff, Tara explains why policies that affect undocumented immigrants also affect the places where they live and the economies in which they work. And since most undocumented residents have lived inside the country for more than a decade, these policies also have big consequences for the families and communities in which they are rooted. Tara also surveys what the economics literature shows about the economics of immigration -- bringing needed clarity and nuance to a conversation that so often features little of either.

Links:

• The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear
• Tara Watson's home page

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