In this limited series, Odd Lots explains some of the thorniest issues facing the US economy through the medium of … chicken. Chicken occupies a unique position in the US diet, but issues facing the poultry industry illustrate wider points about the development of the US economy and the decisions being made about how it's structured and who benefits from it. So why has the chicken industry evolved in the way that it has? What’s been driving the price increases in eggs and meat? And what does it all say about things like inflation, the labor market and the nature of American capitalism?

Check out Beak Capitalism on Odd Lots wherever you get your podcasts.

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From our friends over at the Elon, Inc. podcast from Businessweek, hosted by David Papadopoulos, is this special episode we're sharing to our What Goes Up listeners. Please enjoy this episode, subscribe to their feed, and leave a review!
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For years, Tesla fans and critics alike have produced mock bingo cards ahead of Tesla earnings calls. And so, in honor of Tesla’s next call, which will be held Jan. 24 after markets close, the Elon Inc. crew produced our own bingo game. This week we preview Tesla’s Q4 2023 earnings and introduce our picks for which Muskisms will carry the day. You can download a PDF of this quarter’s bingo card here.

In this episode we also recap the other major events from the week: A visit to Auschwitz, a farewell to a former political ally and a paltry attempt at feud of the week.

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Bloomberg News Now is a comprehensive audio report on today's top stories. Listen for the latest news, whenever you want it, covering global business stories around the world.

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At Bloomberg, we’re always talking about the biggest business stories, and no one is bigger than Elon Musk.

In this new chat weekly show, host David Papadopoulos and a panel of guests including Businessweek’s Max Chafkin, Tesla reporter Dana Hull, Big Tech editor Sarah Frier, and more, will break down the most important stories on Musk and his empire. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hey 'What Goes Up' listeners, here's another Bloomberg podcast you might enjoy: Merryn Talks Money. It's hosted by senior columnist Merryn Somerset Webb and every week aims to explain how markets work – and how you can make them work for you. Every episode features a relaxed but in-depth conversation with a fund manager, a strategist, a Bloomberg expert or just someone Merryn finds particularly interesting in any given week. Listen in for the kind of insights and explanations everyone can use to help them make better saving and investing choices. This week Merryn speaks to GMO's Jeremy Grantham. Listen to part of the conversation here and the whole thing on the Merryn Talks Money feed.

Enjoy Merryn Talks Money on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/merryn-talks-money/id1654809850

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The troubles facing highly indebted property developers in China have dominated conversations about the Asian nation’s economy and markets this year. Yet according to Rayliant Global Advisors’ Jason Hsu, there’s an important distinction between this housing crisis and previous ones elsewhere: The developers are the ones who are over-leveraged—not households. And that difference is guiding policymakers’ response.

Hsu, chief investment officer of Rayliant and a co-founder of Research Affiliates, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss China and other emerging markets. 

“Chinese households are not levered when it comes to real estate,” he says. “They’re not levered because they can buy their first home with money down—and they pay quite a bit money down—and they generally have to sort of have enough income to cover the payment. That bankruptcy you’re seeing in the developer sector is very engineered. On the household side, there’s not a balance-sheet crisis, because they’re not buying real estate on leverage. So they really don’t think there’s a meaningful problem there.”

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When it comes to the US Federal Reserve’s campaign to crush inflation by raising interest rates, Morgan Stanley Chief US Economist Ellen Zentner says this: “I have a strong view that they’re done here—but they have left the door open.”

Zentner joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the Fed’s decision this week to pause rate hikes, and what she expects of monetary policy and the US economy going forward. Cooling inflation should keep the central bank on hold until it’s ready to cut rates next year, she says. In the near term, a potential government shutdown by Republicans would bolster the case for maintaining the status quo at the Fed’s November meeting. A shutdown, she explains, would leave policymakers without all of the economic data they need to make a decision.

“In monetary-policy making, uncertainty tends to lead to policy paralysis,” Zentner says. “If we’re lacking data that the Fed can officially sink its teeth into, then that’s going to lead to an inability to make a decision about the path for rates.”

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A few years ago, an editor asked Bloomberg investigative reporter Zeke Faux to take a look at the cryptocurrency Tether, a so-called stablecoin meant to precisely track the US dollar by backing it with real-world reserves. What followed was a tour through some of the most-colorful corners of the crypto world, from Mighty Ducks actor Brock Pierce’s yacht to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s digs in the Bahamas and, finally, a hotbed for human trafficking in Cambodia.

Faux joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss his reporting, which is laid out in his new book Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. 

“There's actually these whole office towers, floor after floor of people who've been lured from, say, like Vietnam, with the offer of a good job,” Faux says. “Then when they get there, they're trapped. They're told they can't leave. They're beaten. They get electric shocks, other forms of torture, and they're just given like 10 phones each and made to try to lure people into scams from around the world.”

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From artificial intelligence to electric vehicles and travel stocks, some of the previously hot equity-market themes have borne the brunt of the selling during the market’s dip in August and September. Sylvia Jablonski, chief executive of Defiance ETFs LLC, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss why that is. She also makes the case for buying the dip. 

“Everyone kind of panics, sells off tech, sells off growth and goes back into cash, cash equivalents, staples and kind of the defensive types of plays,” Jablonski explains. But “these are actually great opportunities, especially if you’re a young person investing for the long term. These are amazing opportunities to dollar-cost average. That’s how I would characterize this market this year.”

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There’s a lot of excitement around AI-focused stocks right now, but market veteran Art Hogan urges caution when it comes to companies that are just trying to take advantage of the hype without having true ties to the industry. 

The chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss how he views the artificial intelligence investment landscape, as well as other market trends.

“If we start to see the capital markets open, and we start to have a flood of newly minted companies that are AI-specific or adjacent, I would avoid that at all costs because they likely don’t have models,” he says.

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Matt Levine, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion who writes the Bloomberg newsletter Money Stuff, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss some of the hot finance topics he’s been covering and what he means when he says “everything is securities fraud.”

“I have a genre of stories called ‘everything is securities fraud,’ which is where public companies do random bad things and people sue them for securities fraud,” Levine says. “It’s indicative of this really big, interesting trend in American securities laws where everything gets sort of reflected—all conduct gets reflected—through the notion of securities fraud because it’s easy to bring cases and the damages can be really large. And so you can like litigate, you can fight over, all sorts of political and social issues by calling them securities fraud.”

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