Podcasts about Macroeconomics

Matthew Klein is the author of The Overshoot, a newsletter that helps readers make sense of the global economy. Matt is also a returning guest to the podcast, and rejoins Macro Musings to talk about the hot topic of inflation and its outlook. Specifically, David and Matt discuss what is driving trend inflation, Matt's decomposition of the CPI, whether or not we should be worried about inflationary trends, and more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Matthew's Twitter: @M_C_Klein Matthew's Substack: https://theovershoot.co/about   Related Links:   *The Case for Patience on Inflation* by Matthew Klein https://theovershoot.co/p/the-case-for-patience-on-inflation   *What's Going On With Interest Rates? (Part 1)* by Matthew Klein https://theovershoot.co/p/whats-going-on-with-interest-rates   *Fed Policy Must Adjust for Inflation* by Martin Wolf https://www.ft.com/content/dc3bedc7-5694-4868-8b86-f9a215966f52   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth David's blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Lyn Alden to the show where she weighs in on where she agrees and where she disagrees with the views Jeff Snider shared with us on last week's podcast. Link: https://bit.ly/3nN7rfZ

Markus Brunnermeier is a professor of economics and the director of the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University. Markus is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Markus joins Macro Musings to discuss his new book, titled “The Resilient Society,” as well as his work on safe assets and their implications for inflation. Specifically, David and Markus discuss the implications of the fiscal theory of the price level for inflation, the role of the Fed in stabilizing money markets, what is meant by “resilience” compared to “robustness” in economies, and much more.   Transcript can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Markus's Twitter: @MarkusEconomist Markus's Princeton profile: https://scholar.princeton.edu/markus/home   Related Links:   *The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level with a Bubble* by Markus Brunnermeier https://scholar.princeton.edu/markus/publications/fiscal-theory-price-level-bubble   *The Resilient Society* by Markus Brunnermeier https://bcf.princeton.edu/the-resilient-society/   *What Makes US Government Bonds Safe Assets?* by Zhiguo He, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Konstantin Milbradt https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161109   David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth David's blog: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/

Paul Nation is one of the world's leading researchers on and writers on vocabulary, reading and fluency, has written dozens of books and been publishing research on these topics since 1970. Paul is Emeritus Professor in Applied Linguistics at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS) at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and has taught in Indonesia, Thailand, the United States, Finland and Japan.For more podcasts, videos and blogs, visit our website Support the podcast – buy us a coffee!Develop yourself! Find more about our teacher training courses Watch as well as listen on our YouTube channelTracy: Hey everybody. Welcome to our podcast.Ross Thorburn: Hey everyone. On our podcasts, I think we spent a lot of time talking about speaking, but we haven't ever really directly tackled the idea of fluency.Tracy: That's true.Ross: Today we've got, once again, Paul Nation, emeritus professor at the School of Applied Linguistics and Applied Language at Victoria University, New Zealand, to talk to us about fluency and vocabulary and how those two things link together.Tracy: Paul is one of the world's leading researchers and writers on vocabulary and fluency. We are incredibly lucky to be able to have him on our podcast.Ross: As usual, we've got three areas that we'll cover in the podcast. Firstly, we will ask Paul why fluency is important. Then secondly...Tracy: ...how can teachers help students develop fluency, and the third one...Ross: ...what are some common mistakes that teachers make in teaching vocabulary and helping students become fluent?Why is fluency important?Tracy: Hello Paul.Paul Nation: Hello.Tracy: How are you doing?Paul: Good.Tracy: Before we go onto fluency, let's start off by talking about vocabulary.Paul: No problem.Tracy: Why have you dedicated so much of your career to vocabulary and vocabulary research?Paul: There's a couple of reasons why I focus on it. I guess being important is one of the reasons. The vocabulary knowledge underlies every language use skill, and without vocabulary, you can't do much in the way of listening, speaking, reading or writing.The other reason I'd probably focus on is that it's been a very poorly researched area in the past. In fact, some of the worst researched areas that I know of in applied linguistics are actually in vocabularies.Ross: Can you tell us a bit about fluency then? To start off, why is fluency so important?Paul: One of my favorite stories about that is when I was in Japan. We went on a train. We weren't quite sure whether we were going to the right place or not. I looked around the carriage, and there was a very studious looking young woman there wearing glasses, looking like a student.I asked her, "Is this the train to Osaka?" She looked at me, and a look of dismay came over her face. She buried her hands in the face. "Oh my goodness, what have I done?" If I caused her to lose face, what's going to happen as a result?Anyway, someone further down the carriage, a man said, "Yes, Osaka." As the train went along, this woman pulled out a book and started reading it. Being nosy, I dropped my pen on the floor and had a quick look at what the book was.She was reading a book called "The Macro Economics of Agriculture" in English. I couldn't read a book called The Macro Economics of Agriculture in English, even being a native speaker. When we got off the train, she came up to us and said, "Where are you going?" I bet that she'd been practicing that sentence for the last 20 or 30 minutes before we got to the station.I said the name. She said, "Follow me." We had a conversation. Here was someone with enormous knowledge of the language and yet not fluent in some of the basic things that she could have quite easily become fluent. It meant that these avenues of use of it were closed off to her.I think it's important that about a quarter of the time on a course to spend getting fluent in reading, getting fluent in writing, using just the little bit that you know even, but making sure that you can use it.Ross: Paul, with fluency, I think there's this concept that, for students, they only really become fluent or develop fluency at maybe intermediate or advanced levels. You wouldn't think of a beginner as being fluent. When do you think it's useful for students to start to develop fluency?Paul: I can't talk about anything nowadays it seems without having to get onto what I call the four strands. The four strands are simply learning through input, learning through output, deliberate learning, and developing fluency.Each one of those that I call a strand, which in the basic principle is that in a well‑balanced language course there should be roughly equal amount of time spent on each of these four strands at every single level of proficiency.If you're learning a language for survival, David Crab and I did some research to set up a survival vocabulary for foreign travel, which is about 120 words and phrases, that if you know those, you can do quite a lot in the language.You can travel around. You can get food. You can find accommodation. You can be polite to people and so on like that. The thing is, you could learn those, but the other thing is you've got to learn them fluently.That means that you can say them in a way that people will understand. When people reply, you need to be able to interpret what they say at a speed which will make it useful for you. Even then learning, a survival vocabulary, you've got to get fluent and that kind of fluency is quite easy to develop.You keep getting people to repeat it over and over again to you and get faster and faster and faster. You keep practicing and practicing and doing that. It's very important because a lot of students have quite a lot of knowledge of English, but they don't have the fluency to put it into practice.How can teachers help students develop fluency?Tracy: Paul, can you please share some practical activities which teachers can use in the classroom to help their students and develop those skills to be more fluent?Paul: I've written lots of books, but the one that I liked the most, one that gave me the greatest satisfaction having written it is called, "What Should Every EFL Teacher Know," because of near I sort of wanted after training teachers and teaching English and that for well over 50 years.I thought if I can sit down, reading all the research, and say in a simple, clear and direct way what do I think EFL teachers should be doing, then there's something wrong with...I haven't spent my life well.I wrote that book and then as, part of doing it, I sat, and I thought, "Well, what if I had to choose 20 teaching techniques and activities, what would they be? The top ones that people should know."I came up with a list of those which are in the book. The ones for speaking fluency, one is a very interesting technique called Four, Three, Two, where the students choose an easy topic, and then they sit down with a partner and teacher says, "Go."For four minutes, they have to talk about that familiar, easy topic. After exactly four minutes, the teacher says, "Stop. Change partners." Then everybody moves onto a new partner.Then for three minutes, the same people, half of the class have to talk again to their partner saying exactly what they said before to the new partner, but doing it in three minutes. After three minutes, they move onto another partner. Then they have to do it in two minutes. That's a very simple, easy but very effective technique for developing spoken fluency.Another one would be repeated delivery of a talk, which is a bit like Four, Three, Two because repetition is one of the ways of developing fluency. It's what I call the will beat a path to fluency, that is you keep doing the same thing over and over again until you get good at it.Another way of developing fluency is a rich and varied map where you do similar things but not exactly the same thing. You change it in some way so that you keep coming at the same stuff, but you're doing it in different ways.A very useful technique for that is called Linked Schools where people might read about something. Then they might write about the same topic, and they would have to get up and speak about that topic.Having now read about it, written about it, when they come to speak about it, they can do this speaking with a lot of knowledge and use that speaking as an opportunity to develop fluency in speaking, drawing on that knowledge.Common mistakes teachers make in teaching vocabulary and helping students become fluentRoss: I remember, Paul, a few years ago, in fact, I think we did a podcast about this, I remember reading a paper that you wrote that was warning teachers of the danger of teaching vocabulary in lexical or semantic sets.Can you tell us about some other examples maybe of where you think there's a gap between what research says works with teaching vocabulary and what teachers tend to do for teaching vocabulary?Paul: The lexical sets was interesting because once again, the research is starting to show that there are sort of niceties to that lexical set idea comparing immediate learning compared with a long‑term retention from it.There's interesting research which shows that the interference is greater with say, if you learn fruit together. It becomes harder with fruit, which in some ways resemble each other like apples or more like oranges. Then they are like bananas.You're more likely to get interference between apples and oranges than you are between apples and bananas in terms of the word form and its meaning. That's funny.I would say that the greatest mistake is one I've mentioned already, which was the idea of vocabulary needs to be taught. I would say another belief that's encouraged by people who haven't read the research is that vocabulary needs to be learned in context.They often express this negatively in the sense that it's not good to learn vocabulary out of context and the research is quite the opposite. Learning vocabulary out of context is highly effective and highly efficient.The idea, for example, of using bilingual word cards or bilingual flashcard programs is a very good idea. You'd have this often criticized because it says all the vocab isn't learned in context.If it's part of a well‑balanced program where there's opportunities for learning from input‑output in fluency development, which are all in context. Then some deliberate learning, using the first language translation, learning the word without any illustrative context around it is very effective and efficient.Tracy: That one is interesting. I think that's very different to what most teachers believe and what gets taught on most of the teacher training courses.Paul: Steve Crashing criticized this saying that this learning will not be learning which will be of use when you come to use the language normally. I tackled him on this at a conference one time, and I said, "Does this apply to vocabulary? The idea that deliberate learning doesn't result in the kind of knowledge you need for a normal language used."He said, "Yes, it applies to vocabulary." I said, "Good." We went away, and we got one of our PhD students working on it. She showed the deliberate decontextualized learning of vocabulary resulted in both implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge.Implicit knowledge is a kind of knowledge that you need for normal language use, this kind of flash card learning. You can learn enormous amounts in a very short time, but they out very important principles to follow when you do this learning.These are principles, which have been well‑established by psychological research or research in psychology over the last almost 100 years, or so, involving repetition, spacing of the repetitions, retrieval that means not looking at the word and the meaning together all the time, but having to try and retrieve or recall the meaning that went with the word.If you can't recall it, you have a look. The idea of spaced retrieval is very important. The idea of varying the order of the words being learned, so you're not learning them in the same serial order or anything like it.There are simple guidelines for that learning, but they're very important guidelines. If learners are trained in how to do that, training is not a big deal for that, they could learn large amounts in a very short time.This allows them to make good progress through extensive reading and extensive listening and things like that, because they bring all this background knowledge of decontextualized learning, which now becomes contextualized through their reading and listening.More from Paul NationRoss: Paul, I'll put a link to your University of Victoria web page. Is that a place for people to go if they want to find out more about your work?Paul: Yeah. The latest thing on the website is the updated vocabulary levels test, which is the most useful test for teachers of English as a foreign language to do, to measure the learners' vocabulary size. Then I wrote a book for learners called "What Do You Need to Know to Learn a Foreign Language?" That's free for download.Ross: Thanks so much again for taking the time to come and talk to us.Paul: No problem. Good luck with your work.Ross: Thanks, Paul.Paul: Bye everyone.Tracy: Bye.

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Alhambra Investments' CIO Jeffrey Snider to the show. Jeff gives the first truly credible counter-argument to date for the secular inflation thesis that so many of our previous expert guests have come around to in the last couple of years. Link: https://bit.ly/30JPTZF  

In this week's podcast, our experts discuss recent inflation data and its potential impact on monetary policy, record deal flows in real estate, and the outlook for credit risk and return. Featuring Matt Bush, Director and U.S. economist; Jenny Marler, Senior Managing Director and Head of Guggenheim Real Estate; Maria Giraldo, Managing Director and investment strategist in the Macroeconomic and Investment Research Group in discussion with Jay Diamond, Head of Thought Leadership.

Date: Tuesday 2 November 2021 Speakers: Nadia Ameli, Principal Research Fellow at UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources (UCL ISR) Ashish Ghadiali, Activist-in-Residence at Sarah Parker Remond Centre, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL Dr Joshua Ryan-Collins, Head of Finance and Macroeconomics at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose About the UCL Lunch Hour Lecture: The sustainable finance policy agenda has largely neglected the financial disadvantages faced by many low and middle income nations in addressing the ecological transition. Dr Joshua Ryan-Collins will consider what sort of reforms to the international financial system are needed to address this, including more restrictive financial regulation aimed at reducing ecologically-damaging financial flows, nature-based sovereign bonds, nature-linked central bank swap lines ecologically-linked special drawing rights (SDRs). Thinking about fairness in climate finance, Ashish Ghadiali will talk about the need to develop a holistic approach to what just climate action looks like, not decarbonisation alone. The developing world has been described as a potential "renewables powerhouse", but Nadia Ameli will discuss how lack of fair access to investment could create inescapable traps for the poorest countries. This event is part of UCL's climate campaign ‘Generation One'. Together we are the new generation taking responsibility for climate action and turning science into actionable ideas. Join our new era of climate action at ucl.ac.uk/generation-one

Ajmal Ahmady is the former governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan and is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Ajmal joins Macro Musings to talk about his experience as a central bank governor in Afghanistan and the challenges now facing the nation's economy. Specifically, David and Ajmal discuss his unique role as the country's central bank chief, the structure of the Afghan monetary system, the state of the nation's economy moving forward, and more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Ajmal's Twitter: @aahmady Ajmal's biography and profile: http://www.afghan-bios.info/index.php?option=com_afghanbios&id=4307&task=view&total=696&start=36&Itemid=2   Related Links:   Ajmal's Twitter thread about Afghanistan's collapse: https://twitter.com/aahmady/status/1427265049668636674?lang=en   *Why Afghanistan Fell: An Insider's Account of What Went Wrong* by Ajmal Ahmady https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2021-10-11/why-afghanistan-fell   *Severe Drought Adds to Afghanistan's Woes, Endangering Millions as Economy Collapses* by Sune Engel Rasmussen https://www.wsj.com/articles/severe-drought-adds-to-afghanistans-woes-endangering-millions-as-economy-collapses-11633872935#:~:text=Severe%20Drought%20Adds%20to%20Afghanistan's,Millions%20as%20Economy%20Collapses%20%2D%20WSJ&text=The%20drought%20has%20compounded%20the,Taliban%20overthrew%20the%20previous%20government.    *Regional Power Back Aid for Afghanistan as Russia Hosts the Taliban* by Aljazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/20/russia-hosts-taliban-for-talks-but-warns-no-recognition-for-now   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Saxo Bank Commodity Strategy chief Ole Hansen to the show to discuss the outlook for commodities with the macro backdrop of secular inflation, which Ole sees on the near horizon, and whether gold, copper, or other commodities will be the best inflation hedge for what lies ahead.   Link: https://bit.ly/3H8BcQh

Larry Summers has been at the forefront of economic thinking for decades - a World Bank chief economist, Professor at Harvard and U.S. Treasury Secretary. He's also warned that the global economy is in the midst of secular stagnation. In this episode, he tells Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers why the economy is stagnant, in spite of low interest rates. The three economists also discuss why their field is so influential, and Larry reveals how policy makers get things done.Editor: Alastair Elphick. A Modulated Media production.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Peter Stella is the former Head of the IMF Central Banking division and has researched and written extensively on safe assets, collateral and central bank operations. Peter now hosts a website Central Banking Archeology. Peter joins David on Macro Musings to discuss the role of money and its relationship to inflation as well as its relationship to the payment system. Specifically, David and Peter discuss the fiscal theory of the price level, how rising indebtedness can signal higher inflation in the future, the implications of the fiscal theory for contemporary fiscal and monetary policy going forward, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Peter's Twitter: @Stellar_Consult Peter's website: https://www.centralbankarchaeology.com/ Peter's Voxeu profile: https://voxeu.org/users/peterstella0 Peter's Research Gate archive: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Stella   Related Links:    *Some Incredible Monetarist Arithmetic* by Peter Stella https://www.centralbankarchaeology.com/post/some-incredible-monetarist-arithmetic   *Some Alternative Monetary Facts* by Peter Stella, Manmohan Singh, and Apoorv Bhargava https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/01/08/Some-Alternative-Monetary-Facts-49975   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

Justin Takata, Managing Director and Head of Investment Grade Corporate Credit Sector Team; Paul Dozier, Director in the Macroeconomic and Research Group; Adam Bloch, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager discussion with Jay Diamond, Head of Thought Leadership.

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome to the show, Simplify Asset Management Chief Strategist and portfolio manager Mike Green. They start the discussion with a review of this week's Federal Reserve announcements regarding inflation and asset purchase tapering, then move on to the question of where digital currency is headed, and who will be in control. Link: https://bit.ly/2ZQuCww

Andy Busch joined us to discuss macroeconomic issues that can impact our gains. We also talked about cryptocurrencies and their wide spread adoption, meme stocks and what they say about markets and risk...plus, looking forward to some great financial opportunities that could pay big dividends in the future.    Andrew Busch Former Chief Markets Intelligence Officer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission & Economist at AndrewBusch.com Chicago, IL See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Professor Greg Mankiw is one of the most influential economists today: a New Keynesian, advisor to Presidents, and a good friend of Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. In this episode, the three of them discuss what we can learn from financial crises, why globalisation has lost its shine, and how best to communicate economic ideas.Editor: Alastair Elphick. A Modulated Media production.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robert Orr is a policy analyst at the Niskanen Center where he focuses on welfare, healthcare, and labor market policy. Robert joins Macro Musings to talk about one of the more important sectors of the US economy, healthcare, and some of the biggest supply side bottlenecks the industry faces. Specifically, David and Robert discuss the uniqueness of the US healthcare system, the reason for massive spending within the healthcare industry, and how to fix the supply bottlenecks that have emerged.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Robert's Twitter: @Robert_t_Orr Robert's Niskanen profile: https://www.niskanencenter.org/author/robert-orr/   Related Links:   *The Planning of U.S. Physician Shortages* by Robert Orr https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-planning-of-u-s-physician-shortages/   *The U.S. Has Much to Gain from More Doctors* by Robert Orr https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-u-s-has-much-to-gain-from-more-doctors/   *Unmatched: Repairing the U.S. Medical Residency Pipeline* by Robert Orr https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-u-s-has-much-to-gain-from-more-doctors/   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:3:39 - What the best way is to deal with Bitcoin's volatility.15:49 - What will happen if the government decides to step into the whole bitcoin scene?19:56 - For beginners, how should they start investing in Bitcoin, how is the process going to be like, and what is the finish line?23:13 - Why Robinhood might not be the best platform to use to buy Bitcoin.32:40 - Should millennial investors allocate a portion of their portfolio in cryptocurrencies or are they better off sticking to more tried and true assets like ETFs and stocks?And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESGet more FREE content from Robert.Get a FREE audiobook from Audible.Read the 9 Key Steps to Effective Personal Financial Management.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about business and finance.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about real estate.Saifedean Ammous' book The Bitcoin Standard.Ben Mezrich's book Bitcoin Billionaires.Experts to Follow: Plan B, Trace Mayer, Caitlin Long, Adam Back.Mayer Multiple Website, Mayer Multiple Twitter.Plan B's white paper: Modeling Bitcoin's Value w/ Scarcity.The highest-ranked Bitcoin authorities.David Swensen's book Unconventional Success.David Swensen's book Pioneering Portfolio Management.All of Robert's favorite books.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Save with a credit union that helps you build financial confidence with Navy Federal Credit Union.Trade confidently with BMO adviceDirect. Start trading today with personalized advice with a minimum of just $10,000.Track performance, create custom watch lists, and trade from anywhere with confidence with a BMO InvestorLine Self-Directed account.Transform how you drive business results and connect with customers with Snap AR.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Invest in high quality, cash flowing real estate without all of the hassle with PassiveInvesting.Design like a pro with Canva Pro! Get your FREE 45-day extended trial today.Learn more about how you can get started investing in some of the best cash flow markets today with Rent to Retirement.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Pomp: Website | Twitter| LinkedIn Connect with Robert: Website | Twitter | InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Evergreen Gavekal CIO David Hay to the show to discuss what David calls Greenflation, along with the usual macro suspects such as stocks, precious metals, and bond yields. Link: https://bit.ly/3CryxOG

Lyn Alden on the Petro-Dollar:https://youtu.be/sTKObw_-OBYKeith Dicker explains why the US Dollar is King:https://youtu.be/gLmoJYqZuksJim Rogers on the Rise of China:https://youtu.be/SfLaJtXfx3wPaul Kingsnorth critiques Neo-liberalism:https://youtu.be/HJViqeBovvQFirst Interview with Simon Mikhailovich:https://youtu.be/Na9SA84JJ1EJeff Booth on Tech Deflation:https://youtu.be/qlF_AG-0QC8

In this episode, we sit with Joanita Lunkuse - Jaggwe to discuss the role of women in spearheading macroeconomic growth in Africa through taking leadership roles in sectors like Finance and Agriculture, and how increasing access to opportunities and proper succession planning could be the bridge to tapping into the benefits of having women in top leadership. Apply for an opportunity to be recognised among Top Women in Africa in Banking, Co-Operatives and SACCOs, Development Finance institutions, Fintech, Fund Management and Investment Banking, Insurance, Microfinance, Public Sector Finance and Private Equity at https://www.angazaawards.com/ Applications close on October 31. This episode features: Joanita Lunkuse - Jaggwe - Expert Financing, Office of the Prime Minister, Uganda Mwakaneno Gakweli - Podcast Producer and Host, The Kenyan Wallstreet Podcast

George Selgin is the director emeritus of the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and is a returning guest to Macro Musings. George rejoins David on the podcast to discuss cryptocurrency, stable coins, CBDCs, and a push for a higher inflation target. Specifically, George and David discuss the category of ‘synthetic commodity money' and how bitcoin is a potential example, the current state of Bitcoin amidst El Salvador's transition to Bitcoin as its legal tender, the role of fintechs in the potential future of a Fed central bank digital currency, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   George's Twitter: @GeorgeSelgin George's Cato Institute profile: https://www.cato.org/people/george-selgin   Related Links:   *Synthetic Commodity Money* by George Selgin https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2000118   *The Denationalization of Money* by F.A. Hayek https://www.amazon.com/Denationalization-Money-Analysis-Concurrent-Currencies/dp/0255360878   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:3:45 - What is Bitcoin?5:36 - Why is Bitcoin the winner in the cryptocurrency space?23:56 - How money has evolved over time and led to Bitcoin.36:11 - What is the current macroeconomic landscape like? And much, much more!*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.EPISODE RESOURCESGet more FREE content from Robert.Get a FREE audiobook from Audible.Read the 9 Key Steps to Effective Personal Financial Management.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about business and finance.Check out our Investing Starter Packs about real estate.Saifedean Ammous' book The Bitcoin Standard.Ben Mezrich's book Bitcoin Billionaires.Experts to Follow: Plan B, Trace Mayer, Caitlin Long, Adam Back.Mayer Multiple Website, Mayer Multiple Twitter.Plan B's white paper: Modeling Bitcoin's Value w/ Scarcity.The highest-ranked Bitcoin authorities.David Swensen's book Unconventional Success.David Swensen's book Pioneering Portfolio Management.All of Robert's favorite books.Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors.Save with a credit union that helps you build financial confidence with Navy Federal Credit Union.Trade confidently with BMO adviceDirect. Start trading today with personalized advice with a minimum of just $10,000.Track performance, create custom watch lists, and trade from anywhere with confidence with a BMO InvestorLine Self-Directed account.Transform how you drive business results and connect with customers with Snap AR.Make it simple to hire and manage remote employees across all 50 states with Justworks.Invest in high quality, cash flowing real estate without all of the hassle with PassiveInvesting.Design like a pro with Canva Pro! Get your FREE 45-day extended trial today.Start investing in cryptocurrency today with as little as $10. Just go to altoira.com/investing.Learn more about how you can get started investing in some of the best cash flow markets today with Rent to Retirement.Read this episode's transcript and full show notes on our website.Connect with Pomp: Website | Twitter| LinkedIn Connect with Robert: Website | Twitter | InstagramSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Forest For The Trees (FFTT) founder Luke Gromen to the show. They discuss the U.S. Dollar, inflation, what the consequences of inflation will be, and much more. Link: https://bit.ly/3AYPIWh

Lyn Alden on the Petro-Dollar:https://youtu.be/sTKObw_-OBYKeith Dicker explains why the US Dollar is King:https://youtu.be/gLmoJYqZuksJim Rogers on the Rise of China:https://youtu.be/SfLaJtXfx3wPaul Kingsnorth critiques Neo-liberalism:https://youtu.be/HJViqeBovvQFirst Interview with Simon Mikhailovich:https://youtu.be/Na9SA84JJ1EJeff Booth on Tech Deflation:https://youtu.be/qlF_AG-0QC8

Peter Conti-Brown is a legal scholar and financial historian at the University of Pennsylvania and is a nonresident fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. Peter's scholarship focuses on the legal and historical issues of the Federal Reserve system, and he rejoins Macro Musings to talk about the many facets of Fed governance. David and Peter specifically discuss the Federal Reserve's recent trading scandal, the Fed Chair nomination process, the central bank's role in fighting climate change, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Peter's Twitter: @PeterContiBrown Peter's Brookings profile: https://www.brookings.edu/author/peter-conti-brown/ Peter's Wharton profile: https://lgst.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/petercb/   Related Links:   *Technocratic Pragmatism, Bureaucratic Expertise, and the Federal Reserve* by Peter Conti-Brown and David Wishnick https://www.yalelawjournal.org/feature/technocratic-pragmatism-bureaucratic-expertise-and-the-federal-reserve   *Restoring the Promise of Federal Reserve Governance* by Peter Conti-Brown https://www.mercatus.org/publications/monetary-policy/restoring-promise-fed-governance#:~:text=In%20%E2%80%9CRestoring%20the%20Promise%20of,it%20was%20designed%20to%20be.   Peter Conti-Brown on *Restoring the Promise of Federal Reserve Governance*: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/01062020/peter-conti-brown-restoring-promise-federal-reserve-governance   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Cullen Roche to the show to discuss the debt ceiling debate, why a platinum coin supposedly solves perpetual motion and buys a free lunch for deficit spending, where inflation is headed, and much more. Link: https://bit.ly/3p50wjA

Lyn Alden on the Petro-Dollar:https://youtu.be/sTKObw_-OBYKeith Dicker explains why the US Dollar is King:https://youtu.be/gLmoJYqZuksJim Rogers on the Rise of China:https://youtu.be/SfLaJtXfx3wPaul Kingsnorth critiques Neo-liberalism:https://youtu.be/HJViqeBovvQFirst Interview with Simon Mikhailovich:https://youtu.be/Na9SA84JJ1EJeff Booth on Tech Deflation:https://youtu.be/qlF_AG-0QC8

Scott Sumner is David's colleague and the Ralph G. Hawtrey Chair of Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center. Scott is also a returning guest to the podcast and joins David on Macro Musings to discuss his new book, The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy. Specifically, David and Scott discuss common misconceptions about the 2008-09 Recession, why bubble narratives too often miss the mark when explaining rising asset prices, whether the Fed's adoption of average inflation targeting signals that it is moving toward a level target, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Scott's Twitter: @ScottSumnerTMI Scott's blog: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/ Scott's Mercatus profile: https://www.mercatus.org/scholars/scott-sumner   Related Links:   *The Money Illusion: Market Monetarism, the Great Recession, and the Future of Monetary Policy* By Scott Sumner https://www.mercatus.org/publications/monetary-policy/money-illusion-market-monetarism-great-recession-and-future-monetary   *Eight Centuries of Global Real Interest Rates, R-G, and the ‘Suprasecular' Decline, 1311–2018* by Paul Schmelzing https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3485734   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

Steve Keen and Victor Kline talk about TNL, the New Liberals party of Australia, where they're running for Senate and House. They talk about MMT, neoliberalism, and Rupert Murdoch.

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Russell Napier to the show. They explore whether the developing situation in China changes the inflation calculus, then go on to talk about rates, inflation, and where this whole macro picture is headed. Link: https://bit.ly/3DlRqTn

In today's podcast, our guest is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect, Aaron Conant. We talked about the macroeconomic and supply-chain headwinds in terms of the US economy and retail spending, as well as new marketplaces and retail media platforms. Make sure to tune in to find out more! Aaron is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect, a networking and knowledge-sharing group of thousands of brands who collectively grow their digital knowledge base and collaborate on partner selection. Aaron talks to 1,200 brands a year and hosts 250 in-person and virtual events with industry professionals. Prior to this Aaron was Head of eCommerce Sales at Perrigo, where he helped launch their Amazon business as well as D2C and B2B websites. Aaron began his career doing synthetic organic chemistry at Pfizer. 

EP277- Holiday 2021 Preview Holiday 2021 will be one of the most uncertain holiday events in modern retail history. Major disruptions to the supply chain, the last mille, and to consumer behavior as a result of covid, will make this year extremely hard to predict and manage for brands and retailers. Will shipageddon 2.0 play out again this year? Will the supply chain become the supply pain? With Amazon and Target starting holiday deals early in October, and consumer still looking for scarce inventory late into January or even February, Holiday 2021 is likely to be 5 months long. In this episode we break down all the potential issues, and make some prediction about how it might all play out. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 277 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday October 3rd, 2021. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 277 being recorded on Sunday October third 2021 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners, Jason this is a really good time for listeners to pause because we're going to do a deep dive here so that means it can be a little bit of a longer episode. And leave us that five-star review this episode is going to be so good you can go ahead and pre leave us the five star review so we'll wait for second for you to come back. All right thanks for doing that that really helps us out as we get the word out about the show, Jason last year at and I went back and had a one of our many interns look at this and it was exactly this time last year I think was actually October 2nd recording this in October 3rd so it's a pretty darn close. We coined and we were doing our annual holiday preview and we both coined and predicted ship again and that is where we saw pretty early on I think before a lot of the rest of the folks in the industry that there was going to be both a surge in digital adoption due to covid plus the normal holiday increase from e-commerce and that that was going to more than absorb all of the available last-mile demand and that's the why we coined ship again and it happened and it was bad but we all survived and made it through and hopefully the folks listening to this show got in front of that both on their business and personal side. [1:58] Well this year we want to use this episode and do a deep dive into what that's going to look like this year and it's a more complex situation last year was pretty easy to lie to read those tea leaves because you know we were already pretty close to capacity before covid and it was kind of pretty easy prediction to say that we're going to far exceed the ability to deliver the packages. This year we have a lot to unpack for you spoiler alert it's going to be worse than last year much worse because not only is it that last little piece of the whole digital retail chain of events The Last Mile that's going to be a problem but it's all the other pieces leading into it that are going to be a problem something we call the supply chain but this year we are going to call it the supply pain so we're going to peel the onion on this and first we're going to look at the economic setup heading into holiday 21 then we're going to look at the global state of supply chain then we're going to look at some of the holiday trims that are kind of factors we think that are going to tie into this last some of the pontificate errs are out with their forecasts and we're going to go through those and kind of see what we think about those. Jason want it could suck kick it off with the economic setup coming into holiday 21. Jason: [3:15] Yeah awesome Scott so first of all let me start by saying on the macroeconomic picture most of the professional analysts that look at this. Are pretty uniform in feeling like the consumer is generally in a good place that the economy is in a pretty good place and they are all very bullish on the consumers ability to spend this holiday. And I say that because my own personal feeling is that there's a little more uncertainty cooked in there there certainly are some encouraging favorable things. And there's a few worrisome things and I think. What's going to become the theme for all of these sections we talked about today is there's a significant amount of uncertainty there's a lot of things that could swing either way and have a dramatic impact on holiday so. It is what it is but. Sort of giving you how I look at the macroeconomic situation the first thing we'll talk about is inflation and there's a bunch of ways to look at inflation but a simple one is there's this thing called the Consumer Price Index which kind of. Factors in how much of each good consumers purchase and how much prices are raising for that, and the the CPI is it about 5.25% right now so that's pretty significant we more expensive Goods that consumers are having to pay. And ordinarily that inflation can be problematic for the economy a couple of things to know though. [4:43] If you kind of look at the shape of that CPI it actually is going down a little bit from a peak in July and so possible we've seen the. Peak of inflation and it's starting to come back down. Inflation is a mixed bag for retailers and holiday because they get more money for everything they sell they tend to sell less stuff but make more on each in certain circumstances it can be more profitable. Um but you know the goods are costing more we've got this 5.25 percent inflation. We also though have a pretty significant increase in wages so people are getting paid more for their work, particularly low-income people, are getting paid more for work retailers and warehouses and all kinds of companies are having to raise their wages to compete for the for this labor force that's been hard to find right now and so, wages are going up and in general the analysts would call those two things Awash that that consumers. Are getting bigger paychecks and they're having to spend more on their necessities and that at the moment that's about Break Even so two interesting things to know. [5:52] A kind of predictor of future spending is this this huge survey that University of Michigan does every month the consumer confidence index. And when when we were kind of in the peak of recovery from the first wave of covid-19, that index was a leading indicator that said consumers were starting to feel good about the economy and it hit like it's this index it over a hundred today it's sitting at 71, which is the lowest point since January of 2019 it's not, like a historic low or anything like that that you know you go like oh it's way below normal, but it does appear that consumers are in general feeling less good about the economy than they were, um you know just a month or two ago now there's a bunch of political news out right now and there was fear of government shutdown that we've already averted and those kinds of things have a big impact on the consumer index oh. [6:49] Um I that consumer index doesn't have a perfect correlation with spending so I don't spend too much time thinking about it but just to know, that's a number that had been favorable and is kind of shrinking down. A big one we talk about is unemployment because people don't have jobs it's hard for them to spend on Goods obviously at the beginning of the pandemic we had a huge spike in unemployment, unemployment is actually pretty good right now we're at five point two percent. The kind of pre-pandemic average was about four so we're not all the way back to pre-pandemic average but that pre-pandemic. [7:22] Point was a historic low so historically 5.2 percent is pretty decent for unemployment. Um so like most most analysts would say that's a favorable indicator the two things to know there is, that's based on the people that are seeking jobs and not getting it there actually is a ton of people that kind of took themselves out of the workforce we. Fully understand where all those people went but a big chunk of those people were second incomes for household so like a lot of women. That like maybe don't have as good a help childcare as they had before or more school challenges or things and so they haven't gone back to the workforce and many of them are seeking work so they don't show up in the unemployment number so. Just be aware like household incomes are somewhat stressed because of that factor and then as we've talked about before on this show like as of July. People that make over $60,000 a year the unemployment is actually ten percent better than it was before the pandemic so they're doing great. And the low-income people that are making less than $30,000 a year their unemployment is still 21 percent lower than it was. The beginning of the pandemic so so a little bit of a bifurcated recovery on the jobs thing. [8:38] One of the reasons that we historically have that we had high unemployment was because there's all these rich benefits this enhanced unemployment benefits that people got that all expired last week. So if people were staying at home because they could make more and unemployment that that justification probably ended. The bad news is that ended in 26 States over two months ago and in general the data shows that people did not rush back to work when it ended. So there's not necessarily a reason to think a ton more people are going to rush back to work now that that it's ended everywhere but we'll have to see. Um the other macroeconomic things all these natural disasters are negative to the economy so you know when hurricane Ida takes a hundred billion dollars out of the economy that's a bummer. Um [9:25] Another hugely favorable one in the one that most of us are hanging our hats on that are looking for a good holiday is the savings rate and this is the most unprecedented recession of all times. Unemployment you know went way up at the peak of the pandemic but so did savings which has never happened before, and part of that was because we had all this stimulus money we were pouring into the economy but the savings rate normally hovers around 8% it shot up to 32 percent during the peak of the pandemic, it's way off of that Peak it's a nine point six which is still a little higher than it was before the pandemic and that. All that extra money that a lot of household socked away because they got the stimulus and they spent less during the the peak of the pandemic. [10:18] Arguably puts consumers in a good place to spend for this holiday the counter-argument would be all that stimulus. Is mostly over there still are you know very lumpy employment situation and a lot of that savings has dwindled, um so we'll see how it goes, um but then the last fact I'm going to throw up before I go at Scott get a word in edgewise is that the stock market has done phenomenally right and, we're way up from the pre-pandemic level and so the investor class and people that have you know as a meaningful portion of their wealth. Tied to the market. Did terrific right and so if there is economic uncertainty and instability in this economy it's bifurcated and it's the lower-income people that like do not have equity in the stock market. Um there were her but roll all that up and the the professional analysts feel like. Macroeconomic situation all to all in is pretty good and of course when rich people do well that help certain sectors of the economy quite a bit right and at the moment luxury and jewelry are doing phenomenally well for example so. That's kind of my snapshot of the macroeconomy Scott anything you'd violently disagree with or anything you pay particular attention to. Scot: [11:45] I think I think that's right I think you know there's a lot of folks that feel the inflation the CPI isn't the right inflation number it's kind of this old metric. This basket of goods and doesn't capture a lot of things you know there's, I follow a lot of the crypto people and, so there's been a huge wealth creation through crypto and that whole world which is kind of interesting and then you know there's there's a feeling that the FED has pumped so much cash into the system that is just sloshing around and kind of crazy ways which is why you saw that savings rate kind of go up as high as it did and you know they're they're talk track goes that that's why we're not seeing as much employment where folks have taken so those free free dollars and and you know. Done something with it so that they don't need a job now or they're going to be less likely to enter the workforce but I think at all. Yeah I would say I agree with the analysts on that it's going to be a pretty good holiday. [12:51] But I think the problem we'll get into that as I just don't think there's going to be a thing to buy so I don't not sure if it matters. Jason: [12:56] So step one American families probably have some money to spend okay so now as we've already alluded to the next challenges what is the supply chain look like and what could they spend it on and Scott what's your kind of read there. Scot: [13:13] Yes Supply chains from those things we always talk about but then you know in in your mind you have this kind of linkage these things linked together I remember as a kid when you would cut out the little construction paper strips and make the little chain to go around. The holiday tree there II reminds me of that and we kind of vaguely talk about it as this big, big thing and we want to really unpack it on this episode so as a summary you know there's when you make a product let's say it's one time in a million familiar with right now is a vehicle that which is one of the more complex products or even a. You're relatively simple product like an electronic toy or an apparel item or almost anything it's going to have first of all it. It's going to have component parts right so there's going to be some form of pieces that go into that I kind of mentally think of them as the Lego blocks that make up that item so if it's a cool trendy trench coat there's going to be obviously fabric buttons may be a variety of fabrics and things like that so there's generally it's hard to make any product without there being at least 10 inputs and then many times, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands as you get into like iPhones and vehicles and stuff like that. [14:33] So that's important to remember is each one of those component parts has a supply chain right and you can't make a widget until its component pieces are all there so what happens is we're seeing this really interesting and it's hard to know the root cause or theirs some of the economic stuff you talked about is part of it we're we're just having labor shortages that cause things but then you know we'll talk about some of this there's we import a lot of our goods from China and they're having all kinds of issues of their own there's covid related things non-covered related things but generally let's think about the supply chain and kind of the broad sense of you have typically the bulk of goods are made offshore some of them are are made on Shore but let's kind of assume in this example A lot of these products are coming from offshore or at least income the many of the components maybe there's some assembly in the US but at least the the components for a any widget are made offshore so that's number one so that has to be made in a factory somewhere and then shipped here so there's the port of origin so it leaves a port in a foreign land and then needs to come on its way to the United States for a consumer to buy it. That Journey can go a variety of different ways will to it can go by boat or air, the standard way that products are moved is through containers so you by everyone seemed these containers there's all these cool. [15:57] We just opened up here a restaurant container Village kind of a thing so you have those containers their specialized boats that carry these and and or you can put them on airplanes. So then they get on a boat let's say the bulk of products do go by boat there is some by are then they have to go over the sea and then they get to a destination port so there's you know there's two ports involved with every product that comes across in a container then it has to be unloaded from that boat you've probably seen these giant cranes somewhere. [16:29] Fun Star Wars fact those are the that's where George Lucas got the idea for at-ats he saw some of the cranes and one of the ports on the west coast and thought of what if you had a giant walking robots that look like that so those have to be unloaded and then typically you're going to put them on either so then when they get to the United States in one of the ports they're going to be offloaded onto either a truck and then part of the truck that's really critical in this is called a chassis so if you've ever seen you've probably driven by a million of these container trucks but if you take the container off that's the chassis part as you've got the front part of the truck, then you've got the chassis which holds the container and then the container sits squarely on there it's pretty clever if you think about how it's all been designed or that same container can be put over on rail so there are specialized railroad cars for carrying containers and then and then the product goes on its way then it makes it to a warehouse and then it goes to from that fulfillment center it gets distributed many times do a couple maybe from a big kind of inbound fulfillment center to some regionals to some locals and maybe even one step closer to kind of hyper local and then it gets into the last mile delivery part of the world so it gets onto the virtual shelves and then is sold and goes into that last month so [17:52] There's there's a lot that has to happen right in there and we're going to go through some of the things that are not working right now and you know like any any chain any. There's at least common denominator problem so all that can work great and if you don't have Last Mile Vehicles then you've got a problem or, the factories aren't making things fast enough then the whole chain is compressed and you've got this other set of problems and you know where we are now is almost every single part of that chain I just walked through is is kind of you know sport or in a bad situation right now and we'll take you through some examples. Jason let's start with factories what's going on there. Jason: [18:34] Yeah well a couple challenges with factories so obviously the we have the most factories in China and the good news with China is. Covid is mostly under control they definitely have had a. A spike from from Delta they almost had had down a zero before Delta. [18:55] Because of their their concerns about the the virus they have China has what's called the zero covid policy and what that means is. If they have a single case of covid they will they will shut down an entire business or. Even a sector of business so while there's not huge outbreaks of covid and factories right now. There have been a bunch of examples where only a few cases of covid showed up and that caused a factory to be closed for two weeks so there there have been some disruptions with the Chinese factories. But the bigger problem has been that it, from before and in the very beginning of covid a lot of manufacturing got Diversified and moved out of China right and so the second biggest manufacturer of apparel behind China right now is Vietnam. Vietnam has had a lot of trouble with Delta and about a third of the factories in Vietnam are shut down right now so a lot of the factories that make goods are not making as many Goods either because. [19:56] They don't have very good access to vaccines and they're having covid problems or they have really rigid government policies like China. And then forecasting a future problem that's a huge Debbie Downer, is China is actually experiencing a real energy crisis right now and China always has to kind of, ration electricity and they give quotas at the beginning of every year to these factories and factories often have to shut down because they exceed their quotas. Well this year like they have less. [20:31] Energy capacity in China for a variety of reasons in the cost of coal has gone way up. Um there's there's fixed pricing for for energy in China and said the producers can't charge you more even though the cold cost more and so they have less incentive to make it which means there's less energy and so there's a lot of fear that there's going to be a ton more slowdowns of Chinese factories because of this looming energy crisis so all of those things. Our kind of conspiring to make like the amount of product available from the factories like. Significantly inconsistent and hard to. Scot: [21:12] And then say the call thing and because I have read a couple articles on this and I haven't under Center so they're in an attempt to be green they've lowered the price of coal so cold manufacturers have stopped making goals that. Jason: [21:26] So I think that's what the the green thing has a significant impact here but the the communist country they set the the. It's a. [21:37] The energy industry is a tightly regulated industry and so the prices are fixed so that so the government decides the beginning of the year what the price of electricity is going to be. [21:47] So then these factories are only allowed to charge that price or plus or minus 10% of that price, and coal is four hundred percent more expensive so a lot of factories don't want a lot of power plants don't want to make energy electricity from coal right now because they can't do it profitably, they don't have permission from the government to charge for hundred percent for their electricity but they're having to pay 400 percent for their coal so. There is less production because of that it is also absolutely true that China has some, zero emissions by wants a 2060 things and they have concrete milestones in place every year and so even before cover that constrain how much electricity they were going to be able to make this year with current production means. And it meant that factories had a quota, um and and often that means Factories do periodically shut down when they use up their quota factories are rushing to get more efficient so they're all its, it's like everything it creates all these Downstream effects whatever equipment you use to make your stuff there's probably a more energy efficient version of that equipment that you now want to buy. But it's hard to get your hands on so all the factories are competing for the more energy-efficient versions of all this this materials, but the it's likely that more factories are going to be shut down for longer this year than ever before because of energy shortages. Scot: [23:14] And I saw an interesting graphic I forget I think is there Bloomberg or Wall Street Journal where the government then said well if you're going to shut down energy they created these zones and they put like a lot of that Apple manufacturing plants in The Greener zones that we get more power but then they neglected a lot of the input parts so. But the factories that can make the iPhone 13 or operating but they're sitting there idle because the the red zones that aren't getting a lot of power or only able to run like half a shift are. Jason: [23:44] Per your point like even if the Lego factories allowed to make Lego castles if they're not allowed to make red blocks. It's tough to make a lot of weight so castles so that that is yeah. It's a mess and then to give you an idea how cute it is normally they only shut down the the industrial areas there's so much constrained energy now that they're starting to shut down residential areas so people are. Are like having their power in their residences turned off as well. Scot: [24:14] Interesting and then I've been tracking ports here in the US very closely but what are you seeing at ports of origin in other countries. Jason: [24:24] Well this is one we're very publicly this zero covid policy that China has instituted has come into play. So that that all the biggest ports in the world are in China the third largest port in the world is divided into four terminals one of the four terminals was just shut down for two weeks because of a single. Positive test of covid and so that again to the extent that the factories are making stuff and they need to load up all those containers, um if they have to stop loading for 2 weeks that that creates a real lumpiness in the in the supply chain and that is a particularly hard thing to predict right like if you're just saying like oh man of. Factory you know has a bunch of sick workers it's going to shut down you can kind of watch that and see it coming but what you can't see coming is, you know a very small number of cases having a very material impact on the supply chain like these these ports that are shutting down and so the. The those impacts are sort of outsized on the supply chain at the moment. Scot: [25:34] Yeah and then so so now we've got our products you know, if they can make it through this Gauntlet that we've already laid out they're going to get on a boat and they are going to go get packed into a container and there's a fun if you're a business you're trying to get as much of this product into a container as possible because it's pretty much all you can eat once you once you buy a container there's fractional containers whatnot and because of there's a shortage in containers and then the cost to send these containers has gone way up so right now as we record this the cost there's actually an index you can look at this so if you were will put a link to show notes but if you Google Freight Fredo's fre IG HT o s index there's an index that tracks this and we have hit a record of 20500 86 average dollars to send a container and that's twice what it was in July of this year and that was twice of what it was in January so we effectively you know in July it was about ten thousand dollars and in January as about five thousand dollars now another interesting Factor here is depending on how many units you put in a container you divide that that unit cost right so if you're putting I'll keep the math easy a thousand units in one of these containers which would be something relatively big you're going to you know you just added effectively another. Yeah. [26:57] Let's see I should have smelled your $15 to the product just in kind of Landing cost with this with this increase so whatever your cost is on a per unit it's gone up effectively 4X since January so that's a factor to consider. [27:15] And what I'm what I'm hearing from people on the ground is you'll go bid and you kind of get get in front of this number right now so you're actually out there bidding today 30,000 to get a container and then you think you'll have one and then they'll say oh you know we need to re-evaluate that because they can the shipping company I'm talking to is now saying is 33,000 so there's this like running auction to get. Space on these boats that are coming over because of some of the rest of the supply chain that will talk about so. [27:46] So how about are so that's that's what it looks like by boat what are you seeing on the air side. Jason: [27:51] Yeah and obviously the most cost-effective way to get all this stuff here is via boat so you'd prefer to do that but when the boats aren't available or if you you need stuff considerably faster like a, in Good Times it takes about about 40 days to move a container from China to the west coast of the US so. Some Goods do come via air and little known fact 50% of Air Freight that comes into the u.s. comes on the bottom of, passenger airplanes right so it's not it's not FedEx and UPS planes flying from China to the US cargo planes it's, it's the bottom of these passenger planes and guess what is not happening right now is. International so there's just way less flights and said there's way less capacity for this Air Freight and so both, because there's more demand for Air Freight because of all the problems with the ocean Freight and because there's less Supply that the air option has you know been dramatically diminished from where it would normally be. Scot: [28:56] Yep so then so then you decide okay well I've got to put on a boat you do that you wait your 40 days and then what you find out is your delayed for a very long time because the heart problem is the u.s. ports are all pretty much maxed out so we've kind of done this very big under-investing in our ports so one of our our biggest one is in Los Angeles at Long Beach and then we have Savannah New York New Jersey and then there's a lot of secondary and tertiary ports but those are the big ones and there's another index that Bloomberg, puts out which is effectively the number of boats that are anchored offshore and you know what you want to you never want to Anchor these things because effectively they're just sitting there all that product just sitting there you know. Doing nothing waiting and the reason the reason why they're sitting there is the ports are they can't unload the products fast enough. [29:55] There's a million reasons why we'll talk about that in a second but this just actually ticked up over there's over 40 boats, and this is interesting I've read a data point this has 74 Los Angeles and 40 I think there's 40 anchored in 30 actively kind of being done there's these Maps if you look at my Twitter feed I just tweeted one to just show you know the port and the congestion there's just all these boats just sitting there waiting to come on shore I have a friend that lives in LA and they can just as they drive around they can just see the boats out there just fact it's very unusual time frame. Jason: [30:30] One of the supply chain guys I work with suggested that we should start a new company Uber barge where we deliver like In and Out Burgers to all these boats that are stuck offshore. Scot: [30:39] Someone someone tried to actually get a helicopter to go out one to get their container often. You can't do that because if you've ever seen these things are stacked like 50 deeper someone is crazy you can't just say I really need that one right there so this this index just ticked over 70 for the first time ever since has been created which is just just crazy. [31:00] And so why is it taking so long to offload the boats well we have under invested in these things and then we have this discontinued problem with the supply chain. Number one there's not enough people to I think it's longshoreman there's a lot of these Union type jobs that you hear about that do this so there's a longshoreman or the ones that offload products for a long time due to covid they were only running like half the number of shifts that used to so they have actually spun that up, they're running more shifts but now there's a shortage of chassis and then because of that. [31:37] You know if you don't have chassis you can still off load the boat but now you have to put it into kind of medium term or short term storage and then all that is full so there's not enough chassis there's not enough truck drivers if there is chassis and then if there's not chassis all the storage is full and then, the one when a product comes off the boat at the Port it can either go by truck or rail the whole rail system is all jammed up as well the this is interesting I read this one article that. Near you in the Joliet train yard which is one of the biggest ones in middle of the country they're so jammed up they have over 8,000 containers stacked there waiting for more training capacity and then some some days the trains are backed up for 25 miles waiting as they're loading these containers on there to try to do this, normal turnaround for a chassis to go at a port to deliver something to where it's going and come back is three and a half days due to all these various shortages that is extended out to 17 days so that's pretty crazy. A big factor in this port jam up is also the shortage of drivers and I call them CDL Drivers which is a commercial driver's license. [32:49] To drive one of these 18-wheelers that's going to carry a container you have to have a you know a certification for a certain type of vehicle there's It's relatively, no time-consuming to go get the certification and the number of drivers that have this is actually decreasing over time as they age out and enough people are coming into the profession so I read one article and this was by one of the one of the professional groups of CDL drivers that there's about 240,000 shortfall of CDL Drivers compared, kind of where the demand is there's about you call it to and 50,000 fewer drivers than they need so we're seeing you know I think I can remember was you or someone but Amazon and Walmart are ineffectively gunfighter these people where they're charged their they're paying crazy signing bonuses and hourly rates and salaries for any kind of truck drivers and so because they're the biggest. Employers of these things they tend to have the better economics and its really starving out other parts of the market as they absorb all the available CDL drivers. Jason: [33:57] Yeah that Walmart's paying a hundred and for a new driver $160,000 a year and eight thousand dollar signing bonus. Scot: [34:04] Yeah yes it's not uncommon uncommon thing to see out there it's pretty crazy, so that's what's going on at the ports it is a hot mess on this side as well so even if you are fortunate enough to get your product here to the US then you know you're looking at probably an extra 40 days I think is kind of you know what everyone's saying right now and that's average it can take a lot longer the LA Port is so jammed up that people are are they're rerouting you know rerouting boats across the sand getting them to other other ports but there are no like there's one in Georgia and it's the Savannah one and it's getting backed up I just saw they authorized building this this kind of effectively opening up a big giant parking area to put containers and that's going to give them some more storage capacity but you know where if you add up those, here we are you know in October and you start adding these things together the the holidays pretty much baked at this point right there's you maybe have 15 to 20 days of window here for stuff you already ordered. 80 days ago to kind of get here but none of this stuff is going to get fixed fast that's going to be part of the problem. Jason: [35:17] Yeah yeah if you follow the earning calls like Nike for example like dramatically lowered their guidance and they said Hey look it's it's cost four times as much to get a container of shoes here and the container takes twice as long to get here, and so we're just not going to have the supply to hit our original guidance and and Nikes better this than a lot of other people so it's a. [35:41] Pretty prominent problem and then there's all these secondary impacts right so you mentioned the math of the container right like you'd like to fill up that 40-foot container with Goods if your goods only take up 90%. Ordinarily you'd put someone else's Goods in the last 10% to try to make it more. Cost effective and efficient and share those costs but when the unloading is so gummed up what you don't want to do is have a secondary process where that container comes off the boat has to get re packed your stuff goes One Way their stuff goes another way, so people are actually shipping containers less full than they normally would which is entirely counterintuitive for what you would expect. The boats are all slowing down because they can use less gas to come here and 80 days then to come here in 40 days because there's no place to unload them. Um and the the supply chain guys I'm like we've been helping a lot of retailers hire truckers lately and they kind of summarize it real simply like the average commercial truck driver was 55 years old with multiple comorbidities a bunch of them. Retired and all the trucking schools that can teach people to get these licenses shut down for covid so there were no new licenses being issued for like. [36:54] Year and so there's just this this huge acute problem. And then you know without those truck drivers with the train problems and Barge problems of your on the Mississippi there's just like no place to move all those goods. You mentioned people are moving the boats from from some ports to secondary ports. That helps somewhat but the biggest cargo ships can't even fit in these ports right so I Long Beach the one of the most advanced Sports we have certainly the most advanced on the West Coast, um [37:27] Can't take the two biggest class of ships it can only take the third biggest class of ships and then as soon as you divert that ship to Portland instead of Long Beach. The the that class of ships won't won't fit there and so like there's there's a limited option to just move the stuff around so we're just we're gummed up like never before and most scary of all Gap and their earnings call kind of said like Hey we're loading our guidance and we're going to very lumpy inventory and we don't see any alleviation of these inventory challenges until at least 2020 3. Scot: [38:06] Yeah in the Auto World we're having a huge problem here where there's a chip shortage and then. [38:14] Another problem is you spend down these factories they don't just get spun back up because all the component parts are you know they stop ordering them and then those factories and everything so so even as chips are starting to come in a lot of vehicles can't be made because there's some other component that now is stuck in one of these containers that that were talking about I read this other interesting article where Coca-Cola has several of their bottling facilities that are down waiting on replacement parts so they went and basically least 20 or 40 bulk ships they didn't even worry about getting containers and they just jumped onto those ships the pieces they need to make their factories work and and are bring him over in this kind of crazy never done before way for a big company. Jason: [38:58] Yeah and I guess that that's one last point on this supply chain thing. It definitely is favoring the biggest players in every industry right so if you're the you know the biggest receivers of goods in the US. You're still being impacted by all of this but you're first in line for what capacity does exist and you you mentioned the games that the Brokers are playing with the price of containers that's going to happen a lot more to the independent shipper than it is the you know number one or number two shipper for that port and so. Well this this is a pain for every retailer in America it's going to be less painful to Walmart and Amazon then it's going to be to the, the medium-sized specialty retailer for. [39:49] And I was just going to point out I think you saw this as well as got but like Salesforce kind of put together a holiday forecast and they looked at all these supply chain problems and they're estimating, that this is going to add about 233 billion dollars in extra supply chain cost to holiday sales for the US so that's. Going to come like straight out of margins basically or or drive more inflation. Scot: [40:13] Yeah that's for the products to get here there's this another side of that equation where which is the opportunity cost right because you know. There's not gonna be a lot of exciting merchandise on the Shelf so we're what's opportunity cost of that we'll have to kind of. We'll get to that I guess we talked about forecast so what what holiday behaviors are feeding into this. Jason: [40:34] Yeah so tricky this one is there wild swings both ways right so you think if you remember at the beginning of covid there. Fundamental changes that happen people spend a lot less on travel they spend a lot less on restaurants they spend a lot more on their homes and they spent a lot more grocery stores right and so then as, people got more comfortable as people start getting vaccinated as infection rates are going down we started seeing all those things swing back right and you started seeing, a lot more bookings that are being be you saw a lot more Airline reservations you saw a lot more traffic coming to stores and you certainly saw a lot more people going back to restaurants. Then Delta hit. And we saw a dip again and people started returning to the the the kind of earlier covid behaviors not as dramatically as the first wave. [41:25] You kind of had a second wave and so predicting which of those, behaviors are going to be at the at the peak for holiday is really hard right now so retailers are looking at consumer sentiment and Doug mcmillon in his investor call he's like hey. Our consumer has told a strongly they want to have a normal holiday that they want to sit down with their family and have a meal, they want to travel they want to do the normal things and there's a strong desire and that if it is remotely safe they will do it and Doug's I kind of under his breath comment was. [42:05] Even if it's not safe they're probably going to do it right so, his viewing is there's there's so much fatigue in all of these like covid change behaviors that were going to see a significant return, you know closer to pre covid behaviors but you know we are we are seeing some signs go the other way, in the u.s. store traffic never fully recovered we are still down about ten percent versus pretty covid levels in China store traffic totally recovered and then Delta hit and store traffic drop back down, 30% below pre-pandemic levels and so since China has historically been about 4 months ahead of us. That that would predict that we're going to see another drop in. Um store traffic which again doesn't mean people won't spend it means they're going to buy more online instead of in store and that exacerbates all of The Last Mile problems that we talked about last year and we're going to talk about it. [43:09] Again this year so it's really risky to predict. What's going to happen with the coded behaviors people were starting to buy a lot of clothes again after having not buying clothes in here and now the closed sales are slowing down and then we talked about. Apparel is one of the categories most impacted by all these supply chain issues so there just may not be close to buy and so really hard to predict that stuff. Um but what I can tell you is retailers now have a couple of reasons to desperately get you to shop earlier right one reason is they're not going to have very much stuff and they don't want to be the Grinch that caused you to miss Christmas so they desperately want you to come in early, and give yourself the best chance to get the stuff you want so, the every retailer is more loudly than ever before trying to incentivise and entice customers to shop early. [44:03] Also if this ends up being another digital Christmas where people shop a lot more online than they do in stores, we have a huge problem with the last mile we don't have enough capacity in FedEx ups and u.s. post office to deliver twice as many packages over holiday, and so we need to spread that those those orders out over more days and so for all of those reasons we're seeing retailers start their sales earlier than ever so. To kind of paint you a promotional picture Amazon Prime day normally is in summer it historically celebrated Amazon's birthday which is in July. So then the pandemic kids they can't have a July sale so they have an October sale and it went really well. So this year they went back to Summer but they went to earlier summer they had the sale in June and a lot of us think they did it earlier in June for one of two reasons either they hate their own C fo and wanted him to have to talk. On earnings calls about the sale being in a different quarter every year for the last three years or. They were having a sale earlier to make room for a second big sale they intend to have this year during holiday to kind of repeat the success of. [45:11] Of holiday Prime Day last year and we haven't seen any all the announcements yet but Amazon has already announced a 30 day. Beauty and personal care sale starting in October of this year Target match that and said hey we're going to start our deal days in October, and we're price-matching for the whole holiday so if if you don't believe us and you think we're just making a joke about these early sales and you think there's going to be better sales waiter know if you buy it early will guarantee you, that will match any lower prices that you see anywhere for the rest of holiday so targets leaning heavily into that. And we think most retailers are going to launch their sales. Earlier than ever before to try to pull in these these early Shoppers because of all the supply chain and inflation issues. The sales aren't going to be as good as they usually are like that what used to be 40 percent off is going to be 25% off but what deals they do have are going to be earlier in the year to try to drive those, those sales earlier. [46:21] And people aren't going to get everything they want they're going to be limited inventory and so what's going to happen people are going to get more gift cards people are going to celebrate the holiday later and we're going to sell more stuff in January January is always a good holiday month anyway but January is going to be disproportionately large this year because of the lumpy supply chain think so, if you think of holiday as generally like being a strong peak in October between that that the kind of turkey five, this holiday more than ever before that spending starting in October and is going to last all the way through January. Scot: [46:58] And then as we get to the last mile we're definitely have another ship again so we've got we haven't increased our capacity hardly any because you can't really buy Vans and the everyone's renting Vans and there's just this fixed number of biliary vehicles and if we're going to have this Less store traffic even more e-commerce than last year even if you throw you know maybe. [47:23] Low middle digit low single digits on there like five or 7% or something well we effectively had 98, we can only deliver like 97% of the packages last year so it's going to make it a now will only be a little deliver maybe 90% of the packages so it's going to be really tough delivery, set up coming into the holiday. Jason: [47:46] I think the like some data points I saw the that are alarming like so number one. All the Fulfillment centers have an average turnover rate of like four hundred percent a year right so they're having a hard time hiring people and keeping people. FedEx in their earnings call said that like we just can't staff some of our distribution hubs so we're having to reroute packages in a less efficient manner, because for example we only have sixty percent of our labor force in our Portland Hub right so ordinarily they would try to, be at a hundred and twenty percent of their labor in these hubs for holiday with all this seasonal labor and this year. [48:24] They can't even fulfill all the permanent jobs they have so there's not going to be a seasonal Flex. For the main carriers you know the Retailer's do a lot of seasonal hiring for stores but they're prioritizing the seasonal hiring for their fulfillment centers over the stores because they're so. Worried about enough labor to fulfill all these packages and then you know when when FedEx and UPS have less capacity. What do they do they smartly charge more for it so we've seen gas surcharges we've seen holiday surcharges and and they're now announcing their rate hikes for January and FedEx announced the largest rate hike they've had in the last ten years so on average, it's almost six percent as 5.9 percent rate hike it varies wildly depending on the class of service so some kinds of shippers are going to get hit much harder. Um and just like last year all of the the big shippers have a quota and they're not going to be allowed to ship more more packages. The maybe one silver lining in this is that. Because readers are likely to be more successful in spreading the demand out this year than last year that's going to help a little bit and. [49:37] As a as challenges everyone's going to be with the capacity last year there were political challenges that that particularly got the US Post Office sideways which is a big part of this whole chain. And they don't anticipate that that will be as bad this year and so there is absolutely going to be ship again in 2.0 this year with the, the The Last Mile but the most of the analysts I'm talking to are saying the first mile is going to be so disrupted this year that the last mile is going to seem. Less severe in comparison whereas last year the the holiday challenges were all about the last mile. Scot: [50:16] Yeah and you know the double-edged sword of there not being enough product is maybe there just won't be enough product and it won't you should be getting but if whatever there is is going to get jammed up I think. Jason: [50:29] Yeah so that's a great transition to so like that's a lot of Doom and Gloom what's going to happen for Holiday should we all be shorting the retail stocks like what's. What's going to happen. And spoiler alert I don't know well we'll talk a little bit about our educated guesses but maybe before we do we can walk through some of the the forecast from the the brave souls that have been willing to share their holiday forecast. Scot: [50:56] Yeah the one the one I saw was from Salesforce and they, they say that e-commerce is going to be up 7% versus kind of that huge surge last year which was like you know fifty percent so they're coming in kind of with a moderate 7% growth which which is done yeah I think that would be the probably the slowest e-commerce growth since 2008-2009 yeah. Jason: [51:24] 2008. Scot: [51:26] Yeah that's that's the one I was tracking and you know when I read through the bullet points it made sense they're definitely putting a pretty wet blanket on things due to the this kind of quote-unquote Supply pain. Jason: [51:38] Yeah and it is tricky so they were the only one I've seen that's done an e-commerce forecast right and I would say that's the most uncertain because. Of we just don't know whether people are going to go back to stores or whether they're going to be worried about health and ordering online when they start having constrained. Um supplies is that gonna. Push them to online more because they can hunt more places or is that going to entice them to go to the store because they can use their eyes to see the inventory for themselves like there's, there's a lot of variability in that e-commerce number but I would remind people even as low as 7 percent sounds its. 7% on top of the huge bases from last year right so it's it's that's not a decline in e-commerce by any means that's a slowing of the increase just as a reminder for. People. But then I did see several like of the other the kind of traditional Consultants put together an overall holiday forecast right so beIN predicted that they were going to they thought holiday was going to be up seven percent from last year. [52:45] Deloitte said that they thought holiday was going to be up between seven and nine percent from last year. And MasterCard said they think holidays going to be up 7.4 percent from last year so. To put all three of those numbers in context those are all huge numbers. Um last year was the best holiday year in 10 years and sales were up 10% but the average is about 6% so saying we're going to grow if. You know these three things kind of all averaged out to about seven percent growth if we're here we go. If all holiday store an e-commerce gross 7% on top of the ten percent from last year, that's a phenomenal holiday and so that says, that these guys are pretty confident that the consumer is going to spend even if they can't find exactly what they want right that the supply chain is going to be painful but that the all the macroeconomic stuff we talked about at the beginning is going to win out and consumers are going to spend a lot of money this holiday I. [53:49] I want to believe this I'm going to be pleasantly surprised if it plays out like that right and my um, the the one caveat I'll say is that us retail is incredibly Diversified right and so for every category that's going to get shellacked by the supply chain or by changes in covid behaviors. Some other category is going to benefit right and so. It is true that the holiday could absolutely hit these numbers like I'll remind people that cars are 25 percent of retail sales gas is another huge chunk of retail sales. Some of these forecasts have those things in some don't some of these forecasts are for November and December some are for November December and January like everybody has a different definition of retail and a different definition of holiday so, you can't really apples-to-apples any of these but I pulled all the US Department of Commerce data and again last year November through January 10 percent growth, average of the last ten 10 years is about 6% growth so 7% growth is a. A terrific number and. I don't know I could see it happening if it happens it's going to be because there was a we had the most Monster January ever because I just don't think there's going to be enough Goods on the Shelf in November and December to do. Scot: [55:17] Yeah I'll take a so I think the winners are going to be the companies that have the most power and smartest supply chain operators so I think Walmart and Amazon. Maybe Target I don't know them as well do they have a you think they feel like they have a pretty dialed in. Jason: [55:33] They Walmart and Target both in their earnings said like look our inventory isn't going to be isn't where we want it it's not going to be where we want it but we we in general are feeling good and neither one lowered its guidance for holiday in their last earnings call so they both felt that they were going to weather the storm but you know below that you go look at like a Bed Bath and Beyond and they're like look there's no way we can hit our numbers with the supply we're gonna get. Scot: [56:00] Will they miss this quarter and if you miss this quarter you're just going to get worse the next quarter Seth. Jason: [56:04] Exactly exactly. Scot: [56:06] It's a poop storm now and it's gonna be a bloodbath and in 90 days yes I think I think if I kind of do the calculus on that I think those three guys win I think everyone else is net negative and. You know I don't think those three are big enough let's say they represent Amazon's kind of half of e-commerce only think about e-commerce the rest of retail is. That's your bailiwick yeah Amazon's half, yeah I could see it being flat to down five percent because. Amazon Walmart and Target doing decent isn't it be enough for to make up for the whole that it's created there so yeah so that's kind of, where I see it it's going to be the big get bigger and stronger and because they you know they have Prime, they have more technologies that this has been on their radar longer they have more containers they have more trucks they have more dollars to spend on solving these problems they're going to be the winners so that's going to be you know it is going to be I think a bad year for the small medium sized business the incumbent brands that are just getting their legs under them and you know having to kind of have a Miss effectively miss a holiday because you couldn't get a bunch of product it's going to be be a rough rough year for everybody. Jason: [57:25] Yeah no I in a way it's going to be the exact opposite of last year when covid first hit nobody obviously had Advance warning or was prepared for this and so a secondary impact was a bunch of eCommerce sites that didn't traditionally get a lot of consumer visits, got a lot of Trials because Amazon constrained FBA in Amazon head supply chain problems right and so suddenly you were looking to get your instant pot from Bed Bath & Beyond suddenly a bunch of people are looking to see what eBay had, that hasn't shopped eBay in five or ten years right so a lot of those kind of second-tier eCommerce sites got extra visits as people were. Trying new address the supply chain shortages this year I think we're going to have exactly the opposite there's going to be a ton of supply chain shortages there's going to be a lot of, news stories every day about supply chain shortages and the big players with the best infrastructure in the most advanced supply chain planning, like the Amazons and Walmarts of the world and and targets, are going to be the winners and it's going to be a lot harder for those specialty retailers and Regional retailers to compete unfortunately. Scot: [58:41] Yeah I think that that is the setup and we will continue so that hopefully that gives everyone an idea of the big talk in the industry and you were just at an industry event is this what everyone was talking about Jason. Jason: [58:55] Yeah yeah slightly less than I would have expected I mean it was a huge topic everyone understands the supply chain thing. I do think it was the first conversation a lot of you know customer experience folks and people that you know we're kind of had their head down in their own in their own Silo you know we're suddenly getting their eyes open to the fact that like. Yeah your customer experience is going to stink at there's no products on the. Scot: [59:20] Mix the CX person's job a lot easier they just you know just take the holiday off. Jason: [59:26] Yeah and so you know it is interesting though again like. [59:31] You know we may we may hit the top line numbers and it may be from a lot less items that sold more expensively. The you know category there's going to be winning and losing categories by far and again because of the consumer health and the supply chain issues, the supply chain for diamonds is looking a lot better than the supply chain for Budget shoes and so you know you just may see what jury where you know you say you sell a few things for a while, do better you know where there's extra scarcity then you know some of these low-margin high-volume consumer goods and so I think. [1:00:08] My key takeaways for everyone is it's going to be a very lumpy like the averages will be interesting we should all follow them but but every. Um retailer and every category is going to experience a very different holiday and there just is more uncertainty than there has been in the last 30 years of retail so like for anyone, to definitively say this is how it is going to play out I think is super risky because there's so many things that could go either way at this point, will consumers you know by another toy when they can't get their first choice will consumers go to a restaurant you know or not will consumers take a vacation or not. You know all of these these will they pay 5% more for something or not like there's just so much uncertainty that you know this is going to be. Holiday that really rewards people that do good scenario planning and are prepared for any eventuality. Scot: [1:01:06] Absolutely and we will keep you posted here on the Jason Scott show but hopefully this gives everyone kind of a framework to work within and we'll be updating various components of the supply pain as we get closer to Holiday. Jason: [1:01:22] And until next week happy commercing!

Sensationalistic headlines about labor, GDP, or the Dow have far less to do with the success of independent business than most sellers think. In this episode, Rick Wilson describes how to sidestep an obsession with macro economics, and figure out the correct timescale to analyze progress.

Lyn Alden on the Petro-Dollar:https://youtu.be/sTKObw_-OBYKeith Dicker explains why the US Dollar is King:https://youtu.be/gLmoJYqZuksJim Rogers on the Rise of China:https://youtu.be/SfLaJtXfx3wPaul Kingsnorth critiques Neo-liberalism:https://youtu.be/HJViqeBovvQFirst Interview with Simon Mikhailovich:https://youtu.be/Na9SA84JJ1EJeff Booth on Tech Deflation:https://youtu.be/qlF_AG-0QC8

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Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_ on Twitter) is living life on exactly his terms. He's 20-years old and skipped college to go directly down the money, Bitcoin and global macroeconomics rabbit hole. He articulates Bitcoin's value propositions extremely clearly, outlines the historic role of banking beautifully and does some intense work in the new field of on-chain analytics. On this episode of The Your Life! Your Terms! Show we go through his story, chat Bitcoin and more. Dylan works on producing Bitcoin Magazine's "Deep Dive" On-Chain analytics report (https://members.bitcoinmagazine.com/). You can test drive it for $10/month for six months using the code: rockstar.

Worried about a global financial crisis? You should be. What Black Swan events are hiding under the surface that you are not aware of? We discuss this and more on this episode where we interview macro economist, Richard Duncan. We discuss risks, opportunities & how to protect yourself from the next global financial crisis that is right around the corner. Here are some topics we discuss: Capitalism vs creditism How much credit needs to be created to keep us out of a recession? Is inflation or deflation going to impact our economy in the short term? The China Bubble The Fed Taper implications For more information, visit the show notes at https://moneytreepodcast.com/richard-duncan-macro-economics   Today's Panelists: Kirk Chisholm | Innovative Wealth Barbara Friedberg | Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance Megan Gorman | The Wealth Intersection   Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moneytreepodcast Follow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/money-tree-investing-podcast Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MTIPodcast

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome True Insights founder Jeroen Blokland to the show to discuss inflation, the FED's dot plot and where interest rates are headed, portfolio allocations, and much more. Link: https://bit.ly/3onjHEU

Hanno Lustig is a professor of finance at Stanford University, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Hanno joins David on Macro Musings to discuss his work on dollar safety, safe assets, convenience yields, and more. More specifically, Hanno and David discuss the dollar dominance in global financial markets, how the US's status as the world's safe asset provider reinforces its exorbitant privilege in money markets, whether the countercyclical demand for safe assets can help explain why US inflation has been so low this past decade, how years of low interest rate policy might have contributed to the growing wealth gap, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Hanno's Twitter: @HannoLustig Hanno's Stanford profile: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/hanno-lustig   Related Links:   *Dollar Safety and the Global Financial Cycle* by Zhengyang Jiang, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Hanno Lustig https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/dollar-safety-global-financial-cycle   *Mind the Gap in Sovereign Debt Markets: The U.S. Treasury basis and the Dollar Risk Factor* by Arvind Krishnamurthy and Hanno Lustig https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3443231   *Manufacturing Risk-Free Government Debt* by Zhengyang Jiang, Hanno Lustig, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, and Mindy Z. Xiaolan https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3646430   *US Government Debt Valuation Puzzle* by Zhengyang Jiang, Hanno Lustig, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, and Mindy Z. Xiaolan https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3333517   *The Fiscal Theory of Price Level with a Bubble* by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Sebastian A. Merkel and Yuliy Sannikov https://www.nber.org/papers/w27116   *Debt As Safe Asset: Mining the Bubble* by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Sebastian Merkel, and Yuliy Sannikov https://scholar.princeton.edu/markus/publications/debt-safe-asset-mining-bubble   *The Safety Trap* by Ricardo J. Caballero and Emmanuel Farhi https://www.nber.org/papers/w19927   *Financial and Total Wealth Inequality with Declining Interest Rates* by Daniel Greenwald, Matteo Leombroni, Hanno Lustig, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3789220   *The Saving Glut of the Rich* by Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub, and Amir Sufi https://scholar.harvard.edu/straub/publications/saving-glut-rich-and-rise-household-debt   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome JDI Research founder Juliette Declercq to the show. They discuss the whole macro picture and then translate those ideas to actionable market strategies.   Link: https://bit.ly/3kDuN6t

In this episode of The Wolf's Den, JB is joined by Macroeconomics guru, Nathaniel Whittemore. Nathaniel has quickly gained a name for himself within the finance world thanks to his podcast, "The Breakdown", a daily analysis of macroeconomics, bitcoin, geopolitics and big picture power shifts. Today we discuss crypto and how more people can begin investing and making money.SPONSORED BY:BIOPTIMIZERS: https://magbreakthrough.com/wolfsden Get 10% off when you visit and use code wolfsden10 at checkout!MELON: https://melonapp.com/wolfCheck out Nathaniel's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nlw/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/NathanielWhittemoreCryptoSUBSCRIBE TO JB'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://bit.ly/3iQ3C4uLISTEN TO THE WOLF'S DEN ON:ITUNES: https://apple.co/2lbYTSESPOTIFY: https://spoti.fi/2kGDosVCASTBOX: http://bit.ly/2ngKUvrSTITCHER: http://bit.ly/2kvasE6FOLLOW JB:INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/2Fj4jSzFACEBOOK: https://bit.ly/2Kr2bMOTWITTER: https://bit.ly/2Xub1j7LINKEDIN: https://bit.ly/3175M9HCAMEO: https://bit.ly/2FC0tHdTIKTOK: https://bit.ly/2Yfcp86#JordanBelfort #NathanielWhittemore #WolfOfWallStreet #TheWolfsDen

We all can make mistakes when faced with choices. Biases and old habits can get in the way of good economic decision making. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers discuss the way our psychology affects our decisions, and they show how to make better judgements and assess the risks.Co-host: Nastaran Tavakoli-Far. Editor: Alastair Elphick. A Modulated Media production.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Megan Greene is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and was formerly the global chief economist at Manulife John Hancock Asset Management. Megan is also a returning guest to the podcast and rejoins David to talk about the prospects of central bank digital currency as well as how to conduct climate change policy from a central banking angle.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Megan's Twitter: @economistmeg Megan's website: https://economistmeg.com/about/ Megan's Financial Times archive: https://www.ft.com/megan-greene   Related Links:   *Central Banks Need to Go Slow on Digital Currencies* by Megan Greene https://www.ft.com/content/21e3affe-8c57-4bac-b9c5-21b645e93d7c   *Adapting Central Bank Operations to a Hotter World: Reviewing Some Options* by the Network for Greening the Financial System https://www.ngfs.net/sites/default/files/media/2021/06/17/ngfs_monetary_policy_operations_final.pdf   *Megan Greene and Eric Lonergan on Dual Interest Rates and the Prospects of Average Inflation Targeting* https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/10052020/megan-greene-and-eric-lonergan-dual-interest-rates-and-prospects-average   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Jim Bianco from Bianco Research to the show to discuss secular inflation, demographics, decentralized finance, and much more. Link: https://bit.ly/3AjypQq

Uncertainty and risk are all around us. So how can we make good decisions when we don't know what will happen? Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers show you how to understand risk, and your reaction to it, as well as giving you the tools to help reduce risk.Co-host: Nastaran Tavakoli-Far. Editor: Alastair Elphick. A Modulated Media production.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joseph Wang is a former senior trader on the open market desk at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and the author of the book Central Banking 101. He also blogs at fedguy.com and is active on Twitter. Joseph joins Macro Musings to discuss what has happened at the Fed from the operational side, and we consider its implications for money markets. Specifically, Joseph and David discuss recent events from the perspective of the Federal Reserve trading desk, Joseph's conception of a two-tiered monetary system, continued dollar dominance in global money markets, whether the Fed's overnight repo facility is truly a temporary facility or trending towards a permanent one, and much more.   Transcript for the episode can be found here: https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/tags/macro-musings   Joseph's Twitter: @FedGuy12 Joseph's website: http://fedguy.com/   Related Links:   *QE Zombifies Money Markets* by Joseph Wang https://fedguy.com/qe-zombifies-money-markets/   *The Gravitational Pull of Zero* by Joseph Wang https://fedguy.com/the-gravitational-pull-of-zero/   *RRP At The ZLB* by Joseph Wang https://fedguy.com/rrp-at-the-zlb/   David's blog: macromarketmusings.blogspot.com David's Twitter: @DavidBeckworth

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and this week's guest host Kevin Muir welcome View from the Peak founder Paul Krake to the show to discuss what Paul calls megathematics, the important trends to watch in the current macro environment. Link: https://bit.ly/3yZmuWz

MacroVoices Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna welcome Logica Funds founder Wayne Himelsein to the show to discuss trading the long volatility strategy. Link: https://bit.ly/3yJd8hg

MacroVoices Erik Townsend welcome Dr. Pippa Malmgren and Clint Cox in this second installment of two-part summer special to discuss digital currency and decentralized finance revolution.   Link: https://bit.ly/2UpC53g