The New Bazaar

• Is the US about to fix its housing problem?

  The ROAD (Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream) to Housing Act is a bipartisan bill now making its way through Congress. And as today’s guest, Alex Armlovich, and his colleagues at the Niskanen Center argue, it is “the first comprehensive bid to tackle the roots of America’s‬ affordability crisis in a generation—it correctly‬‭ identifies, and takes initial steps to attack,‬ the interlocking barriers to housing abundance at every level.” Not only that, but the bill is “miraculously‬ bipartisan, and its negotiation and development exhibited a stunning, almost‬ anachronistic return to the old Senate tradition of depolarized collegiality and bipartisan‬ problem-solving.‬”But before discussing the contents of the bill, Alex and Cardiff first talk about recent shifts in housing-policy alliances, the roots of the housing affordability and availability problem, housing experiments that have worked (and haven’t), the roll of the “Abundance” movement, and the genuine collective-action problems that housing advocates too often ignore. Then they break down the ROAD to Housing Act into three main buckets, going into detail on each: 1) Regulatory reform, 2) carrots and sticks, and 3) financing and funding. They also comment on what the bill would fix and what it wouldn’t, and its chances of becoming law. Finally, Alex and Cardiff reflect on housing, construction, and the nature of physical change in New York City, where both have spent the bulk of their adult lives. Related links: Alex Armlovich about page (at Niskanen Center)Niskanen Center home page (where the upcoming ROAD to Housing Act analysis from Alex and his colleagues will appear) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Bubbly markets and the TACO trade

  Rob Armstrong is the writer who first coined the acronym in The TACO Trade, which stands for Trump Always Chickens Out, in a column back in April. He wasn’t trying to go viral, much less have the acronym circulate throughout Wall Street and the media, much less have President Trump be asked about it. But that’s what happened. Armstrong is the Unhedged columnist and podcaster at the Financial Times. He also had a prior career at a hedge fund, which abruptly ended in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He also has a PhD in philosophy, making him an unusual figure in the world of finance and economics journalism. The topics he writes about reflect this varied background. He and Cardiff reflect on the strangeness of coining a term that has such reverberations in a prominent national conversation, in this case the one surrounding President Trump’s tariff strategy, and whether the trade itself still applies. They also discuss how the feedback loops created by the acronym represent the fundamental nature of markets and the ways that societal narratives get around these days. But the main part of their chat is about US markets at the moment. Are they in a bubble? Why has there not been more of a negative effect from tariffs? And why has the US dollar fallen — and stayed fallen — while US stocks have returned to all-time highs just this week? What should we make of the horrific returns on long-term Treasuries this decade? And are higher interest rates truly here to stay? They also discuss Rob’s switch from working in finance to writing about it, and his recent column on Rene Girard and the mimetic rivalries that seem to define this political moment. Finally, they close with a surprising topic that Rob frequently also writes and speaks about: men’s fashion. Related links: The Unhedged Newsletter (Rob Armstrong)Unhedged Podcast (Katie Martin with Rob)A Wealth of Common Sense (Ben Carlson)The Overshoot (Matt Klein)Feed Me (Emily Sundberg)Rob’s Life & Arts columnRob’s FT style column Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• AI and Jobs: What Do We Really Know?

  Will artificial intelligence help you do your job, or will it just straight-up do your job and leave you unemployable? Or will the future bring something else entirely — either between those two extremes or a world that we simply cannot imagine yet? And are we already starting to see signs of that future emerging? On this episode of The New Bazaar, Cardiff is joined by economist Nathan Goldschlag, Research Director at the Economic Innovation Group. Until recently, Nathan was Principal Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, where among other things he led research on the impact of technology, including AI, on the economy. Any worthwhile list of the world’s best economists on the subject of AI and work would have to include him. Cardiff and Nathan go through Nathan’s own research* and also filter out the megaton of nonsense on the topic and discuss some of the work done by others — research, essays, meanderings — that they think is actually worth sharing with listeners. They discuss, among other things: How many businesses are now using AI to produce goods and servicesHow have things changed since the launch and popularization of large language modelsEconomic growth consequences of AIWhether “learn to code” is still good advice The skills that still matter To steer or not to steer the AI future* Nathan’s research on AI was done in collaboration with a large team of researchers at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau including Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia Foster, David Beede, John Haltiwanger, Zach Kroff, Nikolas Zolas, Gary Anderson, and Eric Childress, along with program area partners including Kathryn Bonney, Cory Breaux, Cathy Buffington, and Keith Savage, as well as academic partners including Daron Acemoglu, Erik Brynjolfsson, Kristina McElheran, and Pascual Restrepo. Related links:The impact of AI on the workforce: Tasks versus jobs?Tracking Firm Use of AI in Real Time: A Snapshot from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey.The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI | NBERAnswering the Call of AutomationAI-2027.comTyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humansDriverless trucks are coming and unions aren’t happy about itGenerative AI at Work Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• The US-China Trade War: Causes and Consequences

  It's hard to think of a better guide to the ongoing US-China trade war than Evan Medeiros. A professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a lifelong scholar of the US-China relationship, Evan is also the co-author (with James Polk) of a new study, China's New Economic Weapons. Ever since the trade wars of the first Trump term, Chinese officials have been designing a new set of weapons to prepare them for another provocation from the US."Whereas in the past China mainly used basic trade or investment incentives and sanctions," the authors write, "today China is developing, testing, and deploying an entirely new collection of legal and regulatory tools for the explicit purpose of imposing targeted costs on companies and countries it sees as acting against its interests. In effect, these are precision-guided economic munitions, designed to inflict targeted and often substantial pain for political and geopolitical purposes." In other words, China has been preparing for exactly this moment. Cardiff and Evan discuss these new weapons, the long evolution of the US-China relationship, Evan's own experience in policymaking in the Obama White House, how both American and Chinese leaders have changed in the past decade, and the stakes of the current standoff.Related links: China's New Economic WeaponsChina and Russia Will Not Be SplitThe Delusion of Peak ChinaEvan's Faculty Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Tariffs and the global fallout

  Chad Bown is not just among the world’s most respected trade economists. He is also perhaps the single most careful tracker of real-time trade activity — which obviously makes him the best possible guest to explain the consequences of US President Donald Trump’s decision on April 2nd to impose new tariffs on China and many other countries in addition to further escalating the trade war with China just a week later while changing course (though not entirely) against the rest of the world.Among the topics they chatted about: The scale of the potential fallout Where the tariffs stand now — including earlier tariffs already imposedThe ongoing threat to the American auto industry What it all means for the global liberal trading order The worst-case and best-case scenarios …and more! Related links: Chad Bown home pageTrade Talks, Chad’s podcast Chad’s (updated in real time) interview with Kai RyssdalThe trade war timeline Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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