Odd Lots

The Odd Lots podcast recently did two episodes on US trucking that were interesting. The first with an actual trucker, "The Trucking Episode: Why the Industry Is Such a Mess":

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trucking-episode-w...

* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/the-trucking-episode-why-the-...

Interesting observations on tracking in that episode:

> Gord: (23:44) […] So they regulate the drivers, right? And there's going to be another book being published next month by an academic at Cornell named Karen Levy, which is called “Data Driven: Truckers, Technology and the New Workplace Surveillance.” And she has spent 10 years studying like the effects of all of the regulatory imposition on the driver through surveillance technology, driver-facing cameras, ELDs, all of this stuff that's meant to regulate us because of the public's fear of, you know, drivers driving tired over their hours, all this stuff, which is an effect of the fact that the market's been pummeled by deregulation. So there's this regulation question, but it's not looked at correctly, that they've deregulated the market, but they just moved the regulation from the operations of the companies and the rating and the business side of it, and they've moved all the regulation onto the operations and onto the driver, which is another reason people wash out.

> Because if you're somebody like me who's been in the business my entire life, my dad was a trucker, both my uncles were truckers, my grandpa was a trucker. I was helping mechanics fix trucks and driving around when I was a teenager after school. And I'm one of the sort of last of the big game hunters. I know what I'm doing. If somebody is a professional and knows what they're doing, they don't want to be told how to do their job by some human resources harridan, or a health and safety pencil neck person that's breathing down their neck. And that's a factor.

> Another thing, and this applies to more than just trucking, is like the psychology of people who work for a living. Most people that work for a living just want to do their jobs and be left alone. And we have this management mentality where like every single thing has to be done exactly as the computer models tell us and as safe as possible. And they're trying to impose theory on material reality and it drives the people actually doing the work insane. So, you know, you want to end driver churn and driver retention? One of the factors causing that is that they've overregulated the people doing the work rather than the people in charge of the markets in which the work is being done. Does that make any sense?

> Joe: (27:20) Yeah, and that's an incredible point, and I hadn't really thought about this before, this idea that it’s like, okay, the business of trucking, the business of pay, etc., [it’s] increasingly deregulated even as more burden gets shifted to the driver in the truck and the idea of monitoring. And so essentially sort of redistributing the imposition of where the regulation happens. […]

And just in the last week or so a second episode, "What Truckers Already Know About the Future of Electronic Worker Surveillance", with a researcher that just published a book on the industry:

* https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-truckers-already-know-ab...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-truckers-already-...

> Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the day-to-day independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.

* https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691175300/da...

* https://www.karen-levy.net

The flighty deposit base is also complicated. There are rules around depositors and capital ratios, and they include primitive models of depositor types. It turns out VC money is more like a "deposit broker" than a retail or merchant account, even when you have rules in place to make borrowers use your other services. We know this in retrospect, but I can't fault them too hard over deposit risk modelling. I would have thought "don't cause a bank run on your own bank" was something a dude who used to work for Credit Suisse would already know. Maybe thats why I shitpost on HN instead of running a high finance company myself.

> Its SVB's responsibility to understand its own depositor base.

Its SVB's responsibility, and they paid a price for it by getting zero'd out. But it's _also_ the regulator's job to look out for such risks, to protect deposit insurance among other things. One professor puts the blame on a shift from regulating risk to regulating process[1], promoted by Alan Greenspan. Who later said of the 2008 crises "those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity – myself especially – are in a state of shocked disbelief."

Said differently the regulators aren't there to protect shareholders from the risk of owning a bank. That's just a handy benefit. It seems likely though that this risk would have been easy to spot and the power prevent had regulators been motivated to do so.

For whatever reason, banking seems to attract a lot of "heads the exec suite wins, tails shareholder loses" agent-principal problems. Thats really my point: the cost of hedging risk is the profits -- and profit-sharing -- that you might have earned. Probably _all_ of it. "Not hedging your risk" then isn't just staff and execs being "dumb dumbs" who forgot about it, but a deliberate enterprise and strategy. In the fullness of time we'll probably learn how execs were incentivized to take the risks that took the company down and how they influenced the board to give them those incentives. IDK how relevant it is but Greg Becker was on the board of the SF Fed, while running a regulated institution.

> No one else had the stupid amounts of interest-rate risk associated with having a Silicon Valley tech-startup as their #1 depositor / typical customer. No one else had 95%+ uninsured deposits.

About that... if fed keeps raising rates, I expect more banks to float to the surface. Collateral damage, in both senses. SVB was hardly unique in the 'unrealized losses' category.

[1]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-regulatory-blunder...

Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast recently had two episodes on the topic:

"An Arizona Farmer on How to Grow Alfalfa in the Middle of the Desert"

> Due to a combination of drought, climate change and booming growth, Arizona is facing looming water scarcity. But for all the sprawl and population increase, the overwhelming amount of water used in the state is not consumed by residences, but rather farmers. So naturally, many argue that we should be doing less agriculture in the desert and move the production of cotton, alfalfa and various vegetables towards places with more rain. On this episode, we speak with Trevor Bales, the proprietor of Bales Hay Farm & Ranch in Arizona about his family’s history in the state and why he thinks this dry desert is a great place to grow alfalfa.

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-arizona-farmer-on-h...

"Understanding the Real Fight Over Water in Arizona"

> Arizona recently announced new constraints on housing development in the areas around Phoenix. At issue is water rights and scarcity, which have been a challenge for the US Southwest for as long as people have been living there. That being said, the region is currently in the midst of a 25-year megadrought and when you combine that with booming growth, difficult choices may have to be made. But how do water rights get divided? Who holds them? How much is water worth to the housing developers, farmers and semiconductor manufacturers that have flocked to the state? To learn more, we speak with Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University. We discuss both current and past water management practices in the state.

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/understanding-the-real...

(Episode available on most of the major platforms (including YT?), Apple just came up first in the search.)

Joseph "Fed Guy" Wang was on the Odd Lots podcast semi-recently:

* https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/here-are-the-biggest...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/here-are-the-biggest-p...

The also had the president of the Dallas Fed, Rob Kaplan, as well:

* https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/dallas-fed-president...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Steven_Kaplan

And Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari last year:

* https://player.fm/series/series-1504378/minneapolis-fed-pres...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neel_Kashkari

Over the past year they've also had good episodes on the the US logistics systems (trucking, rail, ports, etc).

Odd Lots is probably one of the better finance-y / business-y podcasts out there. Worth subscribing to just to see what their next topic will be. (Recently had one with a former US Mint president on how a $1 Trillion coin would done.)

* https://www.bloomberg.com/oddlots

The Odd Lots podcast did an episode on this ship—partly motivated by the fact that one of the co-host's (Tracy Alloway) recently moved from Hong Kong to New York and all her stuff is on it:

> It's happened again. Another container ship owned by the Evergreen Maritime Corp. has gotten stuck a year after the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal and briefly halted the flow of global trade. This time the grounding happened in the Chesapeake Bay and involves the Ever Forward -- a 1000-foot container ship which happens to be carrying the contents of Tracy's entire Hong Kong apartment. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with maritime historian Sal Mercogliano about why another ship has gotten stuck, what it says about shipping and infrastructure, and how long Tracy might have to wait to get her stuff.

* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/5abecebe-aa98-11ec-9133-1f4...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-tracys-furniture-i...

Odd Lots has done a number of episode on logistics over the last little while (ports (multiple times), rail, trucking, the Suez Canal and Ever Given, shipping pallets, shipping containers, etc), so this is just continuing the 'series' in a way.

Also interviewed on the Odd Lots podcast a little while ago:

> Housing in the US is a constant source of frustration. On the way up, prospective homebuyers worry that they're missing out on their chance to jump on the housing ladder. On the way down, homeowners worry about losing their equity and their nest egg. So is there a better way? Is there a way to make housing more equitable, and to separate the investment component from the shelter component? On this episode we speak with Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, about a land value tax and how it could help us reposition housing so that it's less of a financial asset that spirals people higher, and blocks so many people out.

* https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/2f88bd35-04b5-4956-b770-aeb...

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/daryl-fairweather-on-t...

* https://open.spotify.com/episode/6tIIjEet2Byi8kSWkmoQEt

* https://podbay.fm/p/odd-lots/e/1655107200