New Ep is Up!

Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks and left them in control. How can we end this cycle of trillion-dollar bailouts and make finance work for the rest of us? Busting the Bankers' Club confronts the powerful people and institutions that benefit from our broken financial system—and the struggle to create an alternative.

Today we have Professor Gerald Epstein, author of Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us. It was a great talk, about the history of banking regulation, the revolving door between government and industry that poisons our financial system, central bank independence, a fascinating concept called public banking, and my favorite topic, bailouts, what does that word even mean, who is getting bailed out, and WHY. Listen up, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, you should have Professor Epstein on, because that last question boils down to privatization of profits and socialization of losses, a favorite topic of Mr. Stewart’s. Here’s the talk.

Follow Professor Epstein on LinkedIn or at UMass Amherst. Buy the book here or wherever books are sold.

We are on the verge of a major paradigm shift for investors in the U.S. stock market. Dividend-focused stock investing has been receding in popularity for more than three decades in the U.S.; once the dominant investment style, it is now a boutique approach. That is about to change.

The Ownership Dividend explains how and why the stock market drifted away from a mostly cash-based returns system to one almost completely driven by near-term share price movements. It details why the exceptional forces behind that shift―notably the 40-year drop in interest rates and the rise of buybacks―are now substantially exhausted. As a result, the U.S. market is poised for a return to the more typical business-like relationships observed in the private sector and in other mature markets around the world. While many market participants have profited from and become used to the way things have been in recent decades, savvy individual investors, financial advisors, and even institutional portfolio managers will want to position themselves to benefit from the reversion to cash-based investment relationships in the years ahead.

Daniel Peris is a fund manager at Federated Hermes, but leans heavily on his academic and professional past as a historian to allocate capital. You can follow Daniel here on LinkedIn, and here on X. Buy The Ownership Dividend wherever books are sold, including here.

New Ep is up!

Today we have Michael D Smith, Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon, and the author of the new book, The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World.

College has been in the news a lot the last few years, mostly due to the skyrocketing cost and the student loan debt crisis. Also, the Varsity Blues admissions scandal and some recent chaos in college rankings by publishers trying to stay relevant in the space. It just reeks of an institution ripe for disruption.

As you’ll hear, the Internet is something that has been expected to transform higher education for a long time. I think this is a when not an if, and the when might be right now. Follow Michael on the Carnegie Mellon website here, and LinkedIn here. Buy the book where ever books are sold, including here on Amazon.

New Ep is up! Today we have our first returning guest, Dr. Amy Finkelstein, economics professor at MIT, co-author (with Liran Einav) of today’s subject, the book We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care, but also co-author of Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It, the subject of an interview from earlier this year.

Amy and her co-authors are experts in insurance generally, and health insurance specifically. I mention that because in the interview I rave about this being a textbook example of Edward De Bono’s lateral thinking and blank page creativity, which seem to come most often from “outside the box.” What I meant by that was as much as she’s studied health insurance, Amy hasn’t worked in the health care industry for 20 years or worked in public policy in Washington. So, from that perspective, I suggest she lacks institutional bias and has an outsider’s advantage.

The title undersells what the book is offering, which is a blueprint for, I believe, the best way to run health care in America, which is universal coverage with free, basic coverage for all. That’s a tease, there’s so much more to it, and the book provides evidence from around the world including not just countries from Europe to the UK and Norway to Singapore and Australia, but also states like Massachusetts and Oregon, to support the authors’ research. And, I know I always say this, but in this case it’s especially true because of the enormity of the subject matter, but you do really have to read the book.

With that said, the most elegant solutions are often the simplest, and by that measure, Amy and Liran have crushed it again. The solution, the final product if we could start from scratch, is amazingly straight forward.

One more thing to entice you into reading the book. If you start from first principles as the authors did, you find that there is actually a lot more consensus on the building blocks of this recommended framework from the right, left, and middle, than there is disagreement.

Other than me screwing up the term “supplemental” insurance and instead saying “premium” a couple of times, it’s a clean interview, thanks to Amy’s mastery of the subject. If you can overlook that error, and apologies for any confusion that causes, you’re going to leave the interview miles ahead of your friends, family, and work associates on the subject. But don’t be greedy. Share it with all of them! And send it to you representatives in Washington.

Read more about Amy here, and coauthor Iran Einav on X. Buy the book here or at your favorite bookstore.

Welcome to Kick the Dogma, the podcast where we interview authors of books on investing, economics, behavioral finance, and business more generally.

Today’s episode is an interview with Algy Hall, author of Four Ways to Beat the Market: A practical guide to stock-screening strategies to help you pick winning shares.

Algy is a journalist, and just over ten years ago he started tracking the performance of his own stock picks generated by his four screens, which are similar to the “factors” used by quants, but it’s not a black box. Algy uses them as an idea generator, from which he does deeper financial and qualitative analysis. Which, is what I think any financial advisors still trying to pick stocks should be doing, basically to improve their chances of success, and for that matter, active fund managers that aren’t finding success. Investors are, after all, odds makers, and this is a practical guide to improving your odds.

You can follow Algy at Citywide Elite Companies, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and buy his book anywhere books are sold, including here. Enjoy my talk with Algy Hall!

What Tight Labor Markets Do For The Poor. Another timely book and discussion, as unemployment remains near historic lows, wages and benefits rise, and the traditionally disenfranchised enter the labor force. Specifically, the book addresses structural change that occur below an already low unemployment rate (think Peter Berezin’s kinked Phillips curve), and only at those levels of labor participation. What is Fed Chairman Powell focused on as the tightening cycle continues? Hasn’t the labor market been subjected to just another supply shock that requires a scalpel instead of a hammer?

“Moving the Needle examines how very low unemployment boosts wages at the bottom, improves benefits, lengthens job ladders, and pulls the unemployed into a booming job market.

Drawing on over seventy years of quantitative data, as well as interviews with employers, jobseekers, and longtime residents of poor neighborhoods, Katherine S. Newman and Elisabeth S. Jacobs investigate the most durable positive consequences of tight labor markets.”

Buy the book here!

New Ep is up! Today we get to talk to Joe Wiggins, author of The Intelligent Fund Investor: Practical Steps for Better Results in Active and Passive Funds. Joe is also a senior portfolio manager, putting the tools he describes in the book to work every day. Joe and I agree that equity markets are not efficient, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are easy to beat for an active manager. I have also argued that I don’t envy wealth managers trying to pick successful active funds and their managers, because of the absence of a systematic way to do so. Joe’s book is a guide to doing just that. Beyond the book, we also talk about Cliff Asness and volatility laundering, Richard Thaler and myopic loss aversion, and Joe raises an interesting point about opportunities to create friction for the individual investor (is that a nudge or the opposite of a nudge, @R_Thaler ?) to treat the effects of loss aversion. I also share the story of how my mother the pre-school teacher was a much better investor than I was because of self-imposed illiquidity that lasted decades. Read Joe’s blog, follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn, and buy his book here.

New Ep is up! If you aren’t already excited about insurance markets, this episode will convert you. Amy Finkelstein is a professor at MIT and co-author of Risky Business: Why Insurance Markets Fail and What to Do About It. Insurance is about risk management. But the markets are inefficient, sometimes wildly so. Sometimes they “function” and other times they fail, i.e., the death spiral. Either way, the price never seems right. That’s where adverse selection comes in. Think about annuities, long-term care insurance, towing insurance (AAA), product warranties, dental insurance (boo!), pet insurance, even divorce insurance. Read more about Amy here, and follow coauthors Iran Einav and Ray Fisman on Twitter. Buy the book here or at your favorite bookstore. If you were wanting to hear more about healthcare insurance markets specifically after listening to this episode, the great news is there’s a sequel coming, you can preorder We’ve Got You Covered. Check back in June so you don’t miss that interview.

On today’s episode we have Jim Edwards, former editor-in-chief of Insider’s news division, and author of Say Thank You For Everything: The Secrets of Being a Great Manager, Strategies and Tactics That Get Results. Jim draws from a combination of his own experiences with leadership, successes and failures, leadership styles of others he witnessed throughout his career in journalism, and research on the most current thinking about group dynamics. Most interesting I think was our digression into creative thinking, how it works, how you set yourself and others up for productive sessions, why you should dedicate time to doing it, just like you might dedicate time to working out, and why brainstorming sessions aren’t as productive as sending people off alone. Enjoy leadership lessons from Dominos and Mad Men, the importance of owning your mistakes, and communicating clearly, repeatedly, and honestly. The book contains a lot of content we didn’t get in to, such as hiring, firing, and even advice for young people just starting out in their careers.

Another take on ESG investing for KTDpod, this time more of a European perspective. I was joined by Becky O’Connor, editor of and contributor to The ESG Investing Handbook: Insights and Developments In Environmental, Social & Governance Investment. Becky is head of pension and savings at interactive investor. She also co-founded the ethical sustainable personal finance website Good With Money in 2015. Additional support and contributions came from Abundance Investment, Baillie Gifford, Impax Asset Management, Carbon Tracker, Green Finance Institute, Global Returns Project, and Federated Hermes. The book is honest, pragmatic, educational, and inspirational. A lot of great work is being done. A lot of work still needs to be done. The work must start somewhere, and so must the vernacular and standards around ESG. Enjoy!

Jennifer joined us from the French countryside for a wide ranging interview that covered her background, her business with co-author Carolyn Coughlin, and what breathing, sleep, laughter, and evolutionary biology have to do with your on-the-job performance and leadership capabilities. The book is Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead. It’s fantastic.

An interview with Samuel Evan Milner, economic historian and author of Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Power, Profits, and Productivity in Modern American. Mr. Milner has a degree in history from Harvard, master’s degrees in history and philosophy from Yale, a PhD in history from Yale, and more recently, a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School.

Author Ann Garcia is both a Certified Financial Planner and the parent of twins that have gone through the college application and financial aid application process. She brings the full weight of her professional and personal experience to bear on the topic of How To Pay For College: A Complete Financial Plan for Funding your Child’s Education.

“Let cannabis be kale.” The licensed weed business is more than about states generating tax revenues. It’s about supporting small businesses, social justice, and more. Ag economists Dan Sumner and Robin Goldstein explain The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics in this interview. I share a story from my firefighter days, we talk about reading books in bars, and we compare California, Colorado, and Oklahoma. KTD short available here on KTDpod.com as well as Spotify, Amazon, Apple.

On today’s episode we have a discussion about the evolution of human behavior and how it can be used in engineering, corporate strategy, marketing, and so much more. Sam Tatam joined us from Sidney to talk about his new book Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking Ancient Innovation to Solve Tomorrow’s Challenges. It is such an interesting book, the most rewarding and thought-provoking book I’ve read this year.

All About ESG…That is, investing based on environmental, societal, and governance criteria, and it’s exploding. ESG has taken over from SRI, or socially responsible investing, and interested investors need to understand both impact investing and sustainable investing. But there’s a new book out by Sam Adams and Larry Swedroe that does a fantastic job bringing it all together.

From the host of NPR's Planet Money, the deeply-investigated story of how one visionary, dogged investor changed American finance forever. The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost it All, is the story of how Bill Gross turned the sleepy bond market into a destabilized game of high risk, high reward; founded Pimco, one of today's most powerful, secretive, and cutthroat investment firms; helped to reshape our financial system in the aftermath of the Great Recession--to his own advantage; and gained legions of admirers, and enemies, along the way. Like every American antihero, his ambition would also be his undoing.