Odd Lots

Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday, Thursday, and Friday

  1. 8h ago

    Lev Menand and Nathan Tankus on Why Fed Independence Is Now Hanging by a Thread

    Last August, President Trump made the unprecedented choice of moving to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. The administration claimed she was being terminated with cause, citing an ongoing investigation in alleged mortgage fraud committed by Cook. The legal battle between Cook and the administration has been tangled in the courts for the last year, eventually reaching the Supreme Court. This June, in a 5-4 decision, the court ruled in favor of Cook. However at the same time, in a different case, the court allowed the President to fire individual members of the FTC, undermining its role as quasi-independent body not beholden to the executive branch. So what are the implications here? How can the court change the status of a body like the FTC while allowing the Fed to continue operating as is? And for how long will the Fed maintain some amount of operational autonomy? On this episode we speak with Columbia Law School's Lev Menand who just wrote a piece on these two cases for Just Security called The Federal Reserve Exception to the Slaughter Rule as well as Nathan Tankus (writer and president of Notes on the Crises). The two of them lay out the consequences of these two decisions and they dig into the generations-long legal history, starting with Alexander Hamilton, that explains how we got here.Read more: Can Trump Still Fire Lisa Cook After Her Supreme Court Win? Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox now delivered every weekday plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  2. 1d ago

    Why Soccer Analytics Works Like Volatility Arbitrage Trading

    American sports fans have long been comfortable talking in the language of stats and analytics. Soccer embraced the 'moneyball' revolution later; the sport was once perceived as too complex to model analytically — there were too many players on the pitch, the game's progression was too random and chaotic to reliably predict. That's no longer the case, and soccer watchers are well aware of stats like xG (Expected Goals) and each match is an opportunity for a team to mine data, whether its tracking data, on-ball data, or even analyzing body poses and movement. Today, we speak with two soccer analytics veterans, Mike Treacy (head of risk at Apex Fintech Solutions) and Joris Bekkers (a soccer analytics consultant). Treacy's background includes a stint in analytics for a Premier League team and he's currently advising the MLS team Austin FC while Bekkers has built software that analyzes raw soccer data and he's worked with the US Soccer Federation. We talk to them about how VAR has affected the sport, how data analytics can capture ineffable things like hustle, how European leagues and the MLS differ in their analytics strategy, and why chess and soccer are not so dissimilar. Read more: The Lawyer Taking On StubHub Over World Cup Ticket Sales Polymarket Partners With Crypto Firm During World Cup Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at  bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday, Thursday, and Friday

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