Odd Lots

She was an architect in the early 1970s who was born in Shanghai, had family in Hong Kong, but had grown up in the United States. And she, when she sort of heard that Nixon was easing trade restrictions, saw an opportunity to import from China.

And so she began through her connections in Hong Kong to import a whole range of different kinds of goods. So she was importing cheap owls and now coats and a whole range of things that were overtly Chinese.

And she very quickly made enough money that she was able to quit her day job. And she was one of a group of these small scale importers who really led the way in not only importing from China, but the result was that they were selling China to American consumers.

They were helping the larger diplomatic thought by easing American consumers and therefore American voters into engaging with China in a very new way.

And so in the early 1970s, one of the really important results of these importers was not only in the diplomatic and economic realms, but in the cultural shift instead of allowing for an acceptance of engagement with China.

He wrote a bestselling book in the United States called 400 million customers that won the National Book Award.

And so he sort of crystallized this idea that China represented 400 million customers. And yet 30 odd years after Carl Crowe's book in this 1970s moment, I began to see that, yes, you have your bowings and your Westing houses wanting to sell to China, sort of treading the path of the Carl Crowe vision of selling your goods to China.

I was reading another book on China called Wild Ride, a short history of the opening and closing of the Chinese economy. And I mean, the clue is in the title there, right? The emphasis is very much on the decisions that are being made by China.

First, I'll be joined by Jacob Goldstein, author of Money, The True Story of a Made Up Thing.

The issue of borders has long been a perplexing one for our monetary system.

If you go read When Genius Fails, they have the numbers in the back, which is quite interesting.

And his more recent book is called When the Heavens Went on Sale, the Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.

I wrote my whole my new book was called When the Heavens Went on Sale because I think this this is completely becoming a commercial enterprise now.

So I'm reading this book called Paved Paradise right now, which is very good. It's about parking lots and like the history of parking lots. And that's been really fun.

I just want to say Economics in One Lesson is the biggest lie there is. That's a 218 page book. Someone handed me that to me when I was like in college, Henry Haslett's book. I don't understand how they got away with titling it.

And we're going to be speaking with Lindsay Owen. She is the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and the author of a forthcoming book called Gouge that will be some time out in the future.

And I've always liked living in New York, it's fine. But now I'm like really like New York-pilled.

And it's all this like has this whole period of like when all these office buildings have gone up.

And now particularly Park Avenue, I know we're talking about a Broadway building. Now I've become like, I look at the buildings now.

I'm in New York City office buildings appreciator now.

He describes himself as a constant gardener, someone who's on gardening leave quite a lot.

And I have to say it is one of the funniest books that I've read in quant finance. I can't say it's the funniest because I did read My Life as a Quant from Emanuel Derman, but it's definitely up there.

And Joe, I know you enjoyed it too.

I did. You know, I like skipped over all the numbers and equations and you just looked at the jokes in Greek letters, but it's very breezy written for what it is. And I did actually, I think maybe I learned a little bit even in my sort of basic reading of it.

Extremely well written.

I can't say it's the funniest because I did read My Life As A Quant from Emanuel Derman, but it's definitely up there.

I've got my book coming out later this summer and it's a different path. There are many paths.

I'm kind of trying to put out my career.

And he's written a new book and we were reading it.

And he's written a book, *Spy the Lie*.

Former CIA officers teach you how to detect deception.

Former CIA officers teach you how to detect deception from our guest Phil Houston.

I've been reading oh I'm gonna have to censor myself BS jobs by David Graber and it's sort of like a dystopian studs turkle in the sense that it just details how much dissatisfaction people seem to have with a lot of modern day jobs where you feel like you're not really doing anything there's a lot of bureaucracy involved and yet you have to pay attention per Danielle's point so I think there's an aspect of that in there.

I'm like halfway through the Fukuyama book right now. I started reading it about two weeks ago. Setting aside whether it's right or wrong, it's a very interesting book.

It's evident that deterrence didn't work for Putin invading Ukraine. It's evident that deterrence didn't work for Hamas and then perhaps what's going on with Hezbollah against Israel, big question mark, whether deterrence is enough for maintaining the status quo with Taiwan. These are all questions that you have to ask yourself. The end of the end of history, for me, means, do we have to have a completely different security architecture in the immediate aftermath of the in the Cold War period?

In the post-World War Two period, we had NSC-68, which said we need to develop the H-bomb, we need to be able to fight two and a half wars and we ended up not doing deterrence, we ended up fighting multiple wars in order to enforce the liberal democratic order. I worry that we're moving back into an era where the end of the end of history means that we can't just, as my friend Neil Ferguson says, talk softly and carry a big stick, that we'll have to actually use the use the stick.

I think this cohort of policymakers in the mainstream, certainly of US policymakers, believes that the post-Cold War architecture either doesn't really demand the US to do that much or deterrence is enough, but it's evident that deterrence didn't work for Putin invading Ukraine.

In Fukuyama's telling, liberal democracy is like the logical endpoint for society, that's the ultimate sort of the expression of society with the least internal contradictions and so what you're saying now is like actually there is competition, there are people and there are countries, etc., maybe there is a different way. Listen, surveys of the global south and if you don't trust the surveys, just look at what the leadership does, whether it's Brazil or India, they're not taking sides, they're seeing the dialectic between liberal democracy and illiberal tendencies and they are not so sure about signing up with the post-Cold War liberal order, just by revealed preference. So you're seeing this play out in real time in a very important way, even with allies who we've hugged closer in certain spheres, like like India. So I think this is a real you're seeing the manifestation of it right in front of your right in front of our eyes.