Brad Setser on the Big Surge in the Taiwanese Dollar

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

News, Investing, Business, News Commentary, Business News

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There are several markets that have really settled down since the tumult of early April. But strange, unusual things are still popping up, particularly in the currency space. Over the last few days, we've seen a huge surge in the Taiwan dollar. This is important, in part, because Taiwanese life insurance companies are major buyers of US dollar assets, such as corporate bonds. Suddenly, they're looking at a major hit to the value of these holdings, with losses that are only partially hedged. So why the sudden move, and what does it mean? On this episode, we speak with Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. We first talked to Brad about exactly this topic back in 2019, when the story was more of an intellectual curiosity rather than a market-moving development. We discuss the implications, and what it means in the context of the Trump administration's trade strategy.

More:
Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great ‘Whodunit' Of The Financial World
Taiwan’s Markets Jolted as Currency Surges Most Since 1980s

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. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to an I-Heart podcast.
0:04.8	And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform.
0:10.8	Please don't touch the exhibit, folks.
0:12.7	It could crash.
0:14.0	Ready to step out of the Financial History Museum?
0:16.5	At public.com, you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options, and more. You could even
0:21.4	put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind.
0:27.1	Go to public.com slash podcast and fund your account in five minutes or less.
0:31.4	Pay for by Public Investing Inc. member FINRA and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash
0:35.6	disclosures. I'm Shannali Bassick, and I hope you'll join me alongside my co-host, David Inglis, and many of Asia's
0:41.9	most important institutional investors and money managers at Bloomberg Invest Hong Kong, June 10th, and 11.
0:48.4	We'll discuss China's growing economic influence, AI's use cases for financial services, recent shocks to the geopolitical
0:55.5	status quo, and more with financial newsmakers and dealmakers. Title sponsor, Investco
1:01.1	QQ. Register now at Bloomberg Live.com slash investHK.
1:08.7	Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News
1:13.6	Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wisenpaw.
1:29.4	And I'm Tracy Allaway.
1:30.7	Tracy, sometimes our old random episodes on just random things end up being kind of relevant.
1:38.5	What do you mean sometimes? What do you mean random? All of our episodes. Each of them are like our children.
2:01.1	They're each special and relevant in their own way. That's what I say. You're right. They're all special. I would say they're all special in their own way. Some of them probably have more relevance to others. You know, this used to not even be our full-time job. We just found interesting things, sometimes connected to the news,
2:07.6	sometimes not. But I remember in 2019, the first time I noticed people like talking about odd lots before the pandemic was an episode we did on Taiwanese life insurance companies.
2:14.1	That's right. And I guess the reason this episode kind of went viral or became a thing was because of the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.