From Against The Rules: The Big Short Companion | Lender of Last Resort
Solvable
Pushkin Industries
4.4 • 602 Ratings
🗓️ 11 November 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Michael Lewis wrote The Big Short, there was an extra character in the story: The Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the US, which bought up bad debt on the balance sheets of big Wall Street banks and trading firms. To better understand the Fed’s role in the financial crisis of 2008, Michael turns to UC Berkeley economics professor Emi Nakamura. And in the process, we get a master class in how currency works, and why there’s still some gold in the vaults of the Fed.
For more, check out Emi Nakamura’s Macro Policy Lab.
Order The Big Short audiobook, now narrated by Michael Lewis, on Audible, Spotify, pushkin.fm/bigshort or wherever you get audiobooks.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, Pablo Torre here, host the Murrow Award winning, |
| 0:07.9 | and Peabody-nominated show Pablo Toray finds out from The Athletic, |
| 0:11.6 | where we use journalism to investigate mysteries, |
| 0:14.7 | like whether the richest owner in sports helped fund a no-show job for his NBA superstar. |
| 0:19.8 | In other words, Quay Leonard got from aspiration a $28 million no-show job for his NBA superstar. In other words, |
| 0:25.4 | Kwai Leonard got from Aspiration a $28 million no-show job. |
| 0:26.9 | Yeah, it's amazing. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm honestly so jealous. |
| 0:33.1 | Or how our friend Action Bronson feels about covering his caps. |
| 0:35.1 | When was the last time you wore pants? |
| 0:38.6 | I don't probably 15 to 20 years. The last time I wore pants? I don't, probably 15 to 20 years. |
| 0:41.5 | The last time I put pants on, I had an accident. |
| 0:46.9 | Three times a week, follow us down the rabbit hole on Pablo Torre finds out. |
| 0:50.2 | Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. I'm Pushkin. |
| 1:05.3 | I'm Lydia Jean-Cott. |
| 1:07.1 | And I'm Michael Lewis. |
| 1:08.1 | This is the big short companion series on Against the Rules. |
| 1:11.1 | So in the last couple of episodes, we talked to people who were in the book. |
| 1:15.7 | And this episode's going to be kind of different because it's actually about an institution, the Federal Reserve. |
| 1:22.5 | In 2008, the chairman of the Fed was an economist called Ben Bernanke. |
| 1:31.1 | And there's a clip of him from your new audiobook of the Big Short. |
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