Domino Brady Raanes, Jim Grenn, Kent Oliver

Please enjoy this short but special episode of Domino.  The following is the introductory chapter to Brady's book, In Light of Yesterday, in which he discusses a phenomena known as the butterfly effect – which can be used to understand the strange chain of events that led our global economy to look the way it does today.

In this episode, the guys explore the comically bad predictions of past economic forecasts and discuss why the economy is so difficult to predict.

How did the Federal Reserve begin? Well, it all started with one top secret meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia...a meeting that set the foundation for what would become America's central bank. Those men probably didn't realize the power they held in that meeting that would go on to change the future of the American economy.  In this episode, we explore the role of the federal reserve and their impact on the economy.

Politicians developed a metric known as GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, during the depths of the Great Depression to help measure the strength of the economy.  GDP become something of a scoreboard for countries around the world and gave politicians a measure stick to gauge the impact of policy decisions.  In time, increasing GDP became a national obsession and drives decision making for our leaders today.

Trade wars aren’t new.  You may recall Ferris Bueller took a day off from school and in the process missed Ben Stein’s now famous lecture on… anyone, anyone?  Tariffs.  There have been several notable eras of trade wars over the past century. From the days of Smoot Hawley and the Great Depression, tariffs on all kinds of goods have impacted economic activity around the globe.

Donald Trump has made it clear he and his administration want to take on China through tariffs.  Who wins this trade war?  Only time will tell, but in this special episode of Domino we examine the impact tariffs have had on our economy, the US consumer, and even chickens.  And we take a look forward to see how this round of negotiations may shape the future of global trade for generations to come.

From the outside, China appears to have discovered the fountain of unending economic growth.  But is it really just a mirage?  Did China purposefully create their own real estate bubble to avoid the global economic slowdown in 2008 / 2009?  Why do massive cities still sit empty years after their creation?  This week we examine the strange and misunderstood world of China, and how government owned enterprises are providing the illusion of growth with high ever-increasing debt.  Could China be the next Domino to fall?