Check This Out: How Money Got Weird

  • Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:01am
  • Business

What: NPR’s Planet Money podcast

Episode: “How Money Got Weird”; originally aired on Sept. 30

Recommended by: Kurt Batdorf, Snohomish County Business Journal editor

The pitch:In the 1980s, Satyajit Das worked for a finance company that owned a large stake in an airline.

Das got the airline to start making speculative bets on the price of oil. That decision was good for the bottom line: One year, the company made more money from trading than it did from selling tickets on its planes.

But in the long run, Das says in this episode, this was part of a much larger shift in the global economy — and that shift turned out to be a disaster.

Take 25 minutes and find out how.

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