Odd Lots

You probably haven't thought much about the Taiwanese life insurance industry. Why would you have? But they're among the most fascinating entities in the financial world. And for a long time they've been a source of incredible mystery. They've built up a gigantic position in foreign, US-dollar denominated assets in order to fund domestic liabilities denominated in Taiwanese Dollars. But how do they hedge this currency mismatch? Nobody has figured it out until now. On this week's podcast, we speak with Brad Setser of CFR and Exante Data about how he and a pseudonymous partner finally cracked the code.