Josh Younger on the Surprising Origins of Eurodollars and Petrodollars

24:58And so these swap line allocations keep growing. They keep growing the max size of that facility to make sure that if needed, they can stabilize the dollar and provide liquidity to the offshore dollar market. I still like the organic free range dollars analogy. So you've set them out into the world, but you take a risk in doing so. The dollars could get scooped up by a hawk or eaten by a weasel. I don't know. It's like an outdoor cat. Yeah. Yeah. I'm taking this too far. Okay, wait. But Josh, you mentioned the 1970s. And when I think about dollars and currencies and big financial events in the 1970s, I think about Nixon de-pegging the dollar.

25:39And I take the point that euro dollars, to some extent, were solving this gold problem that you described. But that must have had some sort of impact on the market. It did. So the 70s are where this all starts to get a little more worrisome, basically. Lots of things got more worrisome in the 70s. Euro dollars start to fall out of favor in the late 60s and early 70s. And for two reasons. One is there's these speculative attacks on various currencies that are blamed on the euro dollar market as the vehicle through which the speculative funds are flowing around. They call them hot money. So the pound crisis of 1967, varying crises in subsequent years are kind of blamed on the euro dollar market.

26:17That's the first thing. The second is it's growing rapidly. And that's for a couple of reasons. One is LIBOR is invented. So now you can manage the interest rate risk in a euro dollar bank. So LIBOR is created for the purposes of euro dollar lending and floating rate loans. And so now you don't have this maturity mismatch that would otherwise be hard to risk manage. There's a lot of analogies to the present day, actually. It's so funny how like these terms that we consider to be so crude, euro dollars, London interbank overnight rate or offered rate. It's like we just don't even question that we have all these European names for these crucial things.

26:50Well, I should have mentioned at the beginning when we were talking about the Soviet Union, the euro dollar does not refer to Europe. It refers to the telex address of BSEN. So BSEN's telex address was euro bank dash BSEN. Oh, it's not even, oh, it's not even. Oh, this makes so much more sense now. Yeah, so euro dollars meant dollars for BSEN, for euro bank. That was like a, Like a shorthand for payment processing agents and things like that. This is a totally new one. Yeah, this is like a revelation because everyone thinks euro dollars have something to do with the euro or Europe, but actually.

27:24Communist owned bank in Paris, yeah. No one thinks that. Okay, so 1970s, this thing is growing. There's some concern about it potentially getting out of control. What do people do about it? So they start to call meetings and commission studies. Yes, as one does. Yeah. So the problem is the U.S. is maintaining a low interest rate policy. It's attracting dollars overseas. And so the euro dollar market is absorbing outflows from the U.S. where interest rates are low relative to euro dollar rates and European rates. And so it's a monetary policy dynamic. And that's causing some consternation because at the same time, Milton Friedman is becoming very popular.

28:01The monetarist movement is growing. And so lack of control over the money supply is much more concerning when you're focused on the money supply for monetary policy purposes. And so in 1971, the BIS calls the Standing Committee on the Eurocurrency Market. It's a very august-sounding body. And they meet, and they decide to have a standstill agreement where central banks will no longer deposit their own funds in the euro-dollar market. Because there was some concern that when the Bank of Italy puts dollars into the euro-dollars, then those get relent and redeposited and relent and redeposited. And so you have two problems associated with that.

28:34One is just multiplier effects. Right. And the other is the sort of official moniker of like, oh, central banks are using this market. That means I can use this market. And so they all agree to stop putting new money into the euro dollar market. The problem is there's not much else to do with your money. And so after three months, they kind of abandoned that agreement. So it literally lasts until the first renewal date. And then they all kind of go their separate ways. Wait, so there's a three-month standstill on the euro dollar market in the 1970s? On central bank placements into the euro dollar market.

29:04Got it. So the governors of the major central banks get together, the G10, and they say, we're not going to put any more money into this market. I know this is like one of the things every time we have these conversations, it's like nothing new under the sun. You think about, you know, some of the lessons here in terms of people are always going to chase the higher rate. Right. So people you create a new money that offers a higher rate and the money gets sucked there. The lack of alternatives to existing market. I mean, so many conversations about alternatives to treasuries, et cetera. It's like often there's just not another thing that you can put it in.

29:34Yeah. No, I mean, it's sort of like more money for the same perceived risk. Now, we can debate whether or not it's the same risk. But from the investor cash investor's perspective, I can get 3 % here or 5 % here and looks the same. I'll take five. Hopefully, it was a little more nuanced than that. But I think that is kind of the logic. And so there's a lot of like hand wringing at the BIS in these regular meetings at the FOMC minutes, Federal Open Market Committee meeting minutes. They start getting a regular rundown of like what happened at Basel this month. And it's kind of a new development because that's the point where it becomes really important.

30:08And so Governor Dane and sometimes Charlie Coombs or the various people who attend these meetings, going back and forth to Europe in 1971 seems like a pretty aggressive thing to do every month. But I guess the planes were nicer and they had served better meals. But they get a rundown. And basically, the message is, we're going to commission a really thorough study. And we're really going to think about this. And we have agreed that this is an important problem that's worthy of attention. But there's very little actually done. In the financial press, people kind of get to the point where they believe the screws are coming.

30:40The screws are going to get stuck and tighten. The hammer's coming down. Like there's an article in The Economist called Who Killed the Eurodollar Market? I think that was 72. too. So there's this sense that it's kind of like getting to the point where someone's got to do something. At some point in this process, there's a company that starts selling euro dollar branded chewing gum. So that's when you know a trend has like. And now we pull up eBay. Oh, yeah. No, I must have this chewing gum. Honestly, that's amazing. So it's kind of got like a pop thing going on. And so the view is at some point this is going to get contained.

31:14And by 1973, there's like a relatively broad consensus that this is sort of necessary. And then in September, there's the Yom Kippur war and the oil embargo. And that's when everything changes.

31:40This is LeVar Arrington from Two Pros and a Cup of Joe. Toyota is moving forward a more sustainable future by giving you the freedom to choose from an incredible lineup of trucks. Now available in both gas and hybrid models, including the legendary Tacoma and powerful Tundra. Both available with the iForce Max Hybrid powertrain and backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability. More choices, less compromise. Visit BuyAToyota.com for a great deal on an efficient Toyota today. Toyota, let's go places. Residents at Brightview Senior Living Communities enjoy enhanced possibilities, independence, and choice.

32:26Brightview, Dulles Corner, and Great Falls offer vibrant senior independent living, assisted living, and memory care services through various daily programs, chef-prepared meals, safety and security, transportation, resort-style amenities, and high-quality care. Take financial possession of your apartment by December 31st, 2025 and save. Discover more at brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal housing opportunity. So this is our cue for act two of the Josh Younger rabbit hole or the second rabbit hole, which is petrodollars. Yeah, so petrodollars are sort of broad term for the dollar-based revenue from the sale of oil.

33:06Petrodollars have been around for a while. Well, actually, the oil producing countries were involved in the euro dollar market since the 60s. The thing that happens in 1973 is as a consequence of U.S. involvement or support for the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War, there's an embargo of oil shipments to the U.S. The price quadruples and oil revenues go from one or two percent of global GDP to five percent of GDP. So we're talking about 100 billion dollars a year in 1973. Right. So this huge, sudden influx of wealth, presumably going mostly to the oil producing nations in the Middle East. And it's kind of come from nowhere, right?

33:39It's just the price of this commodity has gone up. It's not like people issued 100 billion new dollars with which to buy it. And so they have to figure out a way, in a sense, to issue 100 billion new dollars a year to facilitate this flow. So most people are focused on the oil revenues needing a place to go, but you also need dollar loans to the oil importers to buy that oil in the first instance. So you need both sides of the equation. And the euro dollar market, for all the reasons we talked about, was reasonably well developed at the time. So in their search for a distribution mechanism, which is again to take the oil, Saudi Arabia sells$100 worth of oil.

34:16They take that money, they put it into something that has to somehow get to the next country that has to buy$100 worth of oil. And it goes back to Saudi, and it kind of goes around in a circle. That's why it's called petrodollar recycling. And so So those petrodollars need an intermediary that has elasticity. Elasticity means they can grow substantially to meet this massive increase in demand. And euro dollars, the US in particular, Bill Simon, who's the Treasury Secretary in 1974 for Nixon, he is very focused on using that channel, specifically private market intermediation, not going through the IMF, not going through the BIS, but specifically private market intermediaries serving as that distribution system.

34:58So, sorry, you know, because again, I think as you said, people use the word petrodollars and they sort of mean all different kinds of things. But this is like to use it in a way that's actually useful. What we're talking about is the system of private banks that issued dollar denominated liabilities that handled the flow of oil revenue. Yeah. And they issued assets. Right. So they had loans to oil importing countries and liabilities to deposits from oil exporting countries. And so they're the bridge because the financial system doesn't track oil imports. Who are these? Like, are there specific banks that played a prominent role early on?

35:36It's just like all the usual massive banks. Like, they were all involved in this. There's old pamphlets. When I was at J.P. Murray and went down to the archives, they had these old, like, pamphlets. Like, the Eurodollar market, a great opportunity for this, that, or the other thing. And so it's like, it's just seen as, like, a very lucrative, very, like, high growth business area. The concern is that these loans are relatively long dated and these deposits are relatively hot and flighty. And so there's a lot of analogies to today, right? So you issue a short dated deposit. You're not sure how long it's going to stick around.

36:08You think it's going to stick around for a long time. But if the Saudis decide that they don't like this bank, they like that bank, they'll move their money or they're paying an incrementally higher rate or that sort of thing. So how sticky euro dollar deposits are is an open question. But the loans are long dated because countries have ongoing need to import oil. So the euro dollar market grows exponentially, but it incurs a much larger liquidity mismatch or maturity mismatch. It's doing more and more and more and more liquidity transformation, long-term loans, short-term liabilities. And there's this increasing concern by the spring of 1974 that the system is creaking under the weight of this demand and something might break.

36:52Does something break? I'm going to take the bait. And also, since we're talking about historical analogies to today, I have to ask, did something break? Yeah, so something breaks. Not what you'd expect. I think they're the 34th largest bank in Germany, but there's Bankhaus Herstadt. And people talk about Herstadt risk now. But Bankhaus Herstadt is very involved in speculating on currencies. And I didn't talk about the Nixon shock and the de-pegging of the dollar. That's a whole story in and of itself. But what it does is it generates a lot of volatility in foreign exchange rates, which had previously been very sticky.

37:21And so So some people see this as a risk. Some people see this as an opportunity. And Ivan Herstadt runs Bankhouse. Herstadt is a privately owned bank. And he's like, this is my, I think he called it his big hour, right? This is my moment to make my mark. They take a massive long dollar position, goes bad, and they fail. Like the bank fails. Herstadt never takes responsibility for this, by the way. He writes an autobiography later called How My Life Savings Was Stolen For Me. Or My Life's Work Was Stolen For Me. In German, so I'll check with. with somebody on translating. Commitment to the narrative.

37:54Yeah, but the bank fails. It's seized by German regulators in the German afternoon, which makes sense. The problem is they had a bunch of outstanding dollar transactions in New York slated for New York afternoon. So the European transactions, the European payments go through on these foreign exchange transactions. I give you Deutsche Marks, you give me dollars, right? Or you give me Deutsche Marks, I give you dollars in this case. And so they got their Deutsche Marks, but they never sent out the dollars. So this is classic settlement risk. I mean, so Hairstott risk became basically a synonym for this type of risk.

38:29Not only a synonym, it's the reason we have Basel bank regulations in the first instance. So the Basel committee is convened to address this issue and it ultimately evolves into a much more elaborate international standard and standard setting mechanism. But the idea of having international coordination of bank regulations comes out of this episode. So So that's also, I guess, another episode. But from a - We just need to get the Josh Younger lecture series. Yeah. I think. So in New York, the payments don't go through. It's a significant amount of money. There's a lot of banks holding the bag.

39:01And the payment system essentially breaks down. Like no one's willing to do cross-border payments because they're not sure if this is going to happen again. Like who's next? What's the next shoe to drop? Right. Always the same. Yeah. And so the Clearinghouse Association starts allowing for clawbacks of payments until the next day afternoon. to try to facilitate this. And that kind of works for the spot market, but it doesn't really work for the foreign exchange derivatives market. And so you get a tiering of intermediaries, of counterparties, where the largest, best capitalized, most well-known banks can trade freely, but the small and medium-sized banks are essentially shut out of the market.

39:34This sounds a little bit familiar. So now your euro dollar issuers can't hedge. They can't hedge their foreign exchange risks. Now they're long dollars, or they're short dollars from their deposits, and they don't have any hedge for the other side. So unless they have a match with the assets, which they didn't always have, they have a problem. So how did they solve this inability to hedge? So then the question is, what do you do if there's another run? How do you backstop the euro dollar market in a more concrete way? Who is the lender of last resort to the euro dollar market? Which is kind of like the first question I had at the very beginning.

40:08So finally, 20 years later, they start really contemplating this in detail. And because the first instance is 54, then in 1974, they go, we really need a plan for this. And so they start convening meetings and the usual things. In July of 74, there's a tacit agreement to do something, but it's not concrete. It's unclear how it's going to be executed. And basically, the market goes, do better. And you have this massive shift where, on the one hand, the euro dollar market comes from out of favor to very much in favor. This is an important mechanism. We need to maintain the flow of oil to facilitate economic growth, we need a stable euro dollar market.

40:44Oh, interesting. So the regulatory impulse reverses completely. And in September, the G10 central bank governors go so far as to put out a public communique where they say, we are going to do what is necessary. This is whatever it takes the first time. So this is just like what happened in Europe around the sovereign debt crisis, but it's in 74 with relation to the euro dollar market. And they say, we're going to do whatever it takes, I don't remember the exact words, to facilitate liquidity in the euro dollar market and make sure it's stable. Sorry, real quickly. Who said this? Or who is in position to say this?

41:13The G10 Central Bank governor has put out a communique. So it's a collective agreement. A collective, okay. They leave out some details, like what do you literally mean? But because they put it in a communique, this is all about Central Bank communication. Yeah, yeah. So like we're putting it on paper. We're putting it in the newspaper. They send it to the Wall Street Journal because that's what you had to do back then, right? There's no computers. And so like, you know, say please print this. And so they print it. Fax it to the Wall Street Journal. Wait, were there faxes in the 70s? Maybe it was telex.

41:37There we go. Good question. But they put out a public communication that this is the case, the goal being to stop the contagion. So specifically to facilitate the quitted in the euro dollar market. And the implication is we need this thing to avoid a global monetary contraction. There's a lot of hand-wringing in the press. If they don't do something, we could have global monetary-based destruction through the collapse of the euro dollar system. That's what happened in 1929 to 1933. It could happen again. We're looking at another Great Depression. Somebody do something. So they don't announce the exact mechanism, but they just announce that they will do whatever it takes.

42:17Yeah. Those sorts of words. They're very clear about their commitment in a public forum as opposed to having a behind-the-scenes conversation that gets leaked out. Apparently, the fax machine was invented in the early 1800s by someone, but the actual modern fax, 1964. Just in time. So maybe it was a fax. I'm sure the year-dollar banks had it. I'm not sure the central banks had it yet at that point. Just on petrodollars, you know, this word, like even more than euro dollars, like conjures up all kinds of conspiracy theories about how we've forced, you know, the force, the oil exporters to use our currency.

42:48And this is really crucial. Like, is there an element like of truth to that story where like the U.S. made a concerted effort to figure out how the oil exporting nations in the Middle East were going to, you know, the currency that they were going to sell their oil on? So it wasn't always petrodollars. It was originally 75 % dollars, 25 % sterling. So it was a mix. I don't know where that ratio came from, but that was sort of like the agreed upon rough breakout of oil revenues in like 1973. And the question is like, why was it all dollars after then? And I wouldn't say conspiracy theory, but there was a policy decision at the Treasury that we do want them using dollars, and we specifically want them buying treasuries, which makes sense.

43:28So like other than the euro dollar market, you can have governments provide this redistribution mechanism as opposed to intermediating the extension of credit. It can go through government spending. And the U.S. is looking at a widening budget deficit. Wait, so the idea there was just, well, if we're going to spend enormous amounts on oil, we might as well get something back. I guess I can't validate that specifically, but like that seems plausible. All we know is that they decided that this was a good way to sell treasury bonds, which makes sense. There's a lot of excess dollar based savings abroad.

43:57But that requires, one, that the oil exporting countries be comfortable buying treasuries, which is like got a bunch of things around that. And two, that it stay in dollars. Those two things are connected. So in the spring of 74, Kissinger convenes this like council with Saudi Arabia specifically to think about U.S.-Saudi economic coordination. We don't have a lot of records from that that at least I have easy access to. But David Spiro wrote a book about this a while ago. And his view was those meetings in part revolved around trying to convince them to use only dollars for their oil revenues.

44:29So that was one line of debate at these council meetings. The other is the Treasury side of it. And so Bill Simon's idea is euro dollars are the primary recycling mechanism. But like, well, we're at it. Maybe we'll get some revenue for the government. And so he flies to Riyadh in July. buy he actually gets uh scooped by fannie mae who wants to sell more debentures to fund mortgage oh they get their first and they're like buy the mortgage and there's like this whole back and forth in the state department about like who approved this and like why is this guy here first no one told me um but there's a little bit of a gold rush dynamic but he shows up and he says okay here's what we can offer you buy treasury bonds they will be after the auction you can look at the price and decide if you want more we'll do them on an add-on basis which means you're not an active participant in the auction, you get like a second look and you can decide if you want them at that price.

45:20Your name will not appear on the ticket. So like the Federal Reserve from New York is going to be the custodian. And so they're going to transact on your behalf. You get confidentiality. And the implication is in exchange - And this was a pitch to the Saudis in particular. Pitch to the Saudis in July. And it's like reasonably well received. And they start dabbling in the treasury market in September. The problem is that the governor who did this deal dies in October. Suddenly, he has a heart attack in DC while he's on a set of meetings. And so it takes him a little while to find a successor, but the whole thing gets put on ice for a little while.

45:53And then when they find a successor, he's not on anyone's list. There's a bunch of State Department cables who are basically, who is this guy? Because nobody thought he would be one of them. But he's a technocrat. He was educated in the US. He's viewed as, quote, very pro-American, was the evaluation the State Department had. And he's viewed as like the harbinger of a technocratic administration that's gonna be much more US friendly. So it's like a big signal from the Saudi government that at least taken to be that we're willing to sort of work with you guys on stuff. When he's appointed, literally his first meeting is with the treasury to restart deal negotiations on treasury purchases.

46:33And that's his first, like three days before he takes office, he goes, I want that to be my first meeting. So they have the meeting. I think it was November. And in December, there's a surprise announcement from the Saudi oil producing companies that they will no longer accept sterling in exchange for oil. So all our revenue in dollars. Very awkward because the British chancellor, the exchequer, is in Saudi Arabia when this leaks out. And the British had really close ties with Saudi Aramco, from what I remember. Yeah. And basically, the response of the administration in Saudi Arabia is like, no comment to the State Department.

47:08So like they said, it's very unfortunate that this happened. So I don't know what you take from that other than maybe this was like an unintended release of information. But like it happens on the 13th of December, on the 14th of December, that there's an agreement on the Treasury deal. So there's a lot of alignment between these two decisions. There's no evidence that they were coordinated in any respect, but they certainly go like the same direction. And some people speculate that there was like a quid pro quo there. There's no direct evidence of that in the record, but people put two and two together.

47:40So can I just ask, the Saudis agree to all of this, to petrodollars sort of as a concept, because they get to buy US treasuries in a semi-advantaged way? It's not clear that's the only reason, but those two things are connected in time. Understood. And some people have put together that story. There's later comments from treasury officials that are like the Saudis are holding the line on the dollar, even though people want them to use other things. And so that's where the record is a little sketchy, but the timing and the nature of these agreements has led some people to speculate that they were connected.

48:14But to your point, if you have a surplus of dollars, that's a problem you have to solve regardless. So maybe you don't necessarily go directly to the treasury market because of some advantage, but at some level, you got to put them somewhere. And so there was some effort made to like, here's an easy way to solve your problem. Yeah. And it's not like they're getting a better price. They're just getting somewhat better treatment in the sense that they can go through, they can look at the auction, decide if they like how it went. If they like the price, they can buy more. Imagine if SoftBank had got there first and all the Saudis would put their money in SoftBank stock.

48:44So this is it. This is the moment when petrodollars become a thing and euro dollars have already become a thing. And the dollar is sort of firmly embedded in the tissue of global financial markets. Yeah. And so it doesn't happen all at once. Like Saudi is not all oil supply, but something like Bank of England put out an estimate a few years later, by$75, they're like 80 % of oil revenue. And then by 76, they're like 94 % of oil revenue. So it happens pretty quickly. But at that point, the dollar's already the medium of global trade, for the most part. It's already the primary reserve currency.

49:19But because oil revenues are the primary thing happening in global finance and global monetary system, this cements in some sense that status. So all of this building up of the Eurodollar market is kind of like put to work, in a sense, through the oil shock of 1973 and the rise of the petrodollar system. It's important to say that petrodollars don't create the Eurodollar market. It has to be in place, elastic and flexible, and already has the network effects that allow it to function as a distribution mechanism. Right. That's the thing I really never realized before, that there is sort of like, it almost sounds like petrodollars are like another skin of the euro dollar market.

50:01And it's like a slice of it. Yeah. And they're the thing that makes it grow the most. Oh, interesting. But all of the basics have to be in place for that to actually work. So is the implication that we do have dollar dominance nowadays in the global financial system, but in order to get there, the US had to give up a little bit of monetary sovereignty? I think the lesson is at least just the experience of the U.S. in that period. And the U.S. in some sense, when dollar dominance is coming into place, you have the disruption of the Second World War. So you have a massive disruption of the global monetary system.

50:35The U.S. is essentially the only economy left standing. And so like the fundamental arguments about global reserve currencies like very much apply to that period. Even so, there were lots of policy decisions that had to get made. This was not a foregone conclusion. there were key decision points where certain key policies were put in place or backstops provided or agreements offered. And so the story of global dollar dominance is an interesting one, I guess, is kind of the conclusion. It's an interesting one with characters and actors and decisions and near misses. And we usually think of it as just kind of like a boulder rolling down a hill and kind of unstoppable.

51:12And that may yet have been so, but the real story is a very like rich one well as tracy pointed you know in the beginning i was like i was sort of emergent and tracy's like well actually maybe the story is not and i think that to your point like no like things happen meetings happen flights happen trips to europe happen like all these things yeah like i don't think there's a movie in it but like there's a book in it you know that kind of thing someone makes euro dollar gum there's a tv series there's a tv series for sure well josh we're gonna have to leave it there but it was wonderful having you on the show And, you know, as much as some of the de-dollarization discourse annoys me, I'm very grateful that it gives us a chance to revisit financial history with you.

51:50So thank you so much. No, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me.

52:06so joe i don't know if anyone listening heard me frantically typing at the euro dollar gum mention but i haven't i did this we both pulled up ebay and so like i need to find this i haven't been able to find an image but there's a 1974 article from the new york times the headline is the Eurodollar bubble, and it has a description where it talks about the inflow of Eurodollars takes the form of bubblegum packaged in gold foil to resemble coins. We gotta find that gum. Isn't that amazing? There's so much to pick out of there. So many things I hadn't realized, including where the Euro in Eurodollar actually came from.

52:42But I guess two things stand out. So one, the theme that Josh hit on at the very end, this idea that we think of the dollar dominance theme as largely a sort of network organic effect that emerged over time when actually there were some conscious decisions that might have gone into at least making it more probable. And then secondly, the asset liability point, that's something that Karthik mentioned in his episode as well, where he was talking about like, well, you're not going to get a lot of UN Chinese Renminbi dominance until you actually see liabilities denominated in this. And that's kind of what happened with euro dollars, right?

53:18Yeah. Yeah. No, so much I learned from that. And, you know, to the point, not to make everything like, oh, what does it mean for today? But then it sort of gives you a further appreciation of how much work another currency would have to do to ever even like entertain the idea of like a replacement for this. Like not just, it's not just going to be emergent. It's going to be the result of diplomacy and back and forth and all these other things. You know, I was thinking about, we recently recorded an episode with Jim Grant and he made that point. He's like, you know, in technology, they sort of like build on the shoulders of giants.

53:48In finance, you just sort of repeat the same stories over and over again in different contexts. You build on the communiques of Basel. Yeah, and you just sort of do it. And again, it's like every time we talk to Josh, it's like, man, nothing really changes. The risk is slightly different. There's a new name for it, but it's the same sort of puzzles in different time periods. Yeah, no new risk under the sun. Well, on that note, shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway.

54:15And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart. Follow our producers on Twitter, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin and Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot. And check out all of the Bloomberg podcasts under the handle at podcasts. And for more Odd Lots content, go to bloomberg.com slash oddlots, where we have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter. It comes out every Friday. And check out the Discord, where you can chat and hang out with listeners 24-7, discord.gg slash oddlots. Really fun place. I go there a lot. Thanks for listening.

55:17This is Rob Parker from The Odd Couple with Rob Parker and Kelvin Washington. Toyota-thon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year-end deals on cars, trucks, and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the ready-for-anything RAV4, or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great finance and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. Residents at Brightview Senior Living Communities enjoy enhanced possibilities, independence, and choice. Brightview, Dulles Corner, and Great Falls offer vibrant senior independent living, assisted living, and memory care services through various daily programs.

56:10chef-prepared meals, safety and security, transportation, resort-style amenities, and high-quality care. Take financial possession of your apartment by December 31, 2025 and save. Discover more at brightviewseniorliving.com. Equal housing opportunity.