60: These Were the Most Interesting Stories of 2016

Joe Weisenthal (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:14)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

So Tracy, it's been quite a year, huh?

Tracy Alloway (0:19)

Uh, that's one way of putting it, yes.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

A lot of things happened this year that probably people wouldn't have necessarily predicted coming into this year.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

I think we can be a bit stronger than that. I think we can say a lot of crazy things happened this year.

Joe Weisenthal (0:35)

All right, yeah, I think you're right. I think maybe I was understating a little bit, but I just wanted to be on the right side of things. I wanted to be sort of conservative. But yeah, it was a pretty wild year, and I feel confident in saying that for several years down the road, people are going to be talking about various events that transpired in the year 2016

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

Yeah, the history books will be looking back just like us.

Joe Weisenthal (0:59)

And all the historians are probably going to be listening to the Odd Lots podcast because they really get a sense of what happened, don't you think?

Tracy Alloway (1:06)

Yeah, we should bury this in a time capsule, right?

Joe Weisenthal (1:08)

Yeah, I agree. So there's obviously the obvious stories, you know, Brexit, Trump, all that.

But there are probably also a lot of facets to these stories and stories that people missed that we don't want those historians to pass over and miss.

Tracy Alloway (1:26)

That's right. So we are going to do the historians' work for them, I guess, and try to dig up some of the lesser known stories that happened this year, some things that really maybe taught us a lesson or entertained us or amused us in some way or that we thought were very important.

So who do we have?

Joe Weisenthal (1:45)

So we've brought together a bunch of folks from Bloomberg News who cover various aspects of our world day in and day out. They cover stories better than just about anyone in the world. I guess I'll go around and introduce them. And then we're going to talk to them about their favorite stories of the year so we can catch all the stories that we might have missed. All right, so let me go around the room.

Ed Hammond is with us. Hey, Ed, how are you doing?

He covers deals at Bloomberg. We have Mike Regan, who is a veteran coverer, I don't think that's a word, journalist covering the market, particularly the stock market for a long time, who is leading a new blog venture here at Bloomberg. Thanks for coming, Mike.

Mike Regan (2:35)

Thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (2:36)

Max Abelson, Wall Street whisperer, Wall Street reporter. He gets Wall Street to speak his mind.

Max Abelson (2:46)

I thought he was going to say Wall Street legend.

Joe Weisenthal (2:49)

Wall Street legend.

Mike Regan (2:50)

He stumbled on the word.

Joe Weisenthal (2:51)

No, I was going there with that. Wall Street's Max Abelson.

Dan Moss, our top editor for economics coverage.

Dan Moss (3:00)

Great to be here.

Joe Weisenthal (3:01)

Who made a great prediction going into this year, which we'll talk about. Probably one of the best predictions of the year. And Megan Murphy, who led all of Bloomberg's politics coverage this year and is now on a new venture leading Business Week magazine. So thanks for joining us, Megan.

Megan Murphy (3:18)

Thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:19)

All right, so now that we have all that out the way, let's talk about our favorite stories this year.

And Ed, let's start with you. What was your favorite story of 2016?

Ed Hammond (3:32)

I'm not going to go with the deal story. I was sort of tempted to self aggrandize and go with the deal that we had broken. But I decided instead to go with the story from July, which I partly like because it was kind of in the summer when everything was quiet. And it was this story of Brett Barna, who was the hedge fund manager at Louis Bacon's Fund. And he trashed his mansion out in the Hamptons.

And it was one of these classic, we all sort of know hedge fund guys like that. And they all pretend desperately that they're not at all like that. And they're actually very responsible. And they do all this charity stuff. But he did exactly what we all know they really do, which was go to a mansion, spray people with champagne, throw midgets in a swimming pool.