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Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great ‘Whodunit' Of The Financial World

Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great ‘Whodunit' Of The Financial World

Every week, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so-random walk through hot topics in markets, finance and economics.

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 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.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Laura Carlson at lcarlson21@bloomberg.net

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