The Capitol Forum

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The Fox Guarding the Hen House (Private Credit Crisis) Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

Private equity owned life insurers are supposed to prepare for the worst, but some of them aren't preparing for anything close to it.

Today on Private Credit Crisis, Executive Editor Teddy Downey talks with Corwin Zass, a consulting actuary who has spent more than 25 years advising life insurers on capital and risk.

Antitrust in Trump 2.0 (Second Request) Sep 25, 2026

Show notes

From Ticketmaster to Paramount-Warner Bros., the Trump administration has had a full docket of antitrust-related cases to deal with.

In this episode of Second Request, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Karina Lubell, partner in Brunswick Group's global antitrust and competition practice, and Nicholas Cheolas, partner at Wiley, to discuss the evolving antitrust enforcement landscape under the second Trump administration.

Clouding Accounting (Private Credit Crisis) Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

Two life insurers can own the exact same bond and tell their regulators two different stories about how risky it is.

In this episode of Private Credit Crisis, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Florida State University professor Kyeonghee Kim to discuss what changes at a life insurer after private equity buys it, and whether the system meant to catch bad numbers is actually built to.

The Anonymous Data Problem DOGE Created (Second Request) Sep 18, 2026

Show notes

Everyone knows their data gets sold. Almost nobody knows how much of it companies just give away, blurred enough to call it anonymous. In this episode of Second Request, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with former Capitol Forum correspondent and privacy lawyer Ben Neumeyer to discuss how DOGE spent a year and a half pooling federal records and made every one of those files findable again.

Hiding Money in Bermuda (Private Credit Crisis) Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

There's a hole in the life and annuity sector's balance sheet, and private equity dug it.

In this episode of Private Credit Crisis, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Nick Nemeth, an investor and the writer of Mispriced Assets, to discuss the life and annuity industry's growing exposure to private credit and the potential risks for insurers and the broader financial system.

The Perils of Personalized Pricing (Second Request) Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

With little response from the federal government, state legislatures around the country are looking at banning the use of personalized pricing.

Today on Second Request, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Hal Singer and Gavin Sicard to explain what personalized pricing actually is, and how its deployment today leads to higher consumer prices.

Lies, Loans and Lawsuits (Private Credit Crisis) Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

We're excited to introduce Private Credit Crisis, a new weekly podcast from The Capitol Forum examining the policy problems building inside the private credit industry.

In this first episode, Executive Editor Teddy Downey and reporter Josh Kosman sit down with attorney Jim Woolery, who is bringing lawsuits on behalf of investors alleging that private equity firms have inflated the assets on their balance sheets and charged inflated management fees on those assets, even as their performance has deteriorated.

Streaming Is the New IP Battleground (Second Request) Sep 04, 2026

Show notes

When phone makers turned on Qualcomm, the company built an intricate, multi-front strategy to fight back. Now, two former employees say the same playbook is being run in streaming.

Today on Second Request, Christie Thoene and Kirti Gupta sit down with executive editor Teddy Downey to revisit their years inside Qualcomm and explain how today's fights over streaming technology mirror the smartphone wars of the 2010s.

Meta's House of Cards (Second Request) Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

This week, Meta reached a multibillion-dollar settlement in federal court over allegations that it was aware of the harm its products could cause to teenage mental health. That may be the tip of the iceberg for Mark Zuckerberg's problems.

Today on Second Request, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Julia Angwin to discuss how Meta's core business, Facebook, is failing, and how Zuckerberg's ambitions to become an AI giant have failed to materialize.

AI Needs to Nearly Triple Productivity to Pay Off (Second Request) Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

To earn the return on its investment, artificial intelligence will need to nearly triple productivity in the U.S. economy. So what will it do?

Today on Second Request, Executive Editor Teddy Downey sits down with Jessica Wachter, the Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs Professor of Quantitative Finance at the Wharton School and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, to discuss her recent paper, "What Investment Data Implies About the AI Transition," co-authored with Jonathan Wachter.

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