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Speaker 1: Hi, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Wisenthal. So, Joe, this

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Speaker 1: is the third and final episode in our first ever

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Speaker 1: series about the intersection of crime, finance, and markets. Are

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Speaker 1: you Are you sad or excited for the finale? I'm

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Speaker 1: really excited about this one. Um. I mean, I I

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Speaker 1: really you know. I think a general theme of all

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Speaker 1: of our episodes has been the markets that where markets

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Speaker 1: appear that people don't talk about very much, But these

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Speaker 1: prime ones have been really in the sweet spot, and

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Speaker 1: I think today's is going to be a really good one.

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Speaker 1: All right. So one of the reasons that you and

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Speaker 1: I find these sort of crime markets so interesting is

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Speaker 1: that they often deal with really entrenched problems in economics.

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Speaker 1: They're honestly some of the most difficult markets in the world,

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Speaker 1: and I think the one that we are going to

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Speaker 1: talk about today is probably the most problematic in all

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Speaker 1: of existence. Like every single big economic problem you can

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Speaker 1: think of, stuff like moral hazard, adverse selection, information asymmetry,

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Speaker 1: all of that is present in this market. And if

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Speaker 1: you get it wrong, someone might die. So there's an

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Speaker 1: added bit of drama here, right, the consequences of this

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Speaker 1: market that we're going to talk about our enormous because,

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned, if the market doesn't work right, it

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Speaker 1: could result in death. And on top of all the

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Speaker 1: things that you mentioned adverse selection, moral hazard, information asymmetry,

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Speaker 1: there's also deep issues of emotion and morality, and you know,

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Speaker 1: economists sometimes like to abstract those things away and sort

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Speaker 1: of assume that they don't exist. But we're gonna be

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Speaker 1: talking about a market where it's essentially impossible to wipe

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Speaker 1: those things away, which has the benefit of sort of

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Speaker 1: informing our understanding of all markets by forcing us to

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Speaker 1: confront those things. Yeah, that's exactly right. And one of

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Speaker 1: the more amazing things about this particular market is that

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Speaker 1: there's actually a pretty decent solution to these problems. A

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Speaker 1: corporate entity has actually come up with a good way

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Speaker 1: of dealing with these problems, and it seems to be

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Speaker 1: working out reasonably well. Um, I guess we should, uh,

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Speaker 1: we should go ahead, and we should stop tiptoeing. Stop tiptoeing.

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Speaker 1: Why don't you say what it is and introduce our guest.

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Speaker 1: All right, we are going to be talking about the

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Speaker 1: kidnapping market. How insurers actually ensure kidnapping risk, how the

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Speaker 1: whole process of ransom actually unfolds. So here with us

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Speaker 1: today to discuss the kidnapping market is a woman called

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Speaker 1: Anna Shortland. She has written a fantastic paper on this

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Speaker 1: very subject called Governing Kidnap for Ransom Lloyd's as a

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Speaker 1: Private Regime. She is also a reader in Political economy

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Speaker 1: at King's College, London. So, without further ado, Anya, thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for

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Speaker 1: bringing me onto the program. So did Joe and I

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Speaker 1: get that introduction right? Is it fair to say that

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Speaker 1: kidnapping or the kidnapping market is probably one of the

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Speaker 1: most difficult markets around, while I certainly think of it

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Speaker 1: as the trickiest trade in the world. So each individual

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Speaker 1: trade is absolutely fraught with difficulty. I think this is

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Speaker 1: we have the title to this episode the Trickiest Trade

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Speaker 1: in the World. Thank you very much for that. That

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Speaker 1: solves that. Why is it? Why? Why? Why do you

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Speaker 1: consider this the trickiest trade in the world? Well, it

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Speaker 1: has It starts off with a run and pairing of

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Speaker 1: transaction partners. You don't get any choice about who you're

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Speaker 1: going to be trading with. Um Usually a kidnap is

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Speaker 1: a black box event. Somebody hijacks a car or a

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Speaker 1: boat and out jump some hostages. So you don't know

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Speaker 1: anything about the people that you're going to be transacting with,

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Speaker 1: and then you have to do a one off transaction

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Speaker 1: with them. The problem with that transaction and the incomplete

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Speaker 1: information is that nobody knows what kind of price should

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Speaker 1: be paid. So the people who have kidnapped a person

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Speaker 1: don't know how rich or poor that person is. They

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Speaker 1: might have a guess. However, for the hostage stakeholders, the

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Speaker 1: question is not necessarily how much can I raise, but

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Speaker 1: how much will the kidnap are settled for? So you

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Speaker 1: have that a bargaining problem with incomplete information. Unfortunately, information

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Speaker 1: can be extract it through the strategic use of violence.

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Speaker 1: You can't stop the kidnappers from chopping off digits, or

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Speaker 1: at least threatening to do so. Um you might use

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Speaker 1: extreme violence if you think you've got as hostage that

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Speaker 1: isn't worth very much, and therefore raise the price of

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Speaker 1: other hostages. Eventually, perhaps you agree a price, and then

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Speaker 1: you have to actually conduct the trade. So getting to

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Speaker 1: a price this difficult. Then you have sequential exchange. Somebody's

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Speaker 1: got to pay and then the hostage has to come back,

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Speaker 1: and any sequential trade is problematic. This one is particularly

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Speaker 1: problematic because it's clandestine and it can be intercepted, So

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Speaker 1: you don't actually know whether you've managed to pay, because

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Speaker 1: if you put some money somewhere in a bin according

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Speaker 1: to the kidnappers instructions, somebody else could empty that burn

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Speaker 1: before the kidnappers get to it, So you can't actually

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Speaker 1: prove that you've paid, and then what you have paid,

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Speaker 1: and they have acknowledge that you have paid, and then

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Speaker 1: they still have to decide whether they want to release

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Speaker 1: a future potential witness. And when you look at it

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Speaker 1: like that, you think, well, this can't possibly go well.

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Speaker 1: And then the amazing statistic is that if you're insured

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Speaker 1: for this kind of thing, then it will go right

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Speaker 1: of the time. That was a remarkable summary of the problem,

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Speaker 1: and I just found listening to that riveting. And I

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about this phenomenon where private companies provide

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Speaker 1: insurance for executives and other people who are prone to kidnapping,

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Speaker 1: But before we dive into the structure of the market,

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Speaker 1: something that I'm particularly fascinated by, and this came up

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Speaker 1: on a previous episode is how do you collect data

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Speaker 1: on this? I mean, this is sort of one of

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Speaker 1: the fascinating aspects of UH criminal markets. It's not exactly

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Speaker 1: listed in the newspaper or on the Bloomberg terminal what

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Speaker 1: the going rate is for a kidnapping victim. That be

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Speaker 1: a good index. Job, that would be a great index.

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Speaker 1: That would be a great chart of the day to

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Speaker 1: do some time if we had that. But how does

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Speaker 1: the process of data collection work in a market where

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Speaker 1: nobody has any incentive to tell you anything. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: exactly the difficulty off my research and the end, it's

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Speaker 1: about people trusting you to not to divulge the information

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Speaker 1: that you get. But that information is being collected and

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Speaker 1: there are people who share it within the community. Because

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Speaker 1: one of the really important things if you want to

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Speaker 1: govern that market and make that market stable is that

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Speaker 1: you don't pay over the odds. So you need to

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Speaker 1: have information about how much a kidnap again is actually expecting, Yes,

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Speaker 1: they will ask you for ten million dollars, but what

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Speaker 1: you need to know is whether they actually settled for

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Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars or twelve thousand dollars or a hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars. You know the fin that the initial um

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Speaker 1: opening gambit gives you very little guidance as to what

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Speaker 1: they're actually settled for. So yes, people collect that information

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Speaker 1: and they share it within the community of experts to

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Speaker 1: make sure that the hostage stakeholders pitch they're opening gambit

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Speaker 1: in expectations of settling in the expectator of settling at

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Speaker 1: a reasonable price for that region and for that particular

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Speaker 1: kidnap group. A Ya, let's get back to that amazing

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Speaker 1: success rate that you mentioned. Um, I think it was

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Speaker 1: if you're ensured for kidnapping. How exactly is that success

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Speaker 1: achieved by private corporations given all the really really deep,

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Speaker 1: dramatic problems that you described previously. Well, to an economist,

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Speaker 1: any trade becomes governable if there is a shadow of

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Speaker 1: the future. Yeah. The the key problem that I had

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Speaker 1: straightaway was this, it's a one off transaction. If you

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Speaker 1: have a shadow of the future, If the kidnapper knows

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Speaker 1: that they're going to do this again and again and again,

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Speaker 1: and that whatever they do will feed into a community

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Speaker 1: that knows what they've done in the past, then you

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Speaker 1: have the potential for reputation building. So this will only

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Speaker 1: ever work if people can build reputations, you talk about

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Speaker 1: the corporation that's behind this and the specialists that behind it. Um.

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Speaker 1: The problem with reputation building a criminal mark kits are twofold.

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Speaker 1: The victims don't talk because the last thing you want

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Speaker 1: to do is when you've just been through a kidnap

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Speaker 1: is go to the newspaper said, ah, just paid half

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Speaker 1: a million for my husband. Um, that's going to be

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Speaker 1: that's going to attract attention and the wrong kind of

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Speaker 1: criminal attention in the future. So people don't want to

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Speaker 1: talk about it. They might talk about it within a

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Speaker 1: small community, and that's how local kidnap markets work. But similarly,

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Speaker 1: a kidnapper would have to feel very self assured to

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Speaker 1: try and build a reputation. So you need to have

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Speaker 1: a very discreete process of exchanging information to replace the

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Speaker 1: rate my kidnapper app right that we usually use nowadays

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Speaker 1: to try and pull information about where the trade partner

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Speaker 1: is actually reliable. But if you have somebody who regularly

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Speaker 1: blows the victim's brains out, texts a ransom and that

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Speaker 1: doesn't even return the body, then you want to send

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Speaker 1: the police and are not the guy with the ransom.

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Speaker 1: So if it would be kidnapper had the reputation of

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Speaker 1: always blowing the victims brains out no matter what. It's

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Speaker 1: pretty clear that they would not. People would not be

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Speaker 1: willing to negotiate with them like that. They wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: very successful long term in the trade. But do people

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Speaker 1: actually get to know individual kidnappers? Do they know the

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Speaker 1: identity of the counterparty or do they just get to

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Speaker 1: know the general patterns of kidnappers, Say, in a given area,

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Speaker 1: do the individuals have the reputation or does the community

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Speaker 1: of kidnappers get the reputation. I think it's a bit

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Speaker 1: of both. Occasionally you have kidnapping gangs, and sometimes you

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Speaker 1: have this advertising thing like the Mexican Flower Gang that

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Speaker 1: always set the chauffeur's body back with a flower um.

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Speaker 1: So yes, so it does. It does happen. But generally

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Speaker 1: you kind of know who's active in the area and

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Speaker 1: you know the expectations because once you get one ransom

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Speaker 1: paid um in an area, that will feed through the

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Speaker 1: criminal community and then other people think, oh, I can

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Speaker 1: do that, so their trade then will be conditioned on

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Speaker 1: the previous ransom. Just the community enforced norm. So you

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Speaker 1: talk about the idea of a kidnapping community. If there

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Speaker 1: is a bad actor, do other kidnappers discourage that. I

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Speaker 1: think quite possibly you'd have a local mafia that would say, well,

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Speaker 1: we don't want this kind of kidnapping here. Yes, So

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Speaker 1: I do think there's discipline there is. There's a lot

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Speaker 1: of research on on on on who governs the criminal

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Speaker 1: side of the market, and the answer is usually that

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Speaker 1: there is a dawn, there is a mafia, and the

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Speaker 1: mafia decides whether or not kidnapping happens, and if it

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Speaker 1: does happen, what kind of things are acceptable. Because if

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Speaker 1: you're maximizing return over over a long period, then again

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Speaker 1: you don't want that kind of kidnapper um on your turf,

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Speaker 1: So they might well get rid of the more random elements.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure it's only a matter of time until some

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Speaker 1: really enterprising criminal comes up with a central clearinghouse for

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Speaker 1: kidnappers to eliminate all counterparty risk um. But on your

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Speaker 1: on a more serious note, there is a sort of

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Speaker 1: thematic tension that emerges from your work, which is that

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Speaker 1: these kidnapping insurers, if they're too successful, then they basically

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Speaker 1: risk encouraging a lot more kidnapping things and having to

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Speaker 1: pay out a lot more money, So how did they

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Speaker 1: actually navigate that tension? Yes, So, when kidnapped for ransom

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Speaker 1: insurance was first developed as a product, the families negotiated,

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Speaker 1: the families raised the ransoms, the families um delivered the ransoms,

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Speaker 1: and then the insurers reimbursed reinbursted them afterwards. The problem

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Speaker 1: was that was that the families were particularly careful about

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Speaker 1: how much how much ransom they paid. They didn't resist

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Speaker 1: the kidnappers demands as much as would have been desirable,

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Speaker 1: and ransom started to explode in the nineties seventies and

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Speaker 1: Latin America ransoms went from from half a million to

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Speaker 1: a million, to two million, to six million, to ten million,

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Speaker 1: to thirty million to sixty million, and it would have

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Speaker 1: become uninsurable if insurers hadn't done something about taking control

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Speaker 1: of the ransom negotiations. So what they did was to

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Speaker 1: bring in specialists to advise the families to make sure

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Speaker 1: that they started to consider how much the kidnapper would

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Speaker 1: settle for rather than the maximum amount of money that

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Speaker 1: they might like to afford to bring a treasured uncle back.

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Speaker 1: Now here's a question, who's interested to the specialists? Who

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Speaker 1: do they work for? They work for the insurance company. Right,

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Speaker 1: they work for the insurance company they advised the family,

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Speaker 1: and their job is to bring the hostage back safely

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Speaker 1: for the minimum that the kidnappers will settle for. So

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Speaker 1: basically they worked for both sides because the family is

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Speaker 1: interested in the safe return, and they work for the

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Speaker 1: insurers because the insurers are interested in the stable market.

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Speaker 1: They don't want premium ransoms to be paid. Because in theory,

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Speaker 1: this could be yet another information asymmetry where there again

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Speaker 1: two parties the stakeholders, the family of the kidnapping victim

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Speaker 1: in the insurance company and the I And you know,

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Speaker 1: the specialist essentially serves two masters, and there could be

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Speaker 1: potentially a conflict of interest there. There's certainly, in many

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Speaker 1: cases perceived to be one. I doubt that it is

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Speaker 1: very great because the chances are that if somebody asks

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Speaker 1: you if they're a million, and you say, yeah, that's fine,

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Speaker 1: the kidnappers well go back and say, well, if if

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Speaker 1: a million is fine, you're just happy to give it

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Speaker 1: to me like that, then I would like five million.

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Speaker 1: So you don't actually gain very much by giving in fast.

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Speaker 1: So as far as the kidnapper is concerned, they're trying

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Speaker 1: to extract the maximum that you've got. And if they

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Speaker 1: if they name a figure beyond their dreams of avarice

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Speaker 1: and you say yeah, that's fine, that's not going to

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Speaker 1: work because there is nothing contracture that obliges the kidnappers

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Speaker 1: to stick with a figure that they originally had in mind. Um,

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Speaker 1: it is all anarchic bargaining. Um. Sometimes the kidnappers will

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Speaker 1: give somebody back if you if the family exceeds very quickly,

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Speaker 1: and then two weeks later another family member will be gone.

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Speaker 1: So basically, this is not really something where you can

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Speaker 1: take shortcuts. And the fact that you've got a highly

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Speaker 1: experienced negotiator at your side, you can explain the process

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Speaker 1: to you, who can reassure you and who you know

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Speaker 1: has already brought dozens of people back and it will

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Speaker 1: take five days and ten tho dollars rather than three

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Speaker 1: wasn't a million? If you know, if you have that

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Speaker 1: background that they know what they're doing, then you probably

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Speaker 1: ought to listen. So we've been talking about these insurance

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Speaker 1: companies able to instill some discipline in the bargaining ransoming

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Speaker 1: process and create this very very healthy success rate. But

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Speaker 1: there's a part of this that we haven't actually talked

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Speaker 1: about yet, which is that in all of the kidnappings

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Speaker 1: we've been discussing, we're talking about criminal gangs, mafia groups

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Speaker 1: doing kidnappings for profit. These insurance companies like Lloyd's are

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Speaker 1: actually prohibited from negotiating or ensuring if someone gets kidnapped

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Speaker 1: from a terrorist group. Is that right? That is right? Yes,

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Speaker 1: it's illegal to facilitate or make or reimburse payments where

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Speaker 1: you have any reasonable of course to suspect and might

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Speaker 1: go to a terrorist group. So yes, the insurers are

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Speaker 1: out as soon as somebody labels a group terrorists. So

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Speaker 1: who makes that decision and why is that rule in place?

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Speaker 1: This is about governments wanting to be tough on terrorist funding,

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Speaker 1: and governments decide which groups they're considered to be terrorists,

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Speaker 1: and there is some leeway on this. So for example,

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Speaker 1: with the Somali pirates, there was a lot of suspicion

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Speaker 1: that Al Shabab might be getting some of the pirate

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Speaker 1: proceeds um and yet the criminal label was applied because basically,

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Speaker 1: once you start labeling something as a terrorist problem, then

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Speaker 1: that beautiful, ingenious market structure that governs criminal kidnaps is

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Speaker 1: sidelined and things start to go badly wrong. In your

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Speaker 1: review is the is this an error of policy? Now?

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Speaker 1: All sorts of problems. When you put a government on

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Speaker 1: the end of a phone line, the insurer will put

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Speaker 1: the family or whatever stakeholder groups is most credibly cash

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Speaker 1: constrained on the end of the phone. So if I

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Speaker 1: was kidnapped, they'll put my husband on the phone. And

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Speaker 1: however much my husband loves me, there's no way he

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Speaker 1: could raise half a million. If you put Angela Merkel

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Speaker 1: on the phone, there is no way that she can

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Speaker 1: credibly signal to the to the kidnapper that the German

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Speaker 1: state does not have five million to bring me back.

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Speaker 1: That is a big difference. So what is the budget constraint?

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Speaker 1: What budget constraint can you actually demonstrate to the kidnapper? Um. Secondly,

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Speaker 1: why my husband would very much like me back, there

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Speaker 1: is not pressure to do so immediately, whereas governments are

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Speaker 1: generally quite keen to conclude and get this thing off

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Speaker 1: their plate, especially if you have kidnappers are who create

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Speaker 1: media pressure for the return of our boys or our

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Speaker 1: girls or whatever it is. And thirdly, insurers have devised

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Speaker 1: a system to make sure that the spillovers are from

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Speaker 1: premium ransoms are internalized within the community of insurers, whereas

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Speaker 1: the German government doesn't really care and can't be punished

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Speaker 1: for creating a premium ransom precedent that then becomes problematic

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Speaker 1: for the French government, or the Italian government or the

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Speaker 1: Spanish governments five months down the line. So all the

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Speaker 1: things that contain ransoms within the private sphere are missing

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Speaker 1: in the government sphere. So when it is to terrorists kidnappings,

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Speaker 1: there is one trend that has been happening that I

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Speaker 1: really wanted to ask you about, and that's um, you know,

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Speaker 1: we've seen people unable to get their governments to pay

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Speaker 1: for their loved ones for the reasons that you just

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Speaker 1: laid out, and then they don't have insurance for their

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Speaker 1: loved ones because the insurers aren't allowed to pay out

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Speaker 1: ransoms for terrorists kidnappings. But some of these families have

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Speaker 1: been going online and doing crowdfunding, right, basically asking people

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Speaker 1: for money to pay for ransoms. How does that affect

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Speaker 1: the insurance market because I imagine that that could create

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Speaker 1: some distortions and incentives. Certainly it would knock that discipline

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Speaker 1: that we've been talking about I haven't seen much about

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Speaker 1: the crowdfunding, but what I have seen, of course, it's

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Speaker 1: the ransoms that certain European countries have quite regularly paid

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Speaker 1: to terrorists, and that really creates a problem for insurers

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Speaker 1: because you talked about clearing houses earlier on are there

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Speaker 1: clearing houses? Well, there's certainly used a secondary market for hostages.

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Speaker 1: So if you have a criminal market that settles at

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Speaker 1: thirty or fifty thou dollars and the terrorist market that's

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Speaker 1: settled somewhere between five and twelve million, then it becomes

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Speaker 1: very likely that the criminal kidnappers passed the hostages on

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Speaker 1: to the terrorist organizations. We have to wrap up soon,

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Speaker 1: but I want to ask you. You know, kidnapping is

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Speaker 1: a pretty common theme in movies there I think was

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Speaker 1: there there was a movie called Ransom. I think with

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Speaker 1: Harrison Ford. What is the biggest gap between how most

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Speaker 1: people view the negotiating process with hostage takers or with

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Speaker 1: kidnappers and how it exists in real life? What's the

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Speaker 1: what's the ultimate way that this process by which a

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Speaker 1: number is agreed upon and the delivery of the money happened.

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Speaker 1: How does how do people get it wrong? Because most

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Speaker 1: of their experiences throughout their fiction. I think the big

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Speaker 1: difference is that once that negotiator arrives to advise the family,

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Speaker 1: he will have a very good idea of how long

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Speaker 1: it will take and how much it will settle for.

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Speaker 1: So yes, it will be emotionally highly fraught, but in

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Speaker 1: the background, you know that this is very likely to

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Speaker 1: be done in less than a week an at a

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Speaker 1: price that's not actually going to break the back and

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Speaker 1: of people come home. Yes, hostages die, but most of

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Speaker 1: them die in escape attempts, or because they had pre

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Speaker 1: existing medical conditions, or because somebody tries to liberate them. Though,

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Speaker 1: so the three real big dangers for hostages. That's a

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Speaker 1: that's good to know. Well, I don't know. That's that's

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Speaker 1: just sort of good advice in case that you know,

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Speaker 1: I ever find we ever find ourselves in that position.

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Speaker 1: But that's exactly the advice that you would be getting

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Speaker 1: if you were trained for operations and complex and hostile territories,

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Speaker 1: and that's what everyone advises you. Hang in there, don't

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Speaker 1: be an alpha male. We'll get you out. Eddie Lampert,

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Speaker 1: the hedge fund manager, did negotiate his own or did

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Speaker 1: sneak out? Have you studied his case. No, I haven't.

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Speaker 1: The The hedge fund manager who currently controlled Steers was

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Speaker 1: kidnapped in two thousand three and managed to trick his

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Speaker 1: kidnappers into thinking the police were hot on their tail

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Speaker 1: through negotiation of he did himself and then was able

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Speaker 1: to sneak out. I have one tiny, last little question.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, very minor. Are there any escrow services for

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Speaker 1: money drops? Well, yes there is. Trying to make that

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Speaker 1: payment process smooth is another big business, and trying to

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Speaker 1: find ways of actually proving that you have paid. So

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Speaker 1: I think one of the really nights illustrations of that

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Speaker 1: where the ransom drops for Somali pirates where they're basically

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Speaker 1: flying over with aircraft. The pirates lined up the entire

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Speaker 1: crew to show that everyone was still alive, and then

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Speaker 1: on the second fly path the money was dropped. Photos

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Speaker 1: were taken, so it was very clear that the pirates

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Speaker 1: had been paid. And yeah, and all of these releases

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Speaker 1: went absolutely smoothly and near Shortland. That was a fascinating conversation.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you my pleasure. So, Joe,

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Speaker 1: now we know what to do for kidnapped, right, don't

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Speaker 1: be an alpha male that's the number one piece of

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Speaker 1: advice I'm gonna have to really resist by a tendency

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Speaker 1: to always try to be the alpha male in every situation.

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Speaker 1: But I'm going to remember that now. I love that conversation,

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Speaker 1: and I could have probably asked a hundred more questions.

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Speaker 1: That's why I asked that question at the end about

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Speaker 1: UM about whether their es grow services to prove payment.

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Speaker 1: But I think the fact that there are a million

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Speaker 1: more questions we could have asked really speaks to exactly

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Speaker 1: what you said at the very beginning, that this is

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Speaker 1: probably the most complicated transaction you can imagine, and every

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Speaker 1: little bit from proving the payment to figuring out who

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Speaker 1: the hostage expert negotiator really works for, every single aspect

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Speaker 1: just seems so tricky and hard to manage. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna develop maybe a bit of a

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Speaker 1: specialty in kidnapping academic research, because I really find this

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Speaker 1: fascinating and I'm surprised that more economists don't look at

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Speaker 1: this as a sort of microcosm of all the big

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Speaker 1: issues that we so often find and behavioral finance and

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Speaker 1: beyond UM. But it's definitely one that I think can

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Speaker 1: be further explored. I think that last point to about

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Speaker 1: how in movies, kidnapping always seems like, you know, these

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Speaker 1: negotiation doesn't seem to have any process. It seems completely chaotic.

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Speaker 1: It usually always falls apart at the end, someone backtracks

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Speaker 1: at the last second, and then and the idea that

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Speaker 1: in real life that it's a very emotionally fraught process,

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Speaker 1: but that it also is predictable usually ends in about

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Speaker 1: a week. That from the beginning the expert has a

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Speaker 1: good sense of how much it will cost, it probably

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Speaker 1: won't destroy the family's finances. Is so fascinating that this

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Speaker 1: incredibly complicated transaction through markets and through expertise can actually

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Speaker 1: be made kind of predictable from the very start. Should

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Speaker 1: someone write the movie about the insurance specialists parachuting in

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Speaker 1: having really disciplined negotiations, talking about s growth services making

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Speaker 1: estimates of the ransom I'm imagining I'm imagining Steve Carrell

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Speaker 1: and him sort of coming in with a slightly ill

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Speaker 1: fitting suit and him, uh, you know something something along that,

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Speaker 1: and him trying to be like this very nerdy insurance

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Speaker 1: approach and everyone else freaking out, and him calling everyone's nervous.

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Speaker 1: I think it has to be a comedy. I would

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Speaker 1: totally watch that me too. All Right, Um, that is

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Speaker 1: it for this episode of Odd Lots and for our

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Speaker 1: series on markets and Crime. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can

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Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe Wisenthal.

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Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the star Wart