BONUS: Muddy Waters Capital Founder Carson Block

April 1, 2026·29 min·2 clips

Carson Block describes finding an empty-box factory in China that reported $103 million in revenue but was a complete fraud.

The risk lens is practical. A discussion of double-pledging quickly gets into warehouse financing, where private paperwork can make forged or double-pledged assets harder to catch. The host stops on that point. That reaction gives the guest room to connect paperwork discipline at large financial institutions with a bigger worry about credit-market habits. He keeps the evidence qualified. These are anecdotes, not data, but he still treats them as signals when they sound like past excesses. CLOs are where the conversation tightens. A private-equity discussion about underlying loan performance lands badly because the response suggests some people in the market may not even track it. The analogy is familiar. The host calls it right out of the Big Short, and the guest says the behavior feels like credit excess. Then allocators come in. He describes repeated conversations where investors suddenly keep bringing up private credit, which reminds him of the internet bubble dynamic. Too much money is the problem. His concern is not that private credit exists, but that too much capital may be chasing too few good opportunities. The criticism stays fairly specific. He says his first bet would not be that problems begin at Apollo. Insurance adds another wrinkle. The guest points to smaller private-equity firms buying insurers and using those vehicles to finance deals. Ratings look odd too. An FT Alphaville piece comes up because Egan-Jones, rather than S&P or Moody's, is named as the top rater in the example. The segment works because the host keeps testing the mechanics while the guest turns scattered observations into a credit warning.

As heard by us

Carson Block turns private credit into a story about incentives, not slogans.

Carson Block spends the episode tracing the weak points in private credit, moving from warehouse lending and collateral checks to CLOs, insurance balance sheets, and ratings agencies.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a cautious, anecdote-driven take on how private credit can look polished while the checks behind it get sloppier.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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