This week on our Masters in Business radio podcast, we sit down with Michael Zezas, who is chief strategist for public policy and municipal bonds at Morgan Stanley. Zezas earned a bachelor’s degree in political economy from Georgetown University and a master’s in public affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a CFA charterholder as well as a member of the CFA Institute, the New York Society of Securities Analysts, the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, and the Municipal Analysts Group of New York. Previously he worked as a credit analyst at Fitch.
Zezas tells the story of starting his job on the Fixed Income side at Morgan Stanley just as the financial crisis was beginning. The weakness in corporate bonds were the first telltale signs that something was amiss in the credit markets, as government bonds tend to lag what is happening in the broader economy.
The municipal bond market is an asset class with over $3.7 trillion dollars in investments. He explains what the process of evaluating municipal bonds is like — both the technical aspect of credit evaluation as well as the top down research that goes into the purchase of bonds.
Zezas recently wrote: “The prospect of a Fed taper to its balance sheet raises obvious questions about long-term rates, just as tax reform threatens long-end muni ratios.” He explains how Morgan Stanley’s bond analyses evaluates various tax reform proposals and Federal Reserve actions on rates, reducing the theoretical impact everything to a set of probabilistic odds.
All of the books Zezas discusses can be found here.
You can hear the show on Bloomberg Radio, or stream/download the full show, including the podcast extras, on iTunes, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Bloomberg
Next week, we speak with L.A. Laker Byron Scott / CEO of McKesson & Deer Park Spring Water Charles Norris, discussing leadership in business and sports. They are the authors of Slam-Dunk Success: Leading from Every Position on Life’s Court.
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