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No, it isn’t
Bill Burr is one of my favourite stand-up comedians and also someone you can easily relate to. At the 2014 all-star tribute to Don Rickles—another one of my favourite comedians—Jerry Seinfeld who was hosting, started the night by saying: On the Mount Rushmore of stand up comedy there are four faces in my opinion: Richard […]
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Revolution in a box: The extraordinary story of the ordinary shipping container
Can you think of some of the greatest inventions and innovations in human history? 90% I’m sure you thought about things like the printing press, steam engine, and electricity. Sure, these innovations permanently altered the course of human progress. But what if I told a simple box was just as consequential in tilting the arc […]
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Dear fintechs, please stop hurting India
Sometime in the last decade, software is eating the world became fintech is eating the world. The term “fintech” is a portmanteau of “finance” and “technology” and was coined in the 1990s but became popular after 2010. It’s a catchall term for companies that use technology to deliver better financial service experiences. In popular discourse, the […]
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So long, and thanks for all the fish
The relative calm of 2021 feels like yesterday to me. Sure, we had a virus that was hellbent on killing us, but most of us had made peace with our impending deaths. After a while, the biggest worry for most people was getting caught on a video call wearing a suit without pants. Good times. […]
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The boy who cried wolf about an emerging markets sovereign and corporate debt crisis
These are good times for all those who’ve been crying wolf about market crashes and economic crises for the past couple of decades. It just took two decades, but it seems like most of those apocalyptic predictions are partially starting to come true. The Weimar Republic people had been crying wolf about inflation since 2008. […]
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What’s old is new again
A few things that made me go, ooh, that’s interesting. What’s old is new again The Lindy Effect is this notion that the longer something survives, the less likely it is to die. When it comes to frauds, pump and dump schemes are Lindy. Pump and dump schemes have been going strong for over 400+ years since the […]
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SPACtacular
A few things I learned this week. The post-2008 period was like a rave party for the financial markets. The central banks around the world had the hottest parties with cheap tickets, booze, and food. The parties were all the rage for well over a decade. But, it was 5 AM in 2020, and the […]
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Yield curve meets Munger
Here’s what I learned this week. One thing is that I’m going to be poor, but here are a few other things. Charlie Munger famously said, “There are all kinds of tricks that I just got into by accident in life. One is to invert all the time.” Looks like the US bond yield curves […]
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Making sense of the Russia-Ukraine conflict
If you had the power to bring back someone from the dead, who would it be? I’m guessing a dear one, favorite actor, musician? Not me. I’d bring back that Chinese guy who cast this curse: May you live in interesting times! Not because I like the dude. No! It’s because I want the pleasure, […]
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Niall Ferguson on money and cryptocurrencies
Niall Ferguson is one of the smartest and the most provocative financial historians of our time. His controversial reading of history has earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible among historians. He’s also a prolific author with 16 books on subjects ranging from the history of money, Rothschilds, war, Kissinger, and pandemics. His name […]