How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills
In the wake of Covid-19 making many of us spend lots of time at home and by ourselves, psychologists have begun publishing research on what being by yourself does to your mind, your body and your behaviour: “It turns out there’s a link between the size of a primate’s brain, and size of the communities it […]
Opposition must think harder about political economy of protest to counter new political economy of reform
In this outstanding piece Pratap Bhanu Mehta highlights the BJP’s achievement over the past six months – whilst a lot of people had their heads buried in the sand on account of Covid-19 – of pushing through tricky economic reforms without losing too many votes and with the implicit support of corporate India. Mr Mehta […]
How CAPM has hurt a Generation of Indian Investors
The Capital Asset Pricing Model clearly does not work in India – neither in theory nor in practice – because in the Indian market, risk & return are negatively correlated i.e. lower risk leads to higher returns. Sophisticated investment theories can be damaging for your wealth Amongst the more delusional theories in Finance is the […]
The real lessons from Sweden’s approach to Covid-19
Sweden has gone from initially being hailed for the most liberal lockdown only to later on becoming the whipping boy for being so lax as cases and deaths per capita significantly exceeded its Scandinavian neighbours. Now with things back under control, here’s a piece in The Economist about how Sweden’s policy decisions are driven by […]
Use of fear: Witness protection in India
Whilst there are no prizes for guessing that most of Marcellus’ clients come from the most affluent strata of Indian society, it is actually touching how much faith many of us have in the judicial machinery of the Indian state. Whilst the recent brutality in Hathras might have awakened us city dwellers to the grim […]
HDFC Bank sitting upon $6-7 billion of excess liquidity: Aditya Puri
The outgoing CEO of HDFC Bank and the only one that the bank has had in its 26yr history, Aditya Puri, talks about some of the key issues concerning the bank and the economy in this interview with Nikunj Dalmia in The Economic Times. In line with the digitisation initiatives of the bank in the […]
Social Capital: 2019 Annual Letter
To continue with the theme of big technology monopolies, no better to get the perspective of someone who is a Silicon Valley insider and yet a critic of the monopolist winner takes all industry structure. Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of venture capital firm, Social Capital, is known for his outspokenness about various issues, in particular […]
The 14 Juiciest Quotes From the House Antitrust Report
The Antitrust Subcommittee of the US Congress published a 400 page report a couple of months ago on the practices that Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon use to deal with competition. Wired has summarised some of the more interesting findings: Amazon: “…in response to the Committee’s request for “a list of the Company’s top ten competitors,” […]
A Century of Rapid Recoveries in Consumption
Whenever the economy is hit by a mega-crisis, consumption proves to be far more robust than most people expect it to be. Furthermore, financially strong, dominant franchises consolidate market share during such crises. And finally, stockmarkets tend to perform well in the decade following major crises. In the opening quarter of CY20, stock markets crashed […]
How Eddie Van Halen transformed Michael Jackson’s Beat It
Eddie Van Halen, the lead guitarist and songwriter of the rock band Van Halen passed away last week, triggering a whole host of tributes from rockheads across the world. Of all the virtues extolled, humility stands out. Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen, named after Mozart, says in a recent interview that “he did not know his […]
Laughter May Be Effective Medicine for These Trying Times
We have been featuring articles about how mental health has become even bigger an issue during the pandemic given increased levels of uncertainty causing stress around health and income and how breathing techniques and eating healthy can improve mental health. This piece in the NYT adds another tool for us – laughter. Laughter clubs have […]
Garry Kasparov on the need to improve our politics with technology
Technology in general and social media in particular have transformed several social sciences in recent times, including politics. Unfortunately much of the transformation has been adverse through extreme polarisation of ideas with little scope for reconciliation and making progress for the common good. In this article by invitation for The Economist, the former world chess […]
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