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Anecdote: A crisis that caught the imagination of the western world was the UK’s exit from Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) on September 16, 1992. We called that Black Wednesday. I was 25, Lehman London, just young and dumb enough to find it not particularly surprising. I was trading short term interest rates at the time, and along with the UK’s central bank, Sweden had also been intervening in increasingly fra

Hope all goes well… “I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history,” said President Trump Wednesday, his unexpectedly quick capitulation from a self-inflicted policy catastrophe had sparked a surge in stock prices. “Nobody’s ever heard of it. It’s gonna be a record,” he boasted, the cameras clicking. The stock market had been in freefall, as had the US dollar and the Treasury market, which is just the

Anecdote: “In the late 1800s through the early 1900s, businesspeople were seen to best understand economics,” said Sparks, investor, entrepreneur, iconoclast. “Maynard Keynes came along in the 1920s-30s and helped us see that businesspeople may have understood microeconomics but had little grasp of macroeconomics.” For example, in microeconomics, saving money is a good thing. In macroeconomics, if everyone saves mone

Hope all goes well… “It would have been easy to keep pumping up the economy, borrowing a lot of money, creating a lot of government jobs,” explained Treasury Secretary Bessent to Tucker Carlson, defending the administration’s policies, while describing the extent to which Biden juiced up the US economy, like a body builder on steroids, appearing strong while destroying his internal organs. “There was no controversy w

Anecdote: “Where’s the marginal demand going to come from to increase corporate profits?” asked Sparks. “The government is spending at full bore, the consumer has been spending at full bore,” he said. “What we do have is the AI capex cycle – that’s the Nivida story – but we’re not going to get more aggressive investment in this sector. You can’t build data centers and power capacity at a faster pace ̵

Hope all goes well… “Some countries are weaponizing trade and forcing companies to take sides and make choices that go against economic principles,” said Xi Jinping, standing in the Great Hall of the People, a group of 40 of leading global CEOs in attendance. The US had announced additional secondary tariffs of 25% on any country that buys Venezuelan oil. US tariffs on China were lifted to 20% this month. And Xi boug

Anecdote: We were discussing thought experiments. Charlie, my youngest. He’s studying Hobbes and Locke, English political philosophers. Hobbes saw humans as selfish, brutish, competitive, driven by fear, desire. Locke was more optimistic. Hard to know who is right, but running thought experiments helps. I like to explore such things in the extreme, searching for vivid contrast. Like many of our discussions, we wander

Hope all goes well… Left the parking garage and engaged Autopilot. Tesla’s AI knows my habits, optimized the route home. It’s been four years since I first let it take control. Initially, it was unnerving, adolescent, like being driven by an indecisive16-year-old. With each software update Autopilot matures, in quiet communication with the cloud. It’s not perfect, but that day is approaching fast. It was Friday, I’d

Anecdote: “Revised 2025 Bitcoin Act has been published,” texted Marcel Kasumovich, never really sleeping, one eye always open. “Key differences: (1) 200k bitcoin purchases per year, (2) Holding period now permanent, (3) Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) engaged as a coordination function, and (4) Gold reserve revaluation being used to fund bitcoin purchases,” continued Marcel, keeping the team current. The ESF is an