What a time to be alive
A fall from grace, a rise in rank, how money is making and breaking lives, and food for thought to better understand our complex world. This is issue #007 of Forward.
Donald Trump becomes the first US President to be impeached twice.
Let that headline sink in for a second.
If you showed that headline to someone who’d just exited the movies after watching his cameo appearance in Home Alone 2 in 1992, they’d most likely ask you to get back in your DeLorean, check its flux capacitor, and return to whichever dystopian future you came from.
As they try and distance themselves from the bearer of bad news, you could explain to them that in the future, we sit in self-driving Teslas, and that the company’s CEO (who likes to review memes in his free time) is also the richest man in the world.
What a time to be alive.
Of course, Trump is officially relinquishing office to his successor, Joe Biden, on January 20, but his trial will still be an important event in American history. Besides having his social media accounts suspended, some permanently, the result of his trial will also determine his future should he ever decide to run for any public office again.
Elon Musk on the other hand, is raking in stock options hand over fist, as he continues to help propel Tesla to new heights. Even as Tesla’s stock price touches new highs every week, the American automaker has kicked off a frenzy in India by registering itself in the country, and announcing plans to set up an R&D centre in Bangalore.
What a time to be alive.
A tale of differing fortunes
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a population burdened by debt, struggling to pay it off. In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic (and the extreme measures taken, particularly in the US, to put money in the hands of people through stimulus packages) has created the opposite effect. With sudden liquidity, low interest rates, nowhere to travel, and few avenues to spend, American households are seeing debt plummeting and savings rising to historic levels.
But there’s the flip side of the story too, as Morgan Housel points out. As more people stay home and save instead of spend, the people whose income relies on these spends suffer.
Daily wage earners are struggling and spending their stimulus money to make ends meet while tech industry workers are sitting at home getting richer.
Up against a problem? Print more money!
More money in circulation is good, right? If you’ve read our previous issues of Forward you might now know to cringe inwardly when a new money printing exercise is announced. Not that it’s stopping anyone though, with incoming President Joe Biden already having announced a $1.9 trillion stimulus package to ‘help the economy get back on its feet’.
And people wonder why Bitcoin is surging.
Incidentally, Bitcoin’s rally has drawn a lot of interest, bouquets, and brickbats to the cryptocurrency. How can something rally without any rhyme or reason? How can it fluctuate in price so wildly over a weekend?
What even is Bitcoin?
It’s about time someone wrote an easy to understand primer to dispel some of the mystery that shrouds Bitcoin. Thankfully, Dan Held has done just that in this enlightening read:
A hollow economy
Central banks are a strange lot. First, they distort prices in capital markets, driving up inflation and causing investors to seek riskier opportunities for better yield. Then they intervene in financial markets, prop up zombie companies, and lower interest rates. This easily available capital often gets misallocated in poorly performing sectors instead of automatically finding its way to true innovation — resulting in large sections of the economy being ‘hollowed out’.
These interventions invariably create a vicious cycle in which more and more intervention becomes necessary to avoid a crash. But how long will this tenuous balance last?
"Life instantly improves when you don’t blame other people and focus on what you can control."
Stuff we loved this week
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is in the news for the wrong reasons at the moment, but one cannot dispute the sheer artistry that goes into making it. Check out this deep dive describing the ‘source code’ of the vaccine — a heady blend of biology and technology.
This glorious conversation between Patrick O’Shaughnessy and Octahedron Capital’s Ram Parameswaran on the potential of ‘internet scale’ businesses. (Key takeaway: hire for uncoachable traits, like high emotional intelligence and a love for learning. Listen to it here. [84 min]
There are many works that try and explain why humans, organisations, and countries behave the way they do. There are others that try and decode the true motivations of some of today’s biggest businesses. In one of his most insightful pieces yet, Ben Thompson draws parallels between the ever evolving age of the Internet, and Francis Fukuyama’s book The End of History and the Last Man.
What gives Pixar movies that unique emotional edge? How is it that kiddish animated characters are able to invoke so much emotion in grown adults? The answer, as argued by this piece in The Ringer, might be the magical touch of Pete Docter, who directed Monsters, Inc., Up, Inside Out, and the recent hit, Soul.
This video. No further explanation needed. [19 min]
Food for thought
Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset?
Most people don’t stop to introspect about which side they fall on. This article sheds light on what differentiates the two.
Reading for the sake of it, and reading to imbibe, assimilate, and store information are very different things. If you’re trying to embrace the latter, here are some useful resources on how to read better, and take better notes.
Most people know Peter Thiel as a billionaire investor and the author of Zero to One. Few understand his unique worldview and how deeply it was influenced by French historian Rene Girard. In this deep dive, David Perell explores the ‘religion’ of Peter Thiel — how he took Girard’s work on mimetic theory to the next level in the world of business.
(Bonus: If you’d like to read more about Girard’s work, here’s a post by Alex Danco that’s an excellent place to start).
🔗 Secrets about People: A Short and Dangerous Introduction to René Girard
That’s all for this issue of Forward. If we’re adding value to your day, please consider subscribing if you haven’t done so already. Just drop your email below and we’ll take care of the rest.
As always, we’ll be back in two weeks time with a fresh new issue filled with insights on finance and personal development.
Until next time,
Your friends at NEO