Mrityunjay

Counting on my Stars and focusing on my Kundalini Chakras. What else? Oh Yes, also Running a school & stock addict.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Well said.

[Neel Chhabra @NeelChhabra]

"Nations: born stoic, die epicurean."

"The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and—after some hesitation—the moral code allied with it... In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death."

"Every growing civilization is a scene of multiplying inequalities... they reach at last a bursting point where the poor have nothing to lose by violence, and the chaos of revolution levels men again into a community of destitution."

“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

@anishmoonka Hi Anish, thanks for providing great content. This book review thing is a wonderful initiative, but.. Just a humble suggestion..62 books in 24 hours!! Too much of a good thing!! One doesn't even get time to read & absorb. Take it slow, plz.

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

If I were president and I wanted to tank the dollar and get rich off it, here is exactly what I would do.

I would hire a Treasury Secretary who already made $3.5 billion crashing another country's currency. I would put my guy in charge of the agency that approves bank charters. I would install a crypto czar with $200M in crypto holdings and give him an ethics waiver so nobody could challenge it.

Then I would sign an executive order banning the government from ever creating a digital dollar so there was no competition.

Then I would have my family launch their own private digital dollar. My family takes 75% of net profits. I would grow it to $4.6 billion in circulation and route a $2 billion Abu Dhabi sovereign fund deal through it to prove it works.

Then I would get Congress to pass a law requiring every stablecoin in the country to hold short-term Treasury bills. Now every dollar of my digital currency is a forced buyer of government debt. Brookings projects $2.3 trillion in captive demand by 2030.

Then I would have my OCC guy grant my family's company a federal bank charter. Now I can issue my digital dollar with federal authority.

Then I would have my Treasury Secretary weaken the actual dollar. Bond buybacks that suppress yields but tank the currency. Build a $950 billion war chest for more. Let the debt hit $40 trillion. Dollar index drops to 99. Gold goes to highest point ever.

Then I would kill the Corporate Transparency Act and delete the FinCEN beneficial ownership database. That was the one law that required every shell company in America to report who actually owns it. Without it, nobody can trace who is buying my stablecoin, who is routing money through it, or where the profits land.

Then I would let the loop run. Weaker dollar drives demand for "stable" digital alternatives. The law I passed forces those alternatives to buy T-bills. That funds the government's debt. My family takes profit on every transaction. Foreign central banks walking away from Treasuries get replaced by legally mandated stablecoin reserves my family controls.

Then I would use sanctions to start cutting countries off from the dollar system entirely. And when those countries need a new way to transact in dollars, the only federally chartered private digital dollar in existence is mine. They can buy it through shell companies nobody can trace because I deleted the ownership database.

I just built a toll booth on the global financial system. I take a cut every time someone uses the dollar. And I made it so nobody can see who is paying.

And every single step I just described has already happened.

So what does that mean for you and I?

The reason the United States can borrow at low rates and keep your mortgage and your car payment and your import prices stable is because foreign central banks hold trillions in dollar reserves. That system has always been public. The benefit went to everyone. Lower borrowing costs, cheaper goods , and the single biggest economic advantage any country has ever had.

What I just described is the privatization of that function. The entity buying the debt is no longer a central bank acting in the public interest. It is a private company taking 75% of net profits for one family. The reserve function used to generate a public benefit. Now it generates a private fee.

Your purchasing power shrinks every time the dollar weakens. Your 401k buys less in real terms. Everything you import costs more. And every time the dollar drops, demand for the private digital alternative goes up. The one the president's family owns. The one that by law must buy government debt.

You absorb the cost of a weakening dollar. His family collects the profit. That is the trade.

The enforcement mechanism to stop a sitting president from doing this? There isn't one. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter says it would be a violation for literally any other federal employee, but not the president.

Nobody voted for this. No one was asked. There was no debate. There is no enforcement mechanism. There is no one investigating it. The Senate tried and it was blocked.

This is the largest conflict of interest in American history happening in broad daylight while everyone argues about something else.

So what do you do? Share this. Make it impossible to ignore. Send it to your representative, your senator, every journalist you follow. We make them answer for it.
Because the only thing protecting this scheme right now is the fact that not enough people understand it yet.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Apt!

[Vikas Vij @TheClubJunto]

“Give them bread and circuses, and they will never revolt.” – Poet Juvenal, Roman Empire, 100-130 AD

In its original adivasi tradition, Dhimsa dance is not performed for an audience. Not even for the tribal chief. Everyone participates.

People’s Power vs. Drama

Followed by 500 years of civil war, misgovernance, and economic turmoil, the ancient Roman Republic degenerated into an autocratic Empire. The people’s power was stripped away office by office, law by law.

In return, emperors gave the people two things: subsidized grains (the cura annonae) and spectacular entertainment in the form of chariot races, gladiator combat, and mock naval battles in large stadiums.

This loss of democratic power in exchange for “bread and circuses” was never stated explicitly. But every Roman understood: You no longer have a voice in how Rome is governed. But it is guaranteed that you will never be bored, and you will never starve to death.

Scarcity Cuts Mental Bandwidth

Constant mental load of financial scarcity reduces an individual’s cognitive bandwidth. Behavioural economists S. Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir found in their research that poverty cuts down the capacity for decision-making. This isn’t a character flaw.

Even the richest person, when forced to live with constant mental pressure of earning daily wages to feed his children, relying on uncertain rains for survival, escaping the generational debt trap, and battling disease and malnutrition, would have little energy left to critically examine the government's GDP growth claims or its socio-economic policies.

Individual vs. Crowd Psychology

Over a century ago, French sociologist Gustave Le Bon observed that people in a crowd who were fed the same speeches, images, and slogans day after day, year after year, will lose some of their individual ability of critical thinking, and will absorb the emotional temperature of the crowd. Mobs think differently from individuals.

The Mania of Hero-Worship

When life is already a constant struggle, people will willingly trade the mental burden of “free speech and logical thinking” for the instant drug-like escapist relief of surrendering independent judgment.

They will gladly bow down and drink water from the feet of a cultist, God-like figure who promises them a golden tomorrow. Deep down they know there is no tomorrow, but they don’t want to suffer the pain of reality. That would be suicidal.

Endquote

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Prof. Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize in Physics (1965)

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Beautiful.

[Aseem Dhru @aseemdhru]

An ode to Clarity, Priority, Balance and Mediocrity.

Busyness is a great distraction. When we have nothing to do, that annoying chap living inside us starts his chatter asking questions and nagging us.

We take about 20,000 breaths a day. So in effect, we pay for whatever we are pursing with a nonrenewable resource. Think about it: everything we buy, we pay for it literally with our breaths. The real price of anything is not in money but in terms of life we exchange for it.

कभी फुर्सत मिले तो बैठकर ये सोचता हूँ में
के बेचकर साँसें अपनी क्या खरीदता हूँ में

(In moments of introspection I think that by selling my breaths (time/life) what exactly is it that I am buying?)

The cruel reality is that for most of humanity, this is a privilege they can ill afford. Struggle to put food on the table, a roof over the head, kids through school. For this, house, gold, car is mortgaged, and to pay the EMI, future breaths are also mortgaged.

क्या बेचकर ख़रीदे तुझे ए फुर्सत
सब कुछ गिरवी पड़ा हुआ हे
ज़िम्मेदारी के बाजार में

(What remains that I can sell to buy Leisure? Every asset I have is mortgaged in the market of responsibilities).

Our mind is a troublemaker. When busy, it questions and in moments of leisure, it frets! At work it pines for leisure and on a beach thoughts turn to office.

Unhappiness comes from unfinished work, unfulfilled ambitions, unopened bills, unpaid EMIs, unanswered calls, unfulfilled relationships and unmet desires.

Our brain becomes a refrigerator of half eaten fruits. Half eaten fruits putrefy. Conflicting thoughts and desires are the other mischief mongers within. Clarity is key for a joyful state.

It is critical that we be clear about what it is that we want from life. When we choose to do something, we also choose not to do many other things we could have done in its place. I have found Zuckerberg’s regret minimisation framework very effective. When making choices, make the one you will regret not doing the most. They say, our life is a four burner stove- Work, Family, Friendships, & Health. There isn’t enough gas to turn on all the knobs. Maximum effectiveness is when only one is on.

Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, defeated the Romans in 280 BC. This win came at a terrible cost as so much was lost for it! Like this, often if we get say work right but at the cost of health, family and friendships, it feels like a pyrrhic victory.

The most difficult skill of living is balancing. Buddha talked of the Golden Mean.

Aesop said “An honest mediocrity is the happiest state a man can wish for.” Think about it, geniuses and highly accomplished people live complicated lives and are often high strung in their head. The world's only Trillionaire says "My Mind is a storm and most people think they want to be me but trust me, they don't want to be me!" Those at the top and bottom end of the wealth chain have their own battles, the middle is where the balance is, and balance is where joy lives.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Many Indian examples of this..

[Rose Celine Investments 🌹 @realroseceline]

Thoughts on Terry Smith and more

I think there’s an even bigger idea hiding beneath Terry Smith’s letter. He says they’ll pay more attention to momentum going forward. Most people stopped there. I don’t think momentum was the cause at all. I think it was simply the symptom. The real story is something far deeper, and it applies to almost every legendary business that has ever existed.

For years Terry Smith built his reputation by buying businesses with exceptional returns on capital employed. That philosophy wasn’t wrong. In fact, it was one of the greatest investment frameworks ever created. The mistake wasn’t focusing on ROCE. The mistake was forgetting that high returns and long reinvestment runways are two completely different things.

Investors obsess over how much capital a business earns on. Far fewer ask how much capital it still can earn those returns on. That second question is infinitely more important because today’s returns tell you about the past, while tomorrow’s reinvestment opportunities determine the future. Markets don’t pay for history, they pay for what still remains.

Imagine two businesses both earning a 35% return on capital. The first can reinvest another $10 billion over the next decade at similar returns. The second can reinvest another $200 billion. They look identical on today’s financial statements, yet economically they are worlds apart. One is approaching saturation, while the other is only beginning its journey.

This is why I believe so many investors completely misunderstood Terry Smith’s sales. $NVO didn’t suddenly become a terrible business. $LVMH didn’t suddenly forget how to build one of the greatest luxury franchises ever created. The businesses remained exceptional. What changed was the market’s perception of how much extraordinary opportunity still lay ahead.

Every great business is fighting a battle that almost nobody talks about. We obsess over competition, disruption and recessions, yet the biggest long term enemy of many compounders is simply success itself. Every factory built, every country entered, every product launched and every acquisition completed consumes part of tomorrow’s opportunity. Great businesses don’t just create value. They quietly consume their future reinvestment runway one capital allocation decision at a time.

The irony is that success eventually becomes its own form of competition. A $1 billion company has many ways to double. A $500 billion company has very few. As businesses grow larger, they aren’t competing against rivals nearly as much as they’re competing against their own size. Mathematics becomes a stronger opponent than competition.

This also explains why valuation changes long before earnings do. Investors often wonder why a company still producing record profits can lose half its market value. It’s because markets don’t discount today’s economics, they discount tomorrow’s possibilities. Once investors begin to believe that the opportunity set is shrinking, multiples compress even while the business itself continues performing beautifully.

I think there’s another mental model hiding here that almost nobody discusses. Every great business has an inventory of future opportunities. Every time management opens another store, launches another blockbuster drug, enters another geography or acquires another business, they’re not just creating value today. They’re also using up one of tomorrow’s opportunities. Opportunity is a finite resource, and the very best management teams spend it wisely.

Perhaps this is why so many legendary compounders eventually slow despite remaining wonderful businesses. They didn’t become poorly managed. They simply became too successful. The first trillion dollar ideas have already been executed, and every future decision must be large enough to move an increasingly enormous business. That’s an extraordinarily difficult standard to meet, regardless of how talented management may be.

1/2👇

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

AI generated or not but feels powerful. And that's enough.

[Vishal Khandelwal @safalniveshak]

If you have a father who can still pick up your call...call.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Fascinating stuff..

https://t.co/ebs7WFBefn

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

A sleep expert describes the perfect conditions for falling asleep quicker

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Well articulated.

[Ritesh Jain @riteshmjn]

Thread: The “Mamdani” Phenomenon — Why Democracies Decline Once Wealth Concentrates
1.Mamdani isn’t the cause. He’s the result of a civilization reaching critical mass — a city so large that its base sees wealth everywhere but can’t access it.
2.Once that happens, someone always rises—a “man of the people”—promising redistribution from the rich to the base. It never ends well. The economy eventually breaks.
3.Because value creation lives at the edge. The top 1% create 99% of innovation, research, talent, and capital growth—just like how 1% of athletes or artists dominate their fields.
4.People admire a Virat Kohli or Ronaldo but don’t demand their salaries. They recognize the skill gap.
But when it comes to finance, they see only “rich guys” and assume unfairness—without understanding the skill behind spotting obscure anomalies in Korean bonds or tech infrastructure.
5.Enter Mamdani, promising easy redistribution. “Tax the rich; I’ll give you plenty.”
Masses love him—because delayed gratification and skill are rare traits. Most prefer free stuff now over effort later.
6.This isn’t new. The Gracchi brothers in ancient Rome said the same:
“Take land from rich landlords and give it to the people.”
Sound familiar? Their story rhymes through history.
7.Rome’s wealth came from conquest. As long as expansion brought land and gold, the state could fund “free corn” (yes, literally).
When wars stopped, Rome ran out of new wealth. People still wanted bread. So, they debased currency. Inflation. Collapse.
https://t.co/HMn7Iv5QGz now? Similar arc. Post–WWII, no new “lands” to win. Democracy demands equality, but wealth creation isn’t democratic. Result: gradual decline masked by slogans of fairness.
9.Democracies struggle to generate explosive wealth—they distribute before creating it. Historically, every truly rich nation got rich before universal suffrage.
10.What’s different today? Speed.
Rome’s decline took centuries. But in a networked world, decay can be exponential. The Roman “free corn” is today’s subsidies and welfare promises—except the timeline is compressed.
11.Unless we rediscover new frontiers (war, technology, or space), the same forces that ended Rome may unwind the megacities of today—London, LA, Toronto.
History doesn’t repeat. It compounds.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Challenge is all about internalizing the all known solutions.

[J Law @JLawStock]

Honored to have reached the top of the 1M+ division in Q3 with a 250% return at the US Investing Championship.

These are the 5 principles that guided me through another triple-digit year — and might help you see markets with greater clarity.👇🏼

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Love the way he presents concepts..

[vineeth (vin8-) @inv_vin8]

“your margin is my opportunity”

Three Men Make a Tiger.

Little Ways The World Works https://t.co/JvSMCLcIc2 via @collabfund

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Hits hard. Can feel the same sort of changes in Indian context.

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

A message from a Kindergarten teacher:

After forty years in the classroom, my career ended with one small sentence from a six-year-old:

“My dad says people like you don’t matter anymore.”

No sneer. No malice. Just quiet honesty — the kind that cuts deeper because it’s innocent. He blinked, then added, “You don’t even have a TikTok.”

My name is Mrs. Clara Holt, and for four decades, I taught kindergarten in a small Denver suburb. Today, I stacked the last box on my desk and locked the door behind me.

When I started teaching in the early 1980s, it felt like a promise — a shared belief that what we did mattered. We weren’t rich, but we were valued. Parents brought warm cookies to parent nights. Kids gave you handmade cards with hearts that didn’t quite line up. Watching a child sound out their first sentence felt like magic.

But that world slowly slipped away. The job I once knew has been replaced by exhaustion, red tape, and a kind of loneliness I can’t quite describe.

My evenings used to be filled with construction paper, glitter, and glue sticks. Now they’re spent filling out digital reports to protect myself from angry emails or lawsuits. I’ve been yelled at by parents in front of twenty-five children — one filming me with his phone while I tried to calm another child mid-meltdown.

And the kids… they’ve changed too. Not by choice.

They arrive tired, anxious, overstimulated. Their tiny fingers know how to swipe a screen before they can hold a crayon. Some can’t make eye contact or wait in line. We’re expected to fix all of it — to patch the gaps, heal the trauma, teach the curriculum, and document every move — in six hours a day, with resources that barely fill a drawer.

The little reading corner I once built, full of soft beanbags and paper stars, was replaced by data charts and “learning metrics.” A young principal once told me, “Clara, maybe you’re too nurturing. The district wants measurable results.”

As if kindness were a weakness.

Still, I stayed. Because of the small, holy moments that no spreadsheet could measure —
a whisper of, “You remind me of my grandma.”
a shaky note that read, “I feel safe here.”
a quiet boy finally meeting my eyes and saying, “I read the whole page.”

Those tiny sparks were my reason to keep showing up.

But this last year broke something in me.

The aggression grew sharper. The laughter in the staff room turned to silence. The light went out of so many eyes. I watched brilliant teachers — my friends — vanish under the weight of burnout, their joy replaced by survival.

I felt myself fading too, like chalk on a board that’s been wiped one too many times.

So today, I began my goodbye. I pulled faded art off the walls and tucked thirty years of handmade cards into a single box. In the back of a drawer, I found a letter from a student from 1998:

“Thank you for loving me when I was hard to love.”

I sat on the floor and cried.

No party. No applause. Just a handshake from a young principal who called me “Ma’am” while checking his notifications.

I left my rocking chair behind, and my sticker box too. What I carried with me were the memories — the faces of hundreds of children who once trusted me enough to reach out their hands and learn. That can’t be uploaded. It can’t be measured. It can’t be replaced.

I miss when teachers were partners, not targets. When parents and educators worked side by side, not in opposition. When schools cared more about wonder than numbers.

So if you know a teacher — any teacher — thank them. Not with a mug or a gift card, but with your words. With your respect. With your understanding that behind every test score is a heart that cared enough to try.

Because in a world that often overlooks them, teachers are the ones who never forget our children.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Very well written..

[Aseem Dhru @aseemdhru]

Tomorrow is the Frenemy.

Probably humans are the only animals aware of their life. Other animals go through life instinctively. This awareness has brought in the concept of time. That there will be a tomorrow and we need to prepare for it.

This single concept has influence over our entire life !

A child is sent to school for 20 years to prepare for life.

Store-rooms, cabinets, boxes are made to store food.

Refrigerators arrived in every home to store food longer.

A tiger hunts, eats and then leaves it for jackals, hyenas and vultures to feed.

We can spend it all but instead invest to take care of our retirement, medical expense, children’s education etc.

The fear of what tomorrow could bring makes us buy Sickness and Death insurance (there is no such thing as health or life insurance- its playing on our psychology!).

We take loans to buy a home that we will pay every month for thirty years from the income we think we may have and then we buy insurance just in case we do not have the time we think we may have!

Life can only be lived in this moment but the design of life is such that we keep postponing for a tomorrow that may never come.

Education, investing, working towards building a business any human activity has commitment of the most precious non replenishing resource we have - time! We sacrifice today with a hope of constructing a better tomorrow.

While the fruits of all actions will arrive tomorrow, it is easy to forget life has to be lived only in the today.

What is a rich life? Money? Nah! That is an enabler but in itself not sufficient.

Richness of knowledge - from Physics to History from Poetry to Artificial Intelligence.

Richness of experience - Traveling to different lands. Meeting diverse people. Eating various cuisines.

Richness of thoughts - not holding on to a dogma or passed knowledge but capable of forming original thoughts.

Richness of adventure - venturing into the unknown. Pushing our body, mind, capabilities to their limits. It could be in terms of climbing a mountain, running marathons, starting a business, moving to a new country where you know no one. Adventure is the joy we know that lies on the other side of fear.

There is no biography in the world that says he/she lived a happy, peaceful life. There is no story without drama, twists and turns, ups and downs, winning and losing and re-winning, battling of odds.

There-in lies the dichotomy. A peaceful life also gets boring. We humans are complex. We seek adventure and peace. We crave the mountains(winning) but detest the valleys(losing). When we settle for a routine, we settle for mediocrity and while we seek adventure, we are scared of the embedded possibility of failure.

We can do all great things because we believe there is a tomorrow but live with the reality that right here, right now is the only certainty! Tomorrow is a friend we hoping to meet and we also know one day like an enemy, it will deceive - it is our Frenemy!

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

Guess, only story matters!

[Shane Parrish @shaneparrish]

20 takeaways from my conversation with @lulumeservey on the most powerful communication strategies from cult leaders, insurgents, and physics:

1. Conviction beats logic.

2. Under attack? Spread the force (pressure equals the force divided by the surface area). Attacking? Focus on a specific point.

3. In order of how much it matters: the hook is first (to get attention), then how you tell your story, and finally where you tell it. Most people get this wrong.

4. You have to fight story with story.

5. Facts don't win hearts and minds.

5. Stories trump statistics. One death is a tragedy. A thousand is a statistic. Stories always win.

6. People remember 2-3 things about you. Don't let them be random.

7. If you have a repeated game of long-term relationships and repeated interactions, the optimal strategy is actually tit for two tats. You can cross me once and maybe I’ll let that go, but if you cross me the second time, I never will.

7. No spokesperson can tell your story better than you.

8. Deterrence matters: Establish that you’re not a soft target. If you can establish that you'll fight back, you’ll make the rest of your life so much easier.

9. Reality bends to whoever tells the better story.

10. Let your inner circle tell you you're wrong, or strangers will embarrass you.

11. Use common words. Everyone gets it. No one feels stupid.

12. Trust = Not a stranger + shared values + common ground first.

13. We’re more convinced by people we like, and we like people that we trust.

14. Humor creates involuntary likability.

15. Apologize when wrong. Never when right. Most do the opposite.

16. Cult leaders speak directly. So should you.

17. Corporate speak is everyone copying everyone saying nothing.

18. The wizard behind the curtain gets no trust. Show your face.

19. Every unicorn pitched the impossible with impossible conviction.

20. Reality is subjective. You can bend it to your will if you’re able to communicate to people who matter in the ways that strike them in the heart and in the mind to get them to see the world the way that you do.

Listen "Lulu on The Knowledge Project"

[Radigan Carter @radigancarter]

Thanks for flagging this. Russell Napier, Luke Gromen, Grant Williams, and others were way ahead of the curve on financial repression so credit to them.

If others are reading this and don't understand financial repression where the risk free rate is/will be held under the rate of inflation it is/continuing to be where our purchasing power and investment return will not keep up with the price increases of assets we want to buy.

This will is being done so governments can reduce their debt to gdp, I think of it as the government and central banks doing what is necessary for social stability, which comes at the cost of our individual happiness.

If you want to read a historical account of bankers and politicians doing it before read the book Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World then if you want a deep dive into how the bond market was originally designed as a check on sovereign powers doing this and it's only through regulatory capture it has become the risk free rate of return, read The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest.

As Morgan Stanley CEO describes, people may feel like they are getting wealthy on a relative basis, but they likely won't on a real basis after inflation and paying taxes which is by design. Someone has to pay for all the lost wars, the promised unfunded entitlements, and so forth and it's easier to do it this way than forcing an electorate that hates consequences to decide who has to pay since they will simply vote for whoever tells them they don't and none of this is true.

We all get to choose how we make money off this. Some will buy bonds thinking the government will find a way to lower rates across the curve, others will not and prefer real assets. Either way they are positioning themselves knowing politicians and bankers will do what is best for social stability since that preserves their power.

There is ikely an entire generation that doesn't understand what is happening since they haven't lived through it. As a classically trained economist apologized in the FT earlier this week, he missed the entire move of gold and miners because he's been taught to avoid the inert, yieldless asset his entire career. I felt a bit sorry for the man, he is used to a world of laws, not one where might makes right and if you want to be rich you simply pull the skimask down and take what you want.

I tend to think we live in the latter world, and always have, it has just been since 1945 the U.S. could use the world of laws to do that, and after seizing Russian assets in 2022 we've showed the world we're now back to pulling the ski mask down.

Why thought we could get away it it. Now that NATO has lost in Europe and global institutions like the ICC are not doing what western politicians want, the silk sheet is being removed and we all get to see the hammer that was always under it.

My way of thinking is people who want to argue about political influence on the sanctity of Fed independence or CBDC are evil and stablecoins are better are wasting my time. There is no difference between any of those things for me as an individual since no matter which way it goes, as a responsible individual I still get the hammer when it suits politicians and bankers.

Politicians and bankers serve themselves by thinking they are serving everyone by doing what they must to preserve social stability which also preserves their power.

Does it matter if the Fed or JPMorgan is freezing my account? Not really, the results for me are the same, I'm frozen out of my account to force me to comply.

So they do not serve me or my family, or yours. If you disagree, I envy you still believing and hope you never find out you're wrong. It is a disconcerting feeling.

Personally I see those arguments as a distraction aimed at wasting our time and energy so we can't see and think clearly, then act decisively for our families.

For me, if politicians and bankers had our own best interest at heart they would not be wasting millions of lives so they didn't have to admit they were wrong in a war that was lost two years ago. They would not be protecting predators on the Epstein list. They would not have forced us who served faithfully to get a vaccine or lose our professions. They would not steal years of our lives that we risk earning money which they then take through inflation.

Their intentions do not matter. By our fruits we will be known.

So we accept this is the system we live in and build strong and beautiful lives designed to not waste time or energy on people who do not care about us.

Good luck to everyone, our families depend on us. RC

[The Icahnist @TheIcahnist]

Timeless Lessons from 200 Years of Tech Investing

Railways, Radios , Dot-Coms, and EVs show the same patterns.

Thread

[Sandeep Singh @Alchemist1320]

Reversal of Laissez-faire (Ayan Rand’s soul must be smirking)

As US Gov took 10% in Intel, below are some previous famous cases of various kinds

Oil & Energy Sectors

* Mexico – PEMEX (1938)
President Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated foreign oil companies and created Pemex, a state-owned oil monopoly.

* Venezuela – Oil Industry (2007)
Hugo Chávez forced foreign oil companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to hand over majority control of operations to PDVSA, the state oil company.

* Iran – Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (1951) Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), sparking a global crisis and eventual coup.

Utilities & Infrastructure

* UK – Coal, Rail, Steel (1940s–1950s)
After WWII, the Labour government under Clement Attlee nationalized coal, steel, railways, and utilities to rebuild the economy.

* Argentina – YPF (2012)
The Argentine government under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner seized a 51% stake in YPF, taking control from Spain’s Repsol.

Banking

* Pakistan – Banks & Industries (1970s)
Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto nationalized all major banks, insurance companies, and large industries.

* India – Banking Sector (1969 & 1980)
The Indian government nationalized major banks in two waves, giving the state majority ownership in the largest financial institutions.

Exchange / Bailout-Driven Stakes

United States – 2008 Financial Crisis

* AIG – The U.S. government took nearly 80% ownership in exchange for a bailout.

* General Motors – Treasury became a major shareholder during GM’s bankruptcy rescue.

* Citigroup & Other Banks – Received equity injections through the TARP program.

United Kingdom – Banking Crisis (2008)

* Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – Government acquired 84% stake.
* Lloyds Banking Group – Partial nationalization with a large state shareholding.

Germany – Lufthansa (2020, COVID-19)

* German government injected €9 billion, taking a 20% stake in Lufthansa to prevent collapse during the pandemic.

France – Renault & Air France-KLM

* France has repeatedly taken or expanded stakes in Renault and Air France-KLM during crises, most recently during COVID-19.

Italy – Monte dei Paschi di Siena (2017)

* The world’s oldest bank was effectively nationalized when the Italian state took a 68% stake to prevent collapse.

[Mrityunjay @Mritunjay12]

So tue!

[Jay Yang @Jayyanginspires]

A question that lives rent free in my head...