Nicola Protasoni
6.4K posts


Very good op-ed: "How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?" @DavidAFrench gives 2 reasons: (1) scarce goods like land in desirable neighborhoods and NFL game tickets and (2) positional goods - there is always someone who sits in the front of the plane and someone who gets on last. As wealth rises, demand for scarce and positional goods increases, and businesses focus more heavily on serving that demand. Seating on Southwest Airlines was originally based on when you arrived. Then they created one premium tier. Now every seat has a distinct price. This evolution went from no positioning to near perfect positioning. Most people can afford many everyday comforts, like a large TV or meal delivery, so competition for scarce and status-linked goods intensifies. That dynamic can leave people outside the top wealth tier feeling worse off, even as their material standard of living improves. "No one is the clear villain in this story, and that’s one thing that makes the problem difficult to solve. We can’t target and defeat a specific set of bad actors who are immiserating America. Everyone is acting in rational self-interest." The growing discontent, almost impossible to reverse, drives the move towards populism as voters demand solutions to problems that can't be solved.

Tokyo is able to turn to nuclear power to help reduce dependence on LNG 🇯🇵 ☢️ The No 6 reactor at Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant just reached full power for the first time in over a decade That will replace ~1.1m tons of LNG a year (15 shipments). Good timing for Japan

BREAKING: London-based hedge fund Caxton Associates has extended its losses to more than $1.3B this month Caxton's fund run by Andrew Law is down -15% in March after betting on UK rate cuts and gold The Iran conflict has flipped both trades, with gilt yields hitting 2008 highs and gold down -15% since the war began



This is Wild. Deutsche Bank has developed an index that helps to predict the next TACO by Trump. It has proven effective in previous big Trump pivots. The "Pressure index" combines one-month change in approval ratings, one-year inflation expectations and performance of the S&P 500 & t-bill yields. The higher it goes, the greater the chances of 🌮










