Vikram Nehru

@TheEconomist It’s indisputable: over the past five years American productivity has grown at its fastest rate in around two decades. And it’s too early to credit AI for this resurrection. So what’s behind this surprising development?

Powerful data from @McKinsey. The question— can the U.S. stay ahead — is the right one. What the graph doesn’t show is how the U.S. lead has shrunk over the last 25 years. It’s not that the U.S. is doing worse; other countries, notably China, are doing better. Your thoughts?

Impact of Middle East violence in a nutshell @IMF

@NikkeiAsia On Tuesday, Chinese battery manufacturer CATL showcased its Shenxing battery, which can charge from 10% to 98% in six and a half minutes, along with [a battery] cell that can deliver a driving range of 1,500 kms. Chinese tech is racing ahead of the West.

Sobering words.

That’s exactly right — approximately $1 a barrel. Hardly catastrophic.

@NMenonRao @karmanomad Hear! Hear!

Much is being made of Pakistan emerging as a U.S.–Iran interlocutor. This is not new. Pakistan has often been used as a conduit when direct engagement becomes difficult. But a conduit carries messages. It does not define outcomes. Geography helps Pakistan. That is all. India’s challenge is not to compete for that role, but to preserve something more valuable: credibility across divides. Power is measured by the ability to speak to all sides without being owned by anyone. We are not chasing visibility here. Let us aim at shaping the context.

@CuriosityonX Worth recalling this:

This is incredible. This machine is capable of cleaning up 100 million kg of plastic ocean waste, and as of 2025, it has already collected about 500,000 kg of plastic. It aims to remove 90% of ocean plastic by 2040.

@tanvi_ratna Venezuela has much more than oil. And it appears Trump can now exploit it without let or hindrance.

The Venezuela story everyone missed. The U.S. just sold $500 million of Venezuelan oil. But they deposited the money in Qatar. Not the U.S. Not Venezuela. Qatar. Here is why that satisfies detail changes everything you think you know about what just happened. Venezuela owes $170 billion to international creditors. Bondholders. Oil companies. China. Everyone is owed money. Any account in the U.S. or Venezuela would be immediately seized through litigation. So the Trump administration parked the money in Qatar. A “neutral venue” where funds flow freely with U.S. approval and without risk of seizure. This is not liberation. This is not regime change. This is not intervention. This is the first operational deployment of a new architecture for sovereign resource capture. The sequence: - January 3: Capture the president - January 6: Announce U.S. will “run” oil sector indefinitely - January 9: Sign Executive Order shielding revenues from all creditors - January 14: Complete first $500 million sale Twelve days from military operation to revenue capture. Iraq took six years to sign its first major oil contracts after 2003. Foreign companies operated under Iraqi law. Revenues went to Iraqi accounts. Venezuela 2026: The U.S. government directly markets the oil, completes the sales, and deposits proceeds in accounts it controls in third countries. This has never happened before. Never! Yup! Not in Iraq. Not in Libya. Not in Kuwait. Not anywhere since 1945. The Executive Order is the key document. It declares that Venezuelan oil revenues are exempt from all creditor claims, all legal judgments, all international arbitration. With one signature, $170 billion in legal obligations became unenforceable. The international legal architecture built over 80 years was bypassed through a domestic Executive Order and an account in Doha. ExxonMobil’s CEO called Venezuela “uninvestible” at the White House meeting last week. He is correct. And it does not matter. When the U.S. government controls the revenue stream, shields it from courts, and promises to “make it real easy,” the old investment calculus is obsolete. The template is now operational: - Designate government as narcoterrorist. - Deploy military to capture leadership. - Install cooperative interim authority. - Issue Executive Order voiding all prior obligations. - Sell resources through U.S.-controlled channels. - Deposit proceeds in jurisdictions beyond legal reach. Any nation with vast natural resources, a government whose legitimacy can be contested, and insufficient military deterrence just watched this template execute in real time. Venezuela has 303+ billion barrels of proven reserves. The largest on Earth. The U.S. now controls the revenue stream. This is not a story about Trump or Maduro or intervention ethics. This is the birth of a new imperial architecture that renders the post-Westphalian legal order irrelevant through financial engineering and offshore banking. The 21st century will not be shaped by international law. It will be shaped by whoever controls the accounts.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Read the full article - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

"The latest attacks on the US Federal Reserve by .. Trump .. are raising fears of a grim future ... But internal and external checks and balances are likely to prove sufficiently robust to prevent a major accident." (Mohamed El-Erian). I hope he's right, but I doubt it.

These are gigantic differences.

@MilanV Graduates can afford to be unemployed; the illiterate poor can’t. It’s why unemployment statistics in poor countries (like India) can be misleading.

"Reflecting the lack of good jobs amidst the surge in gig and contract jobs, a graduate in India is more likely to be unemployed than an illiterate youth." gulzar05.blogspot.com/2025/12/indian…

🇮🇳 The true size of India

@EvanFeigenbaum I’m not surprised. “Washington has sought to include clauses in trade agreements that stipulate the deal would be cancelled if signatories sign a rival pact deemed to jeopardise essential US interests.”

What a shock.

@tech_crafters Grok says its a scam: “This thread links to Oxford Home Study Centre (OHSC), an independent UK provider not affiliated with the University of Oxford, despite using the university's crest in the header image.”

What about future Chinese lending abroad to sovereigns? Having burned their fingers, it's only natural that Chinese banks -- and the Chinese government that directs them -- are going to be more circumspect and strategic going forward when lending to client governments abroad.

Will China be able to cover the costs of its bad sovereign loans abroad? Undoubtedly. It's a small fraction of the losses that Chinese banks have incurred at home -- and they have been repeatedly recapitalized over the years by the government.

A fascinating just-published article by Horn, Reinhart, & Trebesch in the JEP shows a sharp reversal in net transfers by Chinese state creditors to developing and emerging market economies........ (1/2)