Ronojoy Mazumdar

It just took a 1.36% gain against the dollar to count as the best day in 7 years for the Indian rupee.

A lot of people wouldn't have gotten much sleep overnight in Delhi and Mumbai.

Last week I came across commentary accompanying TA of gold's breakout, which described it as "defying all analysis". The fiat-wallahs have had the last laugh on this occasion but something tells me we're going to see more market days that don't fit any framework.

Where did the 8-year old pop out from??

Unbelievable how much the fate of the Indian economy seems tied to the fate of the dollar.

Genuine banger from The Bad Place:

So basically, the Ice Lord has declared that they've lost the Mandate of Heaven.

As U.S. orders fade, Chinese salespeople face tough grind in new markets China sold more goods to the world than ever in 2025, but export saleswoman Aimee Chen says it was the hardest of her roughly two-decade career.

Lv said she traded messages with one client for months, discussing everything from news events to lunch choices and religion. He eventually ordered just one battery, earning Lv a commission of less than $2.

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

They will thus be loath to be seen as doing the U.S. president’s bidding. Trump claimed on Sunday that he had spoken to all of the major U.S. energy firms about his plans for investing in Venezuela "before and after" Maduro’s capture, a claim company executives refuted.

(2/2)

Trump offers US oil companies a poisoned chalice in Venezuela U.S. President Donald Trump is giving U.S. energy companies the opportunity to revive Venezuela’s massive, derelict oil industry. It’s an offer they may want to refuse.

U.S. majors have in recent decades gone to great lengths to distance themselves from American foreign policy, emphasizing their independence to convince investors that they are focused solely on shareholder returns. (1/2)
www.reuters.com/markets/comm...

Computer scientist Yann LeCun: ‘Intelligence really is about learning’ The AI pioneer on stepping down from Meta, the limits of large language models — and the launch of his new start-up

Read this in a French accent:

“But I’m not gonna change my mind because some dude thinks I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. My integrity as a scientist cannot allow me to do this.”

www.ft.com/content/e3c4...

Post the links when they're out?

GPT-speak has broken containment even onto Substack notes. Bleak.

Emerging economies are outpacing advanced markets in EV uptake.

The payoff is clear – EVs use three times less energy than petrol and diesel cars, which can cut fossil demand by:
🇧🇷 94% in Brazil
🇮🇩 Nearly half in Indonesia, despite a fossil-heavy grid

https://loom.ly/pMmY5Y8

Champion of capitalism, ex-Morgan Stanley emerging markets investor Ruchir Sharma with same talking points on AI "bubble" as...AOC: capitalistic on the upside, socialized downside. Worry over its share of stock market gains and its share of capex in GDP
youtu.be/zOOgmOKEZnw?...

but one enforced on private players, their euphemism being "supply management" through a price floor for key crops. Curious whether that kind of compromise (vs a government-guarunteed MSP) made it into India's farm laws debate, or whether it would be a non-starter here. (2/2)

YouTube video by More Perfect Union We Went to Arkansas. The Farm Crisis Will Shock You

Debt distress driving farmer suicides in the US. Issue there is that Big Ag has a chokehold on both ends of the supply chain, unlike in India where they have it only on one end. The U.S. small farmer ask? An MSP... (1/2)

youtu.be/cl02K72QFS0?... via
@YouTube

"The spirit of cooperation that once reigned has been shattered by economic rivalries and a stark divergence in climate policies among the world’s biggest polluters."

www.reuters.com/markets/comm...

India general election, start of June 2024

Bulgarian sub-plot to global petrodollar arm-wrestle!

"The Treasury Department also allowed transactions until April 29, 2026, involving Lukoil entities in Bulgaria"

reuters.com/business/ene...

Discuss: monetary policymakers as embodying the "paternal" spiritual energy in parenting the economy, while fiscal policymakers channel the "maternal" equivalent.

Whenever the b*bble pops, this is the sort of thing that might reveal what Huang and co. really think about AGI:

"GPU producers like NVIDIA may gain some advantage from leasing GPUs rather than selling them if they believe that GPU lessees are mispricing the residual."
t.co/gfk041EyYv(1...

"Reservoirs were already at record lows, rainfall unusually poor, and rationing measures tightening. During the 12-Day War, water infrastructure was even targeted. Yet few paid attention.

Now, Tehran’s water shortage has gone from chronic to critical." (2/2)

Evacuating the Capital? Inside Iran’s Water Crisis and the Politics of Drought Over the last decade, I’ve spent much of my time studying environmental change in the past and tracing what global warming means for our future.

"So while I could be writing about COP30, which began this morning, or about the latest chaos at the BBC, I think the most important story in the world right now is unfolding in Iran."
peterfrankopan.substack.com/p/evacuating...

(1/2)

--> This is precisely the sort of thing that would have allowed journalists to get away with calling Governor Sanjay Malhotra "the trilllion rupee man" in the pre-MPC era (2/2)

India’s RBI Shields Currency, Bond Markets as US Tariffs Bite India’s central bank is supporting the currency and bond markets as delays in reducing harsh US tariffs hurt local assets.

"Analysts at Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. and Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC Ltd. expect the RBI to buy about one trillion rupees of bonds in the coming months."
bloomberg.com/news/article...
(1/2)

Numb at Burning Man Only one thing has ever happened

"They put me on manual labour duty. Fine, I thought. I’m used to working with my hands. Typing for a living is a form of working with your hands." open.substack.com/pub/samkriss...

China's carbon dioxide emissions were flat year-on-year in the third quarter, extending a now 18-month streak of flat or falling emissions 🥳🥳
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Elon Musk's $1 trillion Tesla pay plan wins shareholder approval www.reuters.com/legal/transa...

-- Presumably to shield him from the crazy inflation to come?

"...has utterly dropped the ball on the biggest environmental challenge of our age. Instead, the threat will be met and defeated by China, and — more than any other single individual — by Xi Jinping himself. That’s no small accomplishment."

(7/7) (h/t @noahpinion.blogsky.venki.dev