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Karthik Sankaran

@rajakorman.bsky.social

6.5K followers 1.2K following 5K posts

Bay Area US. Aging macro expat. Cheap lunch guy. 1st to ever rhyme Duce and Juche. Neoliberal peacenik. Has Herder immunity. Virulent vector of dad jokes. 1/3 each phlegm, spleen & dad humors.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 25d

Here's a link to a conversation earlier this week on links between geopolitics and FX & FI markets; the role of CBs; different patterns of real and financial spillover & impacts on Global South; & few other things I have been known to go on about. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvw_...

EXANTE Webinar ‘Beach Reads & Bond Yields’

YouTube video by EXANTE

www.youtube.com

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 1h

Sorry for the delay, but it’s obviously time for a Honda Accord.

FinTwitter @fintwitter.bsky.social · 2d

Honda: Yen going beyond 150 to dollar is a bit too much.

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Reposted by Karthik Sankaran

Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 5h

Perhaps not the main point but I always hate it when people view it as a sign of failure when poorer countries grow faster. There is absolutely no intrinsic reason why Poland should have lower income than the UK or any other EU country forever, and that means it will have to grow faster sometimes

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 5h

"15 years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now Poland is growing twice as fast as we are," says Kemi Badenoch.

Any ideas what may have happened in the interim?

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 2h

If Bob Dylan had won his Nobel much earlier in his career, he would learned of it by a Zimmerman Telegram.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 2h

The one on the left is by Christopher Nolan. The one on the right is worth watching (even if they do some familial history mashing up).

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 2h

They actually made two movies that were really about Austria-Hungary’s pioneering space program in 2006, but they cleverly separated the plots to keep it a secret.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 3h

This makes perfect sense TBF.

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Reposted by Karthik Sankaran

Jake Werner @jwdwerner.bsky.social · 17h

Politico gathered denunciations of Jensen Huang from a long list of the usual suspects in the China panic industry.

I was very glad to be the lone voice against Chinese exclusion in our immigration policy and great power conflict in our foreign policy.
subscriber.politicopro.com/newsletter/2...

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

The Sound and The Furet

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

It all started going downhill when the self-proclaimed rationalists at Quillete published an article defending Chouannerie.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

In turn forgetting something. bsky.app/profile/raja...

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 27d

I would once again like to remind everyone that one of the most memory-holed things on the planet is how a virtue-embracing English regime beat France to legislative regicide followed by a genocidal campaign against an observant Catholic peasantry by about 150 years. (Pinker, there).

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

It all started going downhill when the self-proclaimed rationalists at Quillete published an article defending Chouannerie.

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Reposted by Karthik Sankaran

JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 18h

Well yes, all of which happened in intense, often violent, opposition to the established governments and religion of "the West". The sort of people who use the term now would have been on the other side.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

NTTAWWT.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

The funny thing is that contrary to people who use it that way now, not too long ago, the defining features of the West were supposed to be that it alone had moved from faith to doubt, status to contract, charismatic to bureaucratic authority, and gemeinschaft to gesellschaft.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

Obligatory NTTAWWT.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 18h

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 21h

If it's for real (and IMHO though I don't do this for a living, it is), this kind of thing is typically less a point in a cycle, and more a reasonably sized arc in a circle.

Joseph Cotterill @jsphctrl.ft.com · 1d

We appear to be at that point in the cycle www.ft.com/content/fbf7...

Emerging markets roar back with biggest stock rally in 15 years

‘Stars are finally aligning’ for EM assets, as weakening US dollar sends investors in search of yield

www.ft.com

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 22h

But if a) and b) change, the need to change c) increases, even as the ability of the US to maintain c) declines and the measures for RoW to change c) come into play.

Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 22h

Ranking the following in terms of degree of difficulty AS THINGS CURRENTLY STAND re: replacing the US in terms of:
a) Contribution to global final demand
b) Contribution to global security (Personally, I'm less alarmed/ist about aims elsewhere).
c) Contribution to global financial "seamlessness."

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 22h

The funny thing about Singapore is that between the autocratic state-capacity technocracy, the free-trading Hanseatic city-stateness, and the government having built owner-occupied housing on a massive scale, it’s like a blank screen where a lot of the political spectrum can project its fantasies.

Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 23h

British neoliberalism of the 70s and 80s was obsessed with Singapore, a technocratic autocracy of free trade and deregulation. Of course that would evolve to Dubai, an even more autocratic technocracy with even freer trade and no safety net beyond indentured migrant servants for the very rich

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 1d

it's weird to me how much Gulf states seem to dominate the imagination of the UK right at the moment. I assume it's largely about who's giving them money, but I also think "Dubai expat" is a common social type in their circles.

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 22h

Globalists

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 23h

As detailed here. open.substack.com/pub/sankaran...

Stop blaming neoliberals for neoconneries

One of the things long-time followers on Twitter know about me (besides the most important fact that I am the Stakhanov of the dad joke) is that I like to come up with definitions for neoliberalism.

open.substack.com

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 23h

Globalists is indeed an excellent book that influenced me deeply, even if that influence took the form of me muttering “yes, but stop saying that like its a bad thing” every few pages.