Global money markets, still $ denominated
“More generally, in 2012 I was excessively anchored to Stigum’s largely domestic account of dollar money markets, because that is where I started when I first began to develop the course. Today I would emphasize instead the dollar as global money, both means of payment and means of funding, not just in Europe but now increasingly in the Global South as well. In this regard, one of the most important developments of the decade since the global financial crisis has been the ability of private non-financial firms in emerging market countries to tap global capital markets directly for their dollar funding needs.”
" If the seabed were perfectly flat, the sonar image would be featureless. If there were rocky hills or obstructions, you’d see a shadow — known as a holiday — behind the outcrop. What the crew was looking for were items inexplicable by geology. In the case of a debris field, the anomalies would look like a collection of shiny flecks. In the case of a whole, preserved shipwreck, the sonar would show what looked like a toy ship, dropped in a sandbox."
Facebook and the shift to privacy
editor’s note: the shift to privacy takes policing FB’s network “off balance sheet”
“Another way to cede responsibility is to encourage users to try the company’s new encrypted messaging services, which are designed so not even Facebook can see what they’re saying to one another. “I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” Zuckerberg wrote in his March 6 blog post. Some read it as victory for Facebook’s critics after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but even Zuckerberg acknowledges a trade-off: The shift could make it easier for terrorists, drug pushers, and propagandists to run wild."
Adventures in the musky underworld
“A sheriff’s deputy, Tony Dosen, met Tripp on the street outside the casino. Body cam footage shows Tripp shaking and crying as he walked up to the police. He said he didn’t have a gun. Then he sat down on a park bench and started telling the police what had been going on since he’d clumsily attempted to blow the whistle on one of the world’s richest and most famous men.”
“Taleb gives other examples, for instance: avoiding doctors, having different alternatives on vacation or for dinner, the ability to switch jobs, a rent-controlled apartment, or being married to an accountant but an occasional fling with a rock star. To the extent these options are desirable, they are not underpriced, and certainly not free. People realize this, which is why they are rarely mentioned outside the book. The bottom line is that things with convexity are too costly in general because people love lottery tickets.”