IQ versus Earnings

You Don’t Have to Be Smart to Get Rich
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-02/do-you-have-to-be-smart-to-get-rich-not-necessarily
The key to career success is not necessarily intelligence, but the ability to synthesize your skills into a coherent whole.
 
Smart or Attractive – Which is Better?
https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2021/06/is-it-better-to-be-smart-or-attractive.html 

Pandemic Murder Wave Has Crested

Pandemic Murder Wave Has Crested. Here’s the Postmortem.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/pandemic-murder-wave-has-crested-heres-the-postmortem/2023/03/03/f4a84e1c-b9b8-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html 

China's New Economic Team

What Wall Street Gets Wrong About Xi Jinping’s New Money Men
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-03/xi-s-new-money-men-worry-investors-but-could-push-chinese-economic-reform
China’s new lineup of top economic policy makers is about to take the stage. The view that they offer nothing more than a lurch to the left is too simplistic. 

Waiting for the Recession

Why the Recession Is Always Six Months Away
https://www.wsj.com/articles/godot-recession-federal-reserve-powell-d50ba71f

The Reason the Recession Hasn’t Happened Yet
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/us-economy-recession-interest-rates-inflation/673238/
 
Long-Robust U.S. Labor Market Shows Signs of Cooling
https://www.wsj.com/articles/long-robust-u-s-labor-market-shows-signs-of-cooling-d1d11075 

Car Debt Is Piling Up as More Americans Owe Thousands More Than Vehicles Are Worth
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-01/car-debt-is-piling-up-as-more-americans-owe-thousands-more-than-vehicles-worth

Idled Ships, Empty Containers. Ocean Shipping Faces Its Biggest Slump in Years.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/idled-ships-empty-containers-ocean-shipping-faces-its-biggest-slump-in-years-6f8dfcc4
Box-ship carriers cancel up to a third of ship capacity across the Pacific as demand from American and European consumers evaporates.

Why the US-India Relationship is a Complicated One

Michael Schuman offers an excellent analysis of US-India ties:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/03/india-relations-us-china-modi/673237/
Adding to India’s worries are China’s close ties to Pakistan. India’s nemesis next door is among the largest participants in Beijing’s international infrastructure-building bonanza, the Belt and Road Initiative. One of its premier projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, controversially passes through a section of Kashmir controlled by Islamabad.
As a consequence, Beijing’s relations with New Delhi have deteriorated—arguably, as badly as its relations with Washington have. The U.S. government has talked about banning the Chinese social-media platform TikTok; the Indians actually did it, in 2020. Fearing that the Belt and Road Initiative is a tool for expanding Chinese influence, India has also rebuffed Beijing’s efforts to lure it into the program.
The more threatening Beijing has become, the warmer India and the U.S. have grown toward each other. 

India's Growth Prospects and Investment Opportunities

Companies waiting for India to complete reforms will miss out
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Companies-waiting-for-India-to-complete-reforms-will-miss-out
Bold multinationals are seizing best opportunities with official support 

Anjani Trivedi notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/modi-has-holes-to-fill-before-the-world-rushes-in/2023/03/02/a5c112aa-b92e-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html
To avoid becoming just an assembly line, India needs to spread the love by pushing supply chains further out. Geographical clusters focused on sectors much like China’s, deeper into the hinterland, would be one place to start. Manesar — a now not-so-remote area outside Gurgaon became an industrial hub and residential area because carmaker Maruti Suzuki Ltd. set up a plant there. It boasts excellent sushi and Japanese restaurants, too. Drawing in companies that make vital yet smaller components, not just the big headline goods, would also help.
There’s a practical lesson for the executives rushing to India: Companies need to choose locations where other firms are already present, not states where the incentives look the best, or crowded and saturated urban centers. And, tread with care because there’s opportunity, just not where you’d hope.

As India Shakes Off Shackles, It Emerges as Global Economic Power
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-india-shakes-off-its-shackles-it-emerges-as-a-global-economic-power-431811c0
New infrastructure, regulatory reforms and digitization buttress its strength 

India's rise is beyond doubt
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/India-s-rise-is-beyond-doubt
The shift in India's cities is stark. Infrastructure now represents 23% of total spending at the state government level, the highest in a decade.
Central government spending on infrastructure is at an all-time high of 19%. Last week's new national budget doubled down on the capital investment agenda by including a one-third increase in planned spending, bringing the allocation up to 4% of GDP.
The new budget is marked by an improvement in the overall quality of spending. The record capital investment allocation will have a high multiplier effect on growth and bolster private investment.

Don’t Bet Against India
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/dont-bet-against-india
New Delhi’s Brewing Economic Comeback

India's Digital Payments Revolution

Where Digital Payments, even for a 10-Cent Chai, Are Colossal in Scale:
India’s homegrown instant payment system has remade commerce and pulled millions into the formal economy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/business/india-digital-payments-upi.html
The scan-and-pay system is one pillar of what the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has championed as “digital public infrastructure,” with a foundation laid by the government. It has made daily life more convenient, expanded banking services like credit and savings to millions more Indians, and extended the reach of government programs and tax collection.
With this network, India has shown on a previously unseen scale how rapid technological innovation can have a leapfrog effect for developing nations, spurring economic growth even as physical infrastructure lags. It is a public-private model that India wants to export as it fashions itself as an incubator of ideas that can lift up the world’s poorer nations.

In Payments, Like Geopolitics, India Seeks a Third Way
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-payments-like-geopolitics-india-seeks-a-third-way/2023/03/01/50363824-b87f-11ed-b0df-8ca14de679ad_story.html
The next step is to export this system more widely. India’s tech czars look forward to a time when the UPI and other such Indian platforms link up with counterparts in the emerging world, to create a bottom-up network for small cross-border payments. The hope is to connect small- and medium-sized enterprises in these countries to their customers and suppliers, and to cut out traditional banks’ role in financing these transactions. Since India is the biggest destination for remittances, other payments networks have a clear incentive to partner with the UPI.

These Two Global Money Transfer Ideas Deserve a Shot

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/17/global-money-transfers-it-s-nexus-versus-icebreaker/072dfc6a-dd65-11ed-a78e-9a7c2418b00c_story.html

 
Singapore links digital payments with India after Thailand
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Finance/Singapore-links-digital-payments-with-India-after-Thailand
 
How India's Central Bank Helped Spur a Digital Payments Boom
https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/10/26/cf-how-indias-central-bank-helped-spur-a-digital-payments-boom
 
The central bank has played a key role in the country’s digital payment boom
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/Fandd/Article/2022/September/digital-journey-india.ashx
India’s digital payment volume has climbed at an average annual rate of about 50 percent over the past five years. That itself is one of the world’s fastest growth rates, but its expansion has been even more rapid—about 160 percent annually—in India’s unique, real-time, mobile-enabled system, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Transactions more than doubled, to 5.86 billion, in June from a year earlier as the number of participating banks jumped 44 percent, to 330. Values nearly doubled in the same period.