Buy a US 10Y in 2020 at 0.6%, and by 2023 the price has dropped 30% - that's a paper loss. Buffett's Berkshire sits on $397B in cash, 90% in T-bills - more than the Fed holds. The curve stayed inverted for 27 months (2022-2024), the longest in history. It uninverted in early 2025 - a signal that recession is coming, not that it's over.
4 · v · 2026
Grab's loan book grew 120% YoY to $1.18B in Q4/2025. Monee (Shopee) contributed 33% of Sea Limited's group adjusted EBITDA in Q4/2025 - exactly where GE Capital stood in 2005 before it collapsed in 2008. Rakuten Card processed ¥26.5T in transactions. This isn't float, isn't tax avoidance - it's corporate financialization in 2020s Asia, the same pattern Krippner described from the 1980s, moving four times faster.
4 · v · 2026
Same Visa logo, but credit and debit don't carry the same rights: the US splits Reg Z (credit, $50 cap) from Reg E (debit, $0/$50/$500/unlimited tiers). Singapore has no dedicated statute - only FIDReC. Vietnam has Circular 18/2024 from the SBV, but OTP-authenticated transactions remain a gray zone.
2 · v · 2026
The US spent $13.3 billion in 1948 and rewrote the world. The Soviet Union did the opposite and drove Eastern Europe into a dead end. China in 2025 is caught between the two models - Vietnam has stood on both sides before.
2 · v · 2026
FIRE is 22% of US GDP, manufacturing is down to 10%. 7 of the top 10 S&P companies are tech. America still innovates - but China is catching up in every manufacturing segment. The same disease is happening to you at personal scale, you just haven't noticed yet.
2 · v · 2026
Q1 2026: GOOGL +81%, AMZN +77%, META +61% net income - but most of it is paper markup on Anthropic and a one-time tax benefit. Operating income only rose 20–30% - that's the real speed. Read 'Other Income' before you read the headline.
30 · iv · 2026
Peter Lynch grew the Magellan Fund from $18 million to $14 billion, averaging 29.2%/year over 13 years. His secret: his wife discovered Hanes, and he discovered Taco Bell over lunch. The tenbagger concept and the art of turning everyday observations into 10x stocks.
29 · iv · 2026
Singapore is the only country that gave up interest rates and uses the exchange rate as its monetary tool. The secretive BBC mechanism plus $1.5 trillion in reserves kept SGD's 2022 loss to just 7% - while JPY lost 30% and EUR broke parity.
29 · iv · 2026
Warren Buffett stockpiled $373 billion in cash before every crisis - not out of fear, but because he understands Margin of Safety. An investment philosophy so simple that most people overlook it.
28 · iv · 2026
The petrodollar loop only ran for 8 years before it broke. Saudi Arabia doesn't even crack the top 10 U.S. creditors anymore. The dollar's crown has quietly moved to Asia - where factories generate dollar demand many times larger than oil ever did.
28 · iv · 2026
Folio IV of VIII
