Spotlight on: The EU as a revived medieval empire
When Boris Johnson cheekily suggested this week that Emmanuel Macron’s European Political Community proposal would allow for the creation of a modern Roman Empire he missed one crucial thing. We have already rebuilt a Roman Empire in Europe – it’s just not the Roman Empire you’re thinking of. It is instead the Holy Roman Empire […]
Spotlight on how crypto genius failed
Decentralised finance, a.k.a DeFi, has been hurting The Blind Spot’s head ever since we first heard about pancake swaps earlier this year. Try as we might we couldn’t wrap our heads around it. What the hell was it? What was its point? How did it work? Why did everyone seem to know what was going […]
Spotlight on mass-market satellite access
When a snapshot of a mirrored monolith was posted by state biologists conducting a survey on local bighorn sheep in November 2020, it ignited what would soon become one of the most intensive open-source pursuits for topological intelligence the world has ever seen. Within hours, thousands of amateur sleuths were dissecting the image (which was […]
Why it’s time to start worrying about petchems
A spotlight on strange petchem effects That Russian sanctions on the back of the Ukraine war are disrupting commodity markets is old news. We all know energy and commodity prices are the key drivers of 40-year busting inflation prints and other supply-side disruptions. What is still to be appropriately acknowledged, however, is the degree to […]
Spotlight on the emergence of noble gas spot markets
The second of our deep-dives into the noble gas market, this time focusing on market structure issues and the potential for the emergence of a viable spot market.
A market that fell under the spell of the moon
Why Luna is a lesson for all of finance.
The paradox of Russian oil sanctions
Russia, Dictatorship, and Oil Prices – Is the West Ignoring the Path to Victory? A guest submission for the Blind Spot by the “Data Artist”. Are the Ukrainians on the verge of glorious victory over tyranny or entering a war of attrition that could last for many years? It is really hard to know what […]
Spotlight on a very noble gas crisis
“The scriptwriters of Game of Thrones could not have made this up.” When Stefano Marani, CEO of South Africa-based Renergen, began exploring for gas in the country’s Witwatersrand basin he never expected he would find gold. But then one day in early 2021, he struck what some might say was the next best thing: a […]
How about a Vitruvian capitalist reset?
Editor’s note: In this third post of a multipart series, Tim Ferguson, founder of the Anacyclosis Institute, outlines a new approach to political economy named rationism, which I like to describe as “Vitruvian Capitalism”. Solving precarity without aggravating dependency The first post in our Anacyclosis series concluded that: The diffusion and reconcentration of wealth dictates […]
The end of dollar neutrality and what it means for funding markets
Why the current crisis represents the end of the neutral dollar era.