1. Net FDI from India has been negative for several months now.
Cost of pharmaceuticals too are much higher.
The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India in 2025, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly.
4. For those advocating currency depreciation as the response to a sharp increase in oil prices, Sachidanand Shukla has a cautionary note pointing to the importance of stability and credibility of the rupee.
The allure of a depreciating exchange rate lies in its simplicity: It makes ones’ goods cheaper for foreigners. However, this is often a Faustian bargain. For many emerging and developed markets alike, the reality of a currency in freefall is not a boom in exports, but often a harsh blow to purchasing power and investor confidence. Imagine yourself in the shoes of a big global financial investor. How confident will you be in investing a billion dollars if you lose 9-10 per cent in a year due to depreciation?
On a related note, as the RBI deploys an expansive toolkit to stabilise the rupee, Rajeswari Sengupta writes that RBI has engaged strongly in the forex markets, selling over $30 bn in the spot markets in March. Its other actions were intriguing.
It imposed regulatory restrictions —barring banks from taking positions in the offshore non-deliverable forward (NDF) market and capping their daily onshore FX exposure to $100 million each... The RBI did not merely restrict new positions; it required banks to unwind existing ones, reportedly at a cost of ₹4,000–5,000 crore. In effect, banks were penalised for actions that were fully legitimate at the time. Such retrospective costs risk undermining confidence and making banks more cautious in FX markets. Lower participation could reduce liquidity. And when liquidity dries up, currencies tend to become more volatile, not less.
5. The human cost of Israel's bombings of Lebanon.
On the day the cease-fire came into shaky effect — and most civilians across the region began to breathe a sigh of relief — Israel proceeded to launch one of the deadliest strikes on Lebanon ever, including in the heart of densely populated Beirut, without any warning. The operation, which the Israel Defense Forces sayattacked Hezbollah command centers, hit 100 targets in 10 minutes, killed over 350 people and wounded well over 1,000, many of them civilians... over the past six weeks, Israeli strikes in Lebanon continue, and have forced more than a million people from their homes and have left over 2,000 people dead and multiple villages in ruins.
6. The rise of China's export control measures.
China announced restrictions on exports 30 times between 2021 and 2025, the report by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China found, up from just 11 in the previous five years. Since 2020, Beijing had turned to “geoeconomic” controls — measures aimed at achieving geopolitical goals, it said. These include 10 that made use of global chokepoints in supply chains, such as China’s rare-earths exports, and 10 others aimed at coercing other countries using economic measures.
China has also announced sweeping new regulations to punish foreign companies that are trying to decouple their supply chains from China by increasing reliance on non-Chinese suppliers. These measures are part of the government's efforts to counter rising protectionism and decoupling from China.
The 18-point regulations, described in state media as an effort to “prevent security risks in industrial and supply chains,” supplement the already formidable authority afforded to Chinese regulators to investigate multinational corporations for moving supply chains out of China. Under the new rules, regulators can question employees and examine corporate records during investigations. The regulations also allow authorities to bar companies and individuals from leaving China if they are suspected of moving supply chains elsewhere under foreign pressure... The State Council, China’s cabinet, justified the measures as necessary to protect the country’s economic stability and national security — a rationale it has previously used to expand its ability to pressure companies. China has also adopted sweeping state secrets laws to prevent information from leaving the country.
During the pandemic, Beijing vowed to invest $400 billion in the country in the coming decades in exchange for a steady supply of oil. In 2024, it purchased 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, according to the International Energy Agency. China also accounted for roughly a quarter of Iran’s non-oil exports from 2019 to 2024, according to data compiled by Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, purchasing billions of dollars of Iranian chemicals and metals.
Payments are made in renminbi, China’s currency, avoiding the use of dollars and the need to involve American banks, which are often the primary entities used to help enforce sanctions violations. China, in return, appears to provide nearly 30 percent of the commodities that Iran imports, selling everything from furniture to sunflower seeds. There is another crucial layer of trade between the nations not recorded in official statistics. Both countries have engaged in a complicated barter system that involves secret financing channels. Iran ships oil to China and in return, Chinese state-backed construction companies have built airports and other infrastructure.
8. The new fragile European countries - Britain, Italy, and France (or Bifs).
Europeans still trust the EU over their national political systems, and the margin is wider than it has been since the noughties. (More on this later.) Support for the euro, which was as low as 51 per cent in 2013, has grown to a record high of 74 per cent in the EU, and 82 per cent in the Eurozone. To repeat, that is a near-consensus in favour of the single currency at a time of economic malaise in much of the continent. As for the country-by-country findings, 21 per cent of Austrians think membership is a bad thing. That makes them the most Euro-sceptical people in the union.
10. India reached peak college education premium in 2011?
11. Jason Bordoff makes the important point that, unlike earlier, the risk of oil shocks is a less restraining factor on US supplies.
In 2012, the US was far less equipped to absorb even a small disruption. US crude production averaged just 5mn barrels a day in 2009; last year it approached 14mn. Two decades ago, the US imported about 60 per cent of its oil consumption. Today it is a net exporter and the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
12. The data centre construction boom in the US is being held back by construction and other delays, with almost 40% of those due this year at risk of falling behind schedule.
13. Finally, excellent description of the regressive nature of income taxation especially for the richest Americans.
In 2021, ProPublica published an investigation built on a bunch of leaked tax documents revealing what the richest Americans really pay — or don’t. Warren Buffett had a true tax rate of 0.1 percent; Jeff Bezos had 0.98 percent; Michael Bloomberg had 1.3 percent... Let’s focus on Jeff Bezos because he’s much more of a classic case. Jeff Bezos started his own business. He owns a dominant amount of the stock. And over the course of the years, he has taken a salary that is no higher than $82,000. It’s been more than 20 years now, and his salary is always capped at $82,000.You might say: Well, why would it be? He started the company — he’s the man. Why isn’t he taking a huge salary to reflect all that he put into the company? The reason is: Salaries are for suckers. When people take a salary, they’re subject to high income taxes and payroll taxes, and Jeff Bezos and a lot of our other multibillionaires have no interest in paying those taxes.So instead, they take their benefits through the growing value of their stock — and their stock has grown enormously. And that massive growth of stock happens entirely tax free — with no time frame under our current system in which that stock will ever be subject to tax. That is because we only impose a tax if the stock is sold, and Bezos never has to sell the stock because he can simply borrow against the stock and use that money to support his lifestyle and to pay any interest that’s due on the loan... you’re just taking out one loan after another, sometimes paying one loan back with another, and you’re just doing this again and again.
The interview also makes a reference to Andrew Mellon's views on capital gains (or investment returns) taxation.
The fairness of taxing more lightly incomes from wages, salaries and professional services than the incomes from business or from investments is beyond question. In the first case, the income is uncertain and limited in duration; sickness or death destroys it, and old age diminishes it. In the other, the source of income continues; the income may be disposed of during a man’s life, and it descends to his heirs.
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