Helen Thompson and Peter Thal Larsen on The Big View podcast
🔊New episode of The Big View🎧: Ever since the Iran conflict kicked off, I've been wondering what Helen Thompson thought about it. A Cambridge professor and authority on the geopolitics of energy, Helen took a break from book-writing to share her views. Tune in!
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
“The iPhone accounted for half the company’s revenue in the quarter before Tim Cook became CEO in 2011, and some 60% in the most recent quarter.”
www.reuters.com/commentary/b... by @robcyran.bsky.social
MARISKS on Monday issued an alert warning shipowners that unknown actors, claiming to represent Iranian authorities, had sent some shipping companies a message demanding transit fees in cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin or Tether, for "clearance".
‘Tis truly a golden era for crypto scammers www.reuters.com/world/middle...
The Week in Breakingviews: Running on fumes - www.reuters.com/commentary/b... - @petertl.bsky.social
Key point to surviving the dystopian future: you don't have to be faster than the robot, you just have to be faster than the other guy.
Tbf I think YouTube probably already has you covered
To serve this new demand, it is crucial to understand the user: their accumulated context and their intent. Context is what a person already knows, the situation they are in, the history of what they have asked before. Intent is what they are asking and trying to achieve right now. Together, these form the demand signal, and this might be the defining asset of the AI-mediated information ecosystem. Not clicks. Not time spent. Those attention-economy currencies lose their worth in this paradigm.
Very interesting on what AI will do (is doing?) to audiences for information, by @shuwei.bsky.social. www.economist.com/by-invitatio...
Hong Kong Harbour with an approaching rainstorm
And if you think I'm overdoing the weather metaphor it was sunny all week and then on Friday this arrived
Hong Kong is an unreliable place to take the global economic temperature. Just as the Asian financial hub’s climate can swing from blazing sunshine to tropical thunderstorms in a few hours, its inhabitants are prone to exaggerated bouts of optimism and pessimism. Hong Kong’s weather this week was mostly glorious, and the city’s capital markets are humming. Yet meetings with bankers, business leaders and bureaucrats left a gloomier impression.
The impending energy crunch dominated conversations in hotels and offices overlooking Hong Kong’s famous harbour. Severe shortages of oil, gas, and related products are approaching Asian economies like a freight train. Elevated shipping rates and insurance costs have pushed prices much higher than global benchmarks suggest. Georges Elhedery, HSBC’s chief executive, told delegates attending the bank’s Global Investment Summit that the all-in cost of getting oil to Sri Lanka reached $286 a barrel – almost three times the going rate for Brent crude. The price of jet fuel in northwestern Europe has doubled since late February. Higher energy costs and a shortage of fertilizer will feed through into food: consumer goods groups are considering emergency price hikes. Central bankers think higher inflation is inevitable. Although Iran’s announcement on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz had reopened drove down oil and gas futures, prices look set to remain elevated. The energy squeeze is also upending public finances. In countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, governments are spending heavily to subsidise petrol and diesel to shield citizens from the worst of the pain. This cannot last: “Consumers need to learn there is a crisis,” one senior Asian official told me. Fiscal pressure may prompt policymakers to tap companies as a source of funds. The CEO of one Asian conglomerate is bracing for windfall taxes and other charges. Several Indian states this week hiked minimum wages.
Optimism about artificial intelligence partly offset the economic malaise. Bank executives are increasingly convinced that code-writing chatbots can quickly take over some tasks performed by workers, allowing financial institutions to shrink headcount or redeploy staff. AI is leeching into finance in other ways, too. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of stablecoin operator Circle, sketched out a future where countless autonomous agents authorise and process payments without human input. Joseph Lubin, the CEO of Consensys, told me that the convergence of AI and finance is the latest front in the ongoing battle between controlled systems and the decentralised networks envisaged by cryptocurrency pioneers. Trust, or the lack of it, was a recurring theme. Almost everyone I spoke to in Hong Kong had lost any confidence they might have had in the Trump administration’s ability to steer the global economy. One senior banker mused that, though a U.S. ban on oil exports would be a terrible idea, Donald Trump might still impose one. And while the crisis caused by the Iran conflict has underscored China’s relative economic resilience and enhanced its geopolitical clout, the People’s Republic is showing few signs of wanting to help. Even if the Iran war is ending, the scars from the past seven weeks will endure.
Spent the past week in Hong Kong, talking to executives, financiers and policymakers. Wrote up my impressions for the Week in @breakingviews.reuters.com newsletter, which just landed in subscribers' inboxes. To get the whole thing every weekend sign up here: www.reuters.com/newsletters/...
Iran's navy tells ships on radio that Strait of Hormuz is shut again, shipping sources say Reuters News 30 minutes ago
Schrodinger’s strait
Amazing
Version 2.0 will specify “open for which countries” and then we’ll work on integrating crypto payments
Need an app on my phone that tells me the weather and if the Strait of Hormuz is open today
My brother went to see “Touching the Void” at the cinema but got a bit distracted and ended up with a ticket for “Cold Mountain”
Exclusive: US Fed has told big banks not to push back aggressively on new capital rules reut.rs/3QhHGp1
Saw a snap saying the ships would go through the Iran-approved route
“Right lads, who wants to be first to sail through?”
Interesting. Best guess is he was talking about jet fuel or something similar. The company should ask the local HSBC rep!
Peter Thal Larsen and Edward Fishman on an episode of The Big View
🔊New episode of THE BIG VIEW🎧: Everything you want to know about geopolitical chokepoints with Edward Fishman, who literally wrote the book on the topic. We talked Hormuz, rare earths, tariffs, and the limits of sanctions. Listen here podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... or search for "The Big View".
I guess Bluesky is an official news source now
www.ft.com/content/cd3e... thanks to the ever-perceptive and insightful @robinwigglesworth.ft.com
No he didn’t elaborate. And the moderator did not, er, follow up…
🎧 By strangling the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has retaliated against the U.S. and eased some financial sanctions.
Edward Fishman, author of “Chokepoints”, joined @petertl.bsky.social to discuss how American economic weapons have been turned against it.
Full episode here 👉 reut.rs/4t8Q2xw
HSBC Global Investment Summit in HK this morning
🔊 By strangling the Strait of Hormuz, Iran retaliated against the US. In this episode of The Big View Edward Fishman, senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Peter Thal Larsen how American economic weapons have been turned against it reut.rs/4cnoSMp
HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery says highest oil price he’s seen in this crisis is $286 for a barrel that reached Sri Lanka
THE GREAT READ Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? As half of an unfathomably powerful couple, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves. 16 MIN READ
Years later, as they picked through the rubble of a once-great civilisation, historians would wonder why so few heeded the flashing warnings of impending self-destruction.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/b...
The Week in Breakingviews: Too big to fail again www.reuters.com/commentary/b... @petertl.bsky.social
Confirmed: there was no upside.
