Covid-19 lockdowns ignore everything we know about how the virus spreads, cause the poorest the most pain, and serve as a tool for political showmanship at best
Excellent post!! It is almost ridiculous how lockdowns have been universally supported by the Indian population as a definitive measure without really understanding what the motive of the governments were. The first lockdown was a brazen effort to show who's boss and could have also been to prevent any further anti-CAA gatherings. It is heartening to see that humane thoughts exist among people and can point out the inherent hypocrisy of this whole lockdown business. One last thing I would say is that few realize that the "lockdown" of the scale it was done during COVID was something that was invented by China, which was possible due to its authoritarian nature. Never before has something so extreme which criminalized movement and association has happened. If COVID had broken out in a democratic country, especially like the USA, you can bet that no country would have considered a lockdown at all. What are your thoughts on this point?
P.S.: I really enjoy the other articles that you have been writing; thank you!
Pleasantly surprised that you read this, Pushkar. Thank you.
This post is a remnant of the earlier iteration of Boring Money, which I'd called Fragments. I had intended this to be a personal space where I write about *general* stuff deeply. After two years of dormancy I renamed it Boring Money and revived it as a finance-dedicated space.
My opinion on lockdowns have only gotten more firm since then. I'm still horrified about how we did it both on an execution level as well as an ideological level. At this point though I really try not to think about it because it frustrates me a lot.
Yes, glad to hear your reply, Shreedhar. I stumbled upon your blog through the internet rabbit hole haha. Was perusing reddit and browsing previous Adani allegations. I always knew from general news sources that the P/E ratio was super inflated and was aware of his closeness with PM Modi and the LIC & SBI loans. However, I hadn't paid too much attention to it as I hadn't bought any of his stocks and the Hidenburg allegations piqued my interest. When I read the report, I was shocked as to how a lot of their allegations were based off of (mostly) publicly available information, and how SEBI hadn't poked its nose enough, especially given the presence of these Mauritius shell companies, who were specifically used to fund Adani stocks. So I wondered if there were previous Indian news articles and blogs talking about this, and that's how I stumbled upon your post on Adani stock prices rising, and the allegations behind it.
I must say that your articles don't read like a blog at all! They are very professionally researched and written, and honestly are better than 95% of the Indian media articles that I read, let alone on the Adani case. Kudos to smelling the B.S. a few months before Hindenburg's report!
Adani's is a curious case. ~80% of Hidenburg report could be reproduced with just some digging-in online, with 0 primary research whatsoever :) I'm going to have a post on the situation soon, there's a lot happening and a lot being written have had no time to catch some breath to assess the situation.
Thank you for that :) Curious about how you stumbled upon the substack? Marketing is my Achilles heel!
Excellent post!! It is almost ridiculous how lockdowns have been universally supported by the Indian population as a definitive measure without really understanding what the motive of the governments were. The first lockdown was a brazen effort to show who's boss and could have also been to prevent any further anti-CAA gatherings. It is heartening to see that humane thoughts exist among people and can point out the inherent hypocrisy of this whole lockdown business. One last thing I would say is that few realize that the "lockdown" of the scale it was done during COVID was something that was invented by China, which was possible due to its authoritarian nature. Never before has something so extreme which criminalized movement and association has happened. If COVID had broken out in a democratic country, especially like the USA, you can bet that no country would have considered a lockdown at all. What are your thoughts on this point?
P.S.: I really enjoy the other articles that you have been writing; thank you!
Pleasantly surprised that you read this, Pushkar. Thank you.
This post is a remnant of the earlier iteration of Boring Money, which I'd called Fragments. I had intended this to be a personal space where I write about *general* stuff deeply. After two years of dormancy I renamed it Boring Money and revived it as a finance-dedicated space.
My opinion on lockdowns have only gotten more firm since then. I'm still horrified about how we did it both on an execution level as well as an ideological level. At this point though I really try not to think about it because it frustrates me a lot.
Yes, glad to hear your reply, Shreedhar. I stumbled upon your blog through the internet rabbit hole haha. Was perusing reddit and browsing previous Adani allegations. I always knew from general news sources that the P/E ratio was super inflated and was aware of his closeness with PM Modi and the LIC & SBI loans. However, I hadn't paid too much attention to it as I hadn't bought any of his stocks and the Hidenburg allegations piqued my interest. When I read the report, I was shocked as to how a lot of their allegations were based off of (mostly) publicly available information, and how SEBI hadn't poked its nose enough, especially given the presence of these Mauritius shell companies, who were specifically used to fund Adani stocks. So I wondered if there were previous Indian news articles and blogs talking about this, and that's how I stumbled upon your post on Adani stock prices rising, and the allegations behind it.
I must say that your articles don't read like a blog at all! They are very professionally researched and written, and honestly are better than 95% of the Indian media articles that I read, let alone on the Adani case. Kudos to smelling the B.S. a few months before Hindenburg's report!
Adani's is a curious case. ~80% of Hidenburg report could be reproduced with just some digging-in online, with 0 primary research whatsoever :) I'm going to have a post on the situation soon, there's a lot happening and a lot being written have had no time to catch some breath to assess the situation.
Thank you for that :) Curious about how you stumbled upon the substack? Marketing is my Achilles heel!
Sure, here is the reddit link I was browsing, and it led to your blog:
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/y4wtq2/an_explanation_for_how_adani_has_loaded_up_on/