Arvind's Newsletter

This is the fifth newsletter on the new Beehiiv platform. Hopefully delivery issues are getting streamlined now. We have 2 more issues to go after this one till the end of 2022.

1. Though the World's biggest wealth gainer in 2022 was Gautam Adani , who added $40 bn to his wealth during the year and has become the third richest person, we have decided to spotlight Mukesh Ambani, who has completed 20 years at the helm of Reliance Industries.Mukesh, who took over the reins of Reliance after the sudden demise of his father Dhirubhai, has lead the company in a period which saw a 17-fold jump in revenues, 20-times surge in profit and market capitalisation grow at CAGR of 20.6% p.a.

2. The Economist Tyler Cowen, in his latest column in Bloomberg, which he has excerpted in his blog (Marginal Revolution), quotes from a recent study by 2 economists, David Blanchflower of Dartmouth and Alex Bryson of University College London, who have come up with a new and more intuitive (Tyler's opinion) way to measure well-being of countries. This study considers both positive and negative affect, and gives separate ratings for the two. In other words, it recognises there is more than one dimension to well-being. Measured only by positive affect, the Bhutanese are No. 9 in the world, an impressive showing. But for negative affect they rank No. 149 — in other words, they experience a great deal of negative emotion, perhaps due to the hardships in their lives. Considering both positive and negative affect, they come in at No. 99. The new ranking does not improve India's ranking which is overall No 172, in the bottom 20% of all countries ranked. China is at No 30, Sri Lanka at No 100 and Bangladesh at 154. (No satisfaction at being above Pakistan at No 195). I am not necessarily a fan of all these rankings but they do tell a story.

3.A private company began a controversial “geo-engineering” trial, releasing reflective particles into the atmosphere to reduce global warming. The company Make Sunsets launched weather balloons full of sulfur particles and helium into the stratosphere from Mexico, MIT Technology Review reported. It could be cheap and effective: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that $10 billion in geo-engineering could prevent 1.5 C of warming. But critics warn its impacts would be unpredictable. Still, geo-engineering is technically straightforward, meaning that most countries, and many large companies, could do it unilaterally. So unless everyone agrees it’s a bad idea, others like Make Sunsets will probably try it.

4. Apple shares hit their lowest point since June 2021 and Tesla's stock has dropped 73% from a record high in November 2021. Both companies have struggled to keep production going in China due to Covid restrictions and weeks of lockdowns. Now they are facing a staffing crunch as China battles a Covid wave after lifting years of restrictions. What was Tesla’s bad news this time? A plan to temporarily halt production at its China factory. News of reduced output in Shanghai came on the heels of last week’s report that Tesla was offering US consumers a $7,500 discount to take delivery of its two highest-volume models before year-end. But the electric vehicle maker’s problems seem to run deeper than signs of slowing demand. As 2022 ends, Tesla has seen 69% of its value vanish amid Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and related online antics—and the investor jitters that resulted. Read on.

5. Every year, WIRED assembles a list of the most dangerous people on the internet. For the first time since 2015, Donald Trump doesn't top this list. But there's no shortage of new sources of instability and disruption online. Here are the picks for 2022.