19 Comments
Mar 16, 2023Liked by kyla scanlon

I feel like I stumbled upon Klaatu (Michael Reenie's character in the 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still) in discovering Kyla. I have yet to meet Gort, but I am sure he would be just as protective of this wondrous spirit and intellect called Kyla. What a beautiful description of our complex nature and inabilities in so many ways. I had a teacher this sensitive, worldly and wise in highschool from Quito, Ecuador. A consummate gentleman and intellect. This may be the best essay I have yet to read from anyone Ms Kyla. Staggering insight and sensitivity. My language is failing me; I think I will continue this on a cave wall with pastels and berry sap!

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Mar 18, 2023Liked by kyla scanlon

Great post! Has left me thinking and probably I would come back to it again

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Mar 16, 2023Liked by kyla scanlon

You have such a great delivery it was painful having the robot voice reading your work. Have you ever considered https://beta.elevenlabs.io I have no affiliation just heard about them from a podcast. Idk if it’s possible just a fan of your content.

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Great article and you are totally right.

Even the BBC in the UK has fallen into the trap of doomerism.

Following the news about the drone being clipped by the Russian plane they posted an article about how royal airforce jets had been scrambled to intercept a Russian bomber over the baltics.

That, on the back of the drone incident builds a feeling of escalation and despair.

But wait. Right at the bottom of the BBC article it states that this is a common occurrence. Happens most weeks. Routine. Nothing to see here.

Doomerism.

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Mar 17, 2023Liked by kyla scanlon

Reading something as good as this makes me wonder if I can ever write this well (spoiler - I can’t). Great piece. Eager to share.

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Mar 30, 2023Liked by kyla scanlon

Another lovely, lovely, article, Kyla! Bookmarked for a lot more future readings as I have with your other articles.

My favourite was this:

"Like, there isn’t a fundamental capital-T-Truth for a lot of the stuff that happened. There is a lot of nuance. For Silicon Valley Bank, it was the VCs, it was the lack of hedging, it was the Federal Reserve, it was their customer base, etc etc etc. To try and pull on one of the threads requires looking at the entire sweater of circumstance."

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You gotta be kidding me! A philosophy of language article and no Wittgenstein quote?!

Joking aside, this was really well done and definitely got my gears turning. I appreciate the effort you put into this - thank you.

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The Romanian press started reproducing the GOP argument that “woke” politics led to the collapse of SVB which contributes nothing beneficial to the entire debate. Imagine looking at the exec board, figuring out they want more people of color there, and concluding: yup, that is what prevented them from focusing. A lazy way instead of looking at the lobby that SVB pushed during the past years of stripping the government of tighter controls over itself.

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A great deal has been said and been written about the "moral hazard" introduced to our society from the government"bailouts" of 2007-2209 which effectively rescued the system and rescued the very rich and powerful who had brought about the crash, while the middle class and the poor, who were innocent, had to pay the costs.

There has been some hope from some of us that enough had been said and enough people understood the dangers, that this mistake would not be repeated. The biggest takeawy from the events of last week is that no, they are going to continue to make this mistake until the system collapses.

One little item which is not being said very much about SVB is that the lions share of the unsecured deposits and their owners were mixed up in liberal causes such as bitcoin and disruptive company startups, not to mention large donations to BLM and t LGBTQ causes and of course the Democratic Party.

Pardon me for having a strong suspicion that if the bank had been primarily doing financing for fossil fuel exploration and development companies then there might have been a very different outcome.

During the collapse last week, the spot price for WTI crude oil fell precipitously from over $80/barrel down to $66/barrel. Because this is such an important part of the economy, the effects are going to be very dramatic indeed, and yet hardly anything has been said about it in the financial media. It was difficult for me as a trader to understand even the reasons for the crash, since US production is apparently in a slight decline while demand is slightly increasing.

These are just observations from my desk.

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Thanks Vivian and have a nice weekend.

RBT

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For those Interested, you should read Ludwig Wittgenstein, the preeminent philosopher of language.

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Thanks Hannah. Have a wonderful weekend!

RBT

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