ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

 When you read the newspapers, economists are constantly panicking about the US national debt, which has crossed a staggering $40 trillion and stands at 126% of its GDP (meaning the country owes 26% more than the value of everything it produces in a year).Yet, Japan has a massive gross debt-to-GDP ratio sitting at over 200% to 264%—almost double the US load! And they have sustained this for 30 years without a financial collapse. How does Japan manage it?  Gross debt vs net debt: Think of a person who owes $200,000 on a house, but has $150,000 sitting in the bank. His gross debt is large, but his  net debt is very small. Japan has a huge bank account: The Japanese government owns trillions in financial assets, like foreign stocks and bonds. When you subtract what they own from what they owe, Japan's net debt drops to a very safe 77% to 78%. The US has no safety cushion: The US government spends everything it gets and doesn't hold large financial asset reserves. Its gross d...

  The Heihe–Tengchong Line (hereafter referred to as “HT Line”) is an imaginary diagonal line cutting across China that reveals one of the most dramatic geographic and demographic splits in human history. Devised by Chinese geo-demographer Hu Huanyong in 1935, the line connects the city of Heihe in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang to the city of Tengchong in the southwestern province of Yunnan. The line divides the land area and population of China into two incredibly stark, unequal halves: • East of the Line (The Dense Half): Occupies only about 36% of China's land area, yet holds roughly 94% of the total population. This area is characterized by fertile plains, major river deltas, abundant rainfall, and almost all of China’s mega-cities (like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen). • West of the Line (The Sparse Half): Occupies roughly 64% of China's land area including massive Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, yet home to only about 6% of the population. This region is...

The leveraged basis trade of bonds of the G7 nations: US Treasuries, German Bunds, Japanese JGBs, British Gilts, French OATs.    What happens to you when the music stops and the party ends?  A simple explanation of the leveraged basis trade of  G7 debt  (US Treasuries, German Bunds, Japanese JGBs, British Gilts, French OATs.  And its impact on the 80% of the K-shaped economy that is you and me.    Introduction The financial markets and global economies are still not yet in crisis mode. Despite grossly overvalued US stocks, bond yields not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, US national debt at $40 trillion, oil prices over $100, inflation, the war in Iran, corporate bankruptcies, job losses, AI infrastructure build-up debt and so on. But this week, a new issue cropped up that could trigger a financial Apocalypse.  The hedge fund money machine hiding inside the bond market Imagine a casino game where the house edge is tiny — say, half a perc...

  What would it take for a leaf-eating, house-cat-sized animal on a quiet island to turn into a monkey hunter? I built a small world to find out, and you can watch the answer unfold in your browser. Entikayrus (The creature's name is a play on my intitals: NTKrus) is invented, but the factors in the process that transforms it are real: variation, inheritance and natural selection, climbing, leaping, diet,   Nobody tells it to climb, grow fangs or change its diet. It happens because some animals eat, escape and breed better than others. The idea Evolution by natural selection takes thousands of generations, but this computer simulation compresses 6000 generations into a few minutes. Basically, animals which have slightly different physical attributes that enable them to find more food, or avoid being eaten, will be more successful in breeding and passing on their genes. The young inherit their parents' differences. Repeat for a few thousand generations , and we will have...

  If you have ever wondered why the Singapore Dollar and the Swiss Franc are the two strongest currencies in the world- take a look at this chart I compiled of a country's Central Bank Gold Reserves in ounces divided by the population. A few qualifying notes here: 1. Vietnam's numbers are not accurate because it had stopped providing them to the World Gold Council since 2015. 2. Yes, Canada has zero Gold. It sold all in 2015 I think. Which they must be regretting now. 3. Actually China has the largest Gold Reserves. The table below is in tonnes. Officially China's gold reserves are 2,300 tonnes. However Goldman Sachs and the World Gold Council estimate that China has at least 50,000 tonnes of gold. The PBOC and many of China's SOEs have been buying gold every month for the last 22 months whatever the price is, and are stilll buying. 4. The USA supposedly has 8100 tonnes in Fort Knox, but there has not been a proper audit since 1953. Even if all the gold is there, ther...

   Entikayrus Ancestor Today, I start Project Entikayrus- a simulation of evolution by natural selection. Design and build done with AI (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5). I am creating a cat-like creature called Entikayrus (name derived from NTK, the initials of my name).    This project builds a full-colour, interactive animation showing how natural selection turns Entikayrus, a plant-eating cat-sized island creature, into an arboreal monkey hunter, while its monkey prey coevolves in response. It will take me 8 sessions to complete Project Entikayrus. The story Entikayrus lives on an isolated, forested tropical island. The island has no competitors for its food and no predators that hunt it. A population of small, quick monkeys lives in the lower branches of the trees. The ancestor. Ancestral Entikayrus is about the size of a house cat, roughly 4 kg. It eats leaves, fruit, shoots and fallen seeds, mostly on the ground and in low shrubs. It has grinding teeth, a long ...