WSJ: “It isn’t just credit cards that smartphones have gobbled up like Pac-Man dots. Loyalty cards? Walgreens, Rite Aid and plenty of chains have digital cards you can load into Android or iPhone wallet apps. Membership cards? I bet your gym has transitioned from a key fob to a phone tap. Insurance cards? Aetna, Cigna and others now offer digital, printable cards. Transit cards? You can now tap and pay at all New York City subway stations and buses. San Francisco’s BART just added more mobile options, too. Vaccine cards? You’ve got options. But the real story is in the progress of the holdouts: the driver’s licenses, work IDs and other keys that have struggled to make the leap to the screen. Those cards, the remaining ones in the small stick-on wallet on the back of my phone, are getting ready for their digital debut, too.”
Andy Mukherjee: ” Consider the 36 trillion rupees ($500 billion) of output in the June quarter of 2019. Index it to 100. Had that number continued to increase at the near-7% rate seen during the April-June period of the previous eight years, it would have crossed 114 by now. Instead, India is left with 32 trillion rupees of real production, which corresponds to roughly 91 on the index. That’s a fifth of potential GDP lost in the first quarter of the fiscal year. Assuming that the country gets lucky and avoids a deadly third wave, some of the loss might get made up in the remaining nine months. For that, though, India needs robust pent-up demand. Where will it come from?”
Sam Barcroft: “If we accept that to have a rich life we must sometimes make ourselves vulnerable, we must also agree that risk-taking is a necessity…it is better to take a number of calculated risks, and to accept some of them won’t work out perfectly, than to wait in hope for the world to deliver your outcomes for you on a plate. Faced with a big decision, as long as you’ve evaluated the risks carefully, and taken a positive decision, you’re building the courage and discipline that will see you right over time.”
