FT: “Voters want governments to make them richer. Since the global recession of 2008, they have been unable to do so. That is why we have such political instability and unprecedented turnover at the top of the British government.”
Acquired (via WSJ): “Vanguard has a clever strategy. As it grows its assets and gains economies of scale, it shares that surplus value back with its customers—fundholders—in the form of reduced fees instead of keeping those dollars for itself. This playbook is akin to another great company that we studied on Acquired in 2023: Costco. Costco built a tremendous competitive advantage by capping its profit margins and sharing scale benefits with customers in the form of lower prices. As Costco scales, it becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to match its famously low prices. Vanguard is essentially the Costco of finance but taken to another level: thanks to its corporate structure, it captures no profits. But how did this happen? Index funds owned 0% of the stock market in 1975 when Vanguard started. Today, they are the entrance to investing for millions. And Vanguard—and now other fund managers, too—offer this wildly attractive investment product for a fee that is often less than 0.05% annually, or a mere $5 on a $10,000 investment. It all starts with the founder, John C. “Jack” Bogle.”
Kathleen deLaski: “Google…announced [recently] that they will pilot a hiring process where software engineer candidates can bring their Ai bots to job interviews. This is a clear acknowledgement that, in some fields already, you will be measured on how you perform as a conductor of an Ai-rich orchestra, not just as a single instrument, in this case, your own brain. It’s lot of pressure to have to manage other brains, however synthetic, in real time. The new job title emerging is called “agent manager.”” [via Arnold Kling] He adds: “Most employers are perplexed about what skills to look for these days. In terms of AI, for now de Laski reports that they seem to want smart prompt engineering, editing AI writing, multimedia creation with AI, using AI to brainstorm, mitigating ethical and security risks, and process improvement.”
ET: “In FY25, India received $135.4 billion in remittances, according to the Economic Survey 2025–26, making it the largest remittance recipient in the world for yet another year. During the same period, India’s gross FDI inflows stood at approximately $47 billion. Indian workers abroad sent home nearly three times more money than foreign investors brought into India. This immense inflow of foreign capital has proven structurally shock-resistant, consistently shielding India’s balance of payments against geopolitical crises, energy price spikes and external trade variances. Unlike volatile foreign institutional investment which can flee during global market panics, remittances remain remarkably stable. By transforming its vast working-age population into a formal, highly organized and globally distributed workforce, India can successfully shift from a passive supplier of labour to a strategic architect of international human resource networks, ensuring long-term stability for its current account.”
