Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan asked in the pages of Foreign Affairs whether our troubled world order would be able to survive the disruptive Donald Trump. She wrote that “today’s order appears to be stronger and more resilient than its 1930s counterpart” but, clearly, “norms that were long considered inviolable have been flouted.” She means flouted … Read more
Every year I update long-term return numbers for all of my various spreadsheets for charts, graphs, tables and such.1 From 1928-2024, the S&P 500 was up 9.94% on an annual basis. That’s pretty good. The last couple of years have seen strong returns (+26% and +25%, respectively) so I noticed the long-run number was ticking … Read more
Andrea Pettrachin and Matteo Bassoli argue that while Italy’s deal with Albania has yet to make an impact on migration numbers, it has already achieved key political aims for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. On 27 January, the Italian government embarked on a third attempt to send a group of migrants to Albania to process … Read more
White Mountains has reported that for full year 2024, its investment into the Outrigger Re collateralized reinsurance sidecar, which supports its property and casualty insurance and reinsurance subsidiary Ark, delivered income of $46 million, down 33% on 2023 as catastrophe losses had a far greater impact.As we’ve discussed previously, White Mountains total commitment toward the … Read more
When Nintendo first unveiled the Switch 2 last month, we (and everyone else) noticed something peculiar about the new Joy-Con controllers. Now, some recently unearthed patent filings more or less confirm all the theories. Specifically, there are now publicly viewable patents for the Switch 2’s controllers that tell us what we already basically knew: You … Read more
