Westerners seem to underestimate how mercenary and brass knuckled politics in the developing world is (no, politics in insert_OECD_country_here is not to the same degree), and assume every bleeding heart activist will become the next Gandhi. Ironically this is how Orban's political career got started as well as an pro-Democracy campaigner in the 1980s and 1990s.
This isn't to undermine activists and NGOs working in these countries, but the default assumption in due dilligence should be that everyone is a crook and then validate.
That said, I definetly saw plenty of glazing of questionable developing country politicians during my time when I was much more HKS adjacent, but this is common for just about every pmajor policy program - it's the only way you can attract big names, and non-Westerners know how to take advantage of that Western naivete (I've definitely used it on occasion despite being raised in North America).
Even the most modern country (South Africa) is an economic basket case. 42% unemployment. Stealing from the electric utility costs hundreds of millions per year. The most senior elected person in the legislature was charged with corruption and is pending trial.
And if a coup were to happen, would stuff even get any better? Countries run on institutions, and a coup by default undermine institutions by normalizing violence as a short circuit to consensus building. This weak institution building due to the power of the gun is what lead both Argentina and Pakistan to stagnate despite being economic darlings in the early and mid 20th century respectively.
And more critically - we in the US do not want to normalize private citizens fundraising armed movements en masse in the 21st century. This is a bad precedent.
Finally, the Wikipedia article has clearly had some PR panache attached to it based on the edit history, and it's silence about Ajak's case despite having been going on for over a year now.
A co-founder of something like Jane Street must be making a great deal more than $400k/year. Its probably small change for him.
You cannot make that much money doing those "interesting jobs". You might by financing and employing the people doing them.
A smart person going into finance will definitely make a lot more money than that same person going into another field. Going into finance from an "interesting" field has made a lot people rich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Simons
And of course, we keep hearing "greed is good". We are very fortunate that some people could see beyond that in the past because we are resting on their financial "sacrifice". Thankfully there are still people who still think that way today, but it is always infuriating to hear people pretend some are stupid for not choosing the path that would maximize their earnings.
I think it is a sort of projection from "small minded" people who cannot see anything beyond what they would do, precisely because they are intellectually limited and thus cannot properly reason about those "issues".
I do agree that maximising income is not the optimal path. I sacrificed a lot of income for time with my kids and it was definitely the right decision.
Being able to identify market arbitrage has little to do with biology and rocket science, and smart people are already working on such problems with the limitations of current fields well known. Throwing "smart” people at solving cancer isn't going to magically solve cancer.
Well, for FAANG and the second tier.
Meanwhile, I don't know if you've looked around lately but I see security startups that are well funded offering <200K for Senior ICs.
When people were confused why Sam Bankman Fried behaved as stupidly as he did and thought this was all an act, no they genuinely are like overgrown kids who don't know what guile is, they couldn't survive in a rough neighborhood of New York let alone deal with South Sudanese arms dealers.
There is a band, but whats termed intelligence.
But he said and did lots of embarassing things.
I guess that's part of the definition of genius.
EDIT: My bad, I didn't realize he was part of the article, didn't take the time to deal with the paywall.
> The new chronology is a pseudohistorical theory proposed by Anatoly Fomenko who argues that events of antiquity generally attributed to the ancient civilizations of Rome, Greece and Egypt actually occurred during the Middle Ages, more than a thousand years later.
> The theory further proposes that world history prior to AD 1600 has been widely falsified to suit the interests of a number of different conspirators, including the Vatican, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian House of Romanov, all working to obscure the "true" history of the world centered around a global empire called the "Russian Horde".
From TFA (emphasis mine)
Their actions are what you'd expect any firm to do to hedge their exposure. Its just that they were so large and the Indian stock market is relatively so small that they're hedging moved the market.
So the question is, was their market moving hedging actual market manipulation or was it just the same thing every other quant firm would do in the same situation to hedge out their option exposure?
https://libgen.li/edition.php?id=151275376
Here's a decent description of the issue.
Allegedly being investigated is also quite far from "been manipulating markets", I appreciate the clarification.
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
https://www.business-standard.com/finance/news/explained-jan...
https://www.outlookbusiness.com/markets/jane-street-under-se...
https://www.rediff.com/business/report/why-is-sebi-probing-a...
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
This isn’t perfect but it’s better than randos choosing what to manipulate abroad
Reminds me of:
"In every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it."
At least correctly differentiating between western and combloc weaponry is pretty impressive for two finance reporters.