Nazem Bhai, I loved reading this and will read again and give each link more time. July 1997, very early in my career and as a 26 year old absolute green horn in finance and Macroeconomics, I saw clients in Singapore backout. Took me time to figure things out and in manyways, my interest in financial history and Macro started there
I can relate to this very well and look forward to parts 2 and 3. I am working on something similar regarding this whole Private Credit volcano we are sitting on and your articles will give me some insights that I can shamelessly copy :-)
Srinivas Bhai, thank you. This note is why the series exists. It was written for readers who weren't there, and the reply that means the most comes from someone who was: twenty-six, in Singapore, watching the clients leave before the story had a name. I was watching from Tokyo, managing money in a market already fighting its own deflation when Asia arrived on its lenders' books. The plumbing was invisible until the morning it wasn't.
Your volcano stopped me. A Citicorp banker in Hong Kong reached for the same word in 1995, and he meant it as opportunity, the money still trying to get in. Thirty-one years later you reach for it for private credit, a sector the FSB concedes has never been tested in a severe downturn. I look forward to reading yours. Send it to me when it's ready.
And copy shamelessly. That's why every claim is linked to the primary document. The paper belongs to everyone.
Part 2 begins where your memory does: the morning statement of July 2, and what it did to the price of everything. The series passes through Tokyo before it's done.
Excellent piece! The parallel between 1997 Asia and today's AI debt web is spot on. "A valuation is an opinion, debt is a schedule" completely nails why capital plumbing matters way more than market hype. Definitely worth a full read for anyone trying to understand macro risk today.
Thank you. That line carries the whole of Part 1. Asia's growth was real, and it broke anyway, not in the statistics but in the plumbing beneath them: who had lent what, due when, in whose money.
Today's giants print the currency they borrow in, so there is no 1997 waiting at the center. Watch the edges instead. Fragility has a habit of moving to wherever the schedule is shortest.
I read the FSB report last week and some of that will be in the article. It's a tricky topic and hope to get it out in about 10 days ...I used the Volcano word on purpose after reading that Citibank thing in your article 😊
Nazem Bhai, I loved reading this and will read again and give each link more time. July 1997, very early in my career and as a 26 year old absolute green horn in finance and Macroeconomics, I saw clients in Singapore backout. Took me time to figure things out and in manyways, my interest in financial history and Macro started there
I can relate to this very well and look forward to parts 2 and 3. I am working on something similar regarding this whole Private Credit volcano we are sitting on and your articles will give me some insights that I can shamelessly copy :-)
Srinivas Bhai, thank you. This note is why the series exists. It was written for readers who weren't there, and the reply that means the most comes from someone who was: twenty-six, in Singapore, watching the clients leave before the story had a name. I was watching from Tokyo, managing money in a market already fighting its own deflation when Asia arrived on its lenders' books. The plumbing was invisible until the morning it wasn't.
Your volcano stopped me. A Citicorp banker in Hong Kong reached for the same word in 1995, and he meant it as opportunity, the money still trying to get in. Thirty-one years later you reach for it for private credit, a sector the FSB concedes has never been tested in a severe downturn. I look forward to reading yours. Send it to me when it's ready.
And copy shamelessly. That's why every claim is linked to the primary document. The paper belongs to everyone.
Part 2 begins where your memory does: the morning statement of July 2, and what it did to the price of everything. The series passes through Tokyo before it's done.
Excellent piece! The parallel between 1997 Asia and today's AI debt web is spot on. "A valuation is an opinion, debt is a schedule" completely nails why capital plumbing matters way more than market hype. Definitely worth a full read for anyone trying to understand macro risk today.
Thank you. That line carries the whole of Part 1. Asia's growth was real, and it broke anyway, not in the statistics but in the plumbing beneath them: who had lent what, due when, in whose money.
Today's giants print the currency they borrow in, so there is no 1997 waiting at the center. Watch the edges instead. Fragility has a habit of moving to wherever the schedule is shortest.
I read the FSB report last week and some of that will be in the article. It's a tricky topic and hope to get it out in about 10 days ...I used the Volcano word on purpose after reading that Citibank thing in your article 😊
Srinivas Bhai, write it. Tricky is why it needs writing.
You read the report itself, and you watched 1997 from the client side of the glass. Few writing on private credit carry both.
Keep the volcano. It fits.
looking forward.