Flying credit cards. American multinationals. Valuable plastic robots & anti-ugly pills.
Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email.
Simone Baltaxé Les Constructeurs
America’s airlines are basically credit card businesses with wings
You might expect America’s most valuable airline to earn its keep flying passengers. But you would be mistaken. In the second quarter of the year Delta Air Lines notched up an operating profit of $2.1bn, comfortably ahead of its domestic rivals. Buried in the financial statements, however, was a more revealing figure. Had it relied solely on revenue from passengers, it would have operated at a loss.
Delta is hardly unique in this regard. Last year American, Southwest and United—America’s other big airlines—also lost money from flying passengers, even as the four jointly made around $14bn in operating profits (see chart). To be sure, airlines earn revenue from other sources such as cargo. But what keeps them aloft is a vast loyalty business that binds together consumers, airlines and credit-card issuers. In recent years frequent-flyer programmes in America have grown ever larger and more lucrative. How much bigger can they
Source: Economist
US multinationals. Why don’t we talk about them any more?
This table is from 2021 but it shows the largest US multinational corporations by foreign assets, revenue and workforce.
Source: Mark E. Perry for American Enterprise Institute
“India always under construction” is a phrase often heard amongst locals, partly in jest but more in frustration. It is hard to find a city without cranes and scaffolding dotting the skyline – from the changing shore of Mumbai city, where iconic walkways by the sea are now overshadowed by a network of flyovers aimed at reducing traffic congestion, to the always choked, always under-development highway between Delhi and its fast-expanding satellite town of Gurugram. The government’s infrastructure push aimed at jumpstarting India’s investment cycle means the construction frenzy is set to rise – and nowhere is this more needed and more evident than in the cities. World Bank data show India’s urban population has surged 6x over the past 6 decades. One-third of the population – or 480 mn people – inhabited cities in 2020, with that share forecast to almost double by 2070. Cities are forecast to contribute 75% to India’s GDP by 2030 (vs ~63% now); the IEA predicts “buildings and factories … yet to be built, and vehicles and appliances that are yet to be bought” will account for 60% of India’s CO2 emissions by then.
Periodic reminders of the urgency to build urban infrastructure come in the form of flooded streets in the monsoon and smog-filled skies as the winter rolls in. A downpour last week in Gurugram – where I live – led to massive waterlogging, leaving rush-hour commuters stranded for hours on the city’s roads. Mistimed sewage work in the city centre, where construction material has been lying piled up on the roadsides for months, was washed onto the roads, making the situation worse. A May ’25 World Bank report estimated that losses from urban pluvial or stormwater flooding currently amount to 0.5-2.5% of GDP annually and are set to double under a global high-emission scenario. Highlighting the need for climate resilient infrastructure, it also warned that heat-related deaths in Indian cities will double by 2050. It estimates that urban infrastructure spend needs to more than double, from 0.7% of GDP in 2018 to 1.7% by 2050 as “nearly 70% of urban infrastructure needed by 2047 is yet to be built”.
Source: Deveshwar in TS Lombard
Gundam is "one of the world's most profitable IPs," or intellectual properties, wrote UBS analyst Zhai Yijia in a recent report. In raising her profit forecast and target stock price for Bandai on Wednesday, Minami Munakata of Goldman Sachs cited a "scenario of growth driven by Gundam IP."
Source: Nikkei Asia
Simone Baltaxé Le canal de l’Ourcq, 1949.
Source: Uncyclopedia
HEY READERS,
THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day.
I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button.
If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to.
And when you sign up, there are no more irritating “paywalls”
The kind of exchange that still makes twitter astonishing!
For contributing subscribers only.
When Gaza was the richest port of the Eastern Mediterranean
How tensions are mounting (again) between Ethiopia and Eritrea demands more attention!
The enemy of my enemy is my friend By Gelila Enbaye
The reopening of a border between Eritrea and Tigray masks a deeper realignment. As old foes unite against Ethiopia’s government, the risk of renewed war grows. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Eritrea have improved relations through a makeshift alliance with the aim of facing Ethiopia in a potential military escalation. Previously, the 2020-2022 Tigray war saw the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrean regime fighting against the TPLF. So, this new and unthinkable Eritrea-TPLF alliance should raise concerns about what lies ahead. After power struggles in Tigray, the Eritrean regime has positioned itself as an ally to a TPLF faction, led by its chairperson, Debretsion Gebremichael. The TPLF’s once unified leadership has fractured and is split between Debretsion and Getachew Reda, who served as the head of the federally backed Tigray Interim Administration, a postwar apparatus, until March 2025. Getachew was subsequently appointed as advisor in the federal government and registered a new political party approved by the national election board. Meanwhile, the TPLF is being denied its status as a political party by Ethiopian authorities.
Source: Africa Is a Country
Le Souk 1963
If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: