Greetings folks,

Welcome to the 22ND Edition, are we tired of the Special Military Operation in Iran yet?. This week, a French sailor named Arthur logged a 7 km jog on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, France’s only nuclear carrier, using the fitness app Strava. Well, his profile was public and Le Monde matched the geolocation data to satellite imagery and confirmed the carrier’s exact position: eastern Mediterranean, northwest of Cyprus, roughly 100 km from the Turkish coast. The carrier had been redeployed from Baltic NATO exercises to the Middle East on March 3rd after the Iran conflict escalated. This is the same Le Monde investigative team that exposed the Strava profiles of Macron’s, Biden’s, and Putin’s security details in 2024. The original Strava military base leak was back in 2018 when soldiers jogging the perimeters of bases in Syria and Afghanistan showed up on the app’s global heatmap. So we’ve had eight years to learn this lesson. Arthur ran a 4:58/km pace though, which is a solid performance for someone confined on a deck. There’s always a silver lining.

Meanwhile, on the topic of surprise, President Trump was asked by a Japanese reporter during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi why the US didn’t tell its allies before striking Iran. His response: “We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” Takaichi’s eyes widened and she shifted in her chair. The room went quiet. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii called it “appalling, counterproductive, immature.” The Pentagon is meanwhile requesting $200 billion from Congress for Iran operations. So that’s where we are. Let’s get into it.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has entered its third week, and the consequences are no longer theoretical. Brent crude closed Thursday at $108.65, its highest since July 2022. WTI is hovering around $96. The IEA has released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, and it barely made a dent. For wealthy nations, this means higher gas prices and inflation anxiety. For the rest of the world, it means something far more immediate: governments are rationing energy in ways that reshape daily life for billions of people.

Pakistan announced a four-day work week and early shop closures to conserve fuel reserves, which at current consumption sit at fewer than 20 days. Vietnam ordered work-from-home mandates for non-essential government workers. Myanmar imposed alternate-day driving restrictions based on licence plate numbers. Sri Lanka, scarred by its 2022 economic crisis, rolled out QR code fuel rationing at petrol stations. Bangladesh shut universities and moved classes online. Nepal is rationing cooking gas. Indonesia, which subsidises fuel at enormous cost, is now spending $22.6 billion on energy subsidies alone this fiscal year. South Korea imposed price caps on petrol and diesel. Infosys told its 300,000 employees in India to bring packed lunches to reduce cafeteria energy use. Even Denmark told citizens to consider not driving.

The irony is that most of these countries have nothing to do with the conflict. They’re not combatants, not allies of combatants, not geographically close. They’re simply energy importers caught in the blast radius of a war between the US, Israel, and Iran that has shut down roughly a fifth of global oil transit. Wood Mackenzie’s chief analyst warned this week that $200/bbl is possible if disruptions persist into Q2, which would trigger what he called “demand destruction on a scale we haven’t seen since 2008.” The IEA noted that even with the strategic reserve release, global supply is short approximately 4 million barrels per day.

For Canada, the calculus is familiar but intensified. Alberta producers are printing money. The loonie is getting a commodity tailwind. But the BoC held rates at 2.25% this month and flagged risks to both growth and inflation from the conflict. Canadian CPI fell to 1.8% in February, the softest in nearly a year, but that was before the full oil shock hit consumer prices. Food and transport costs will ratchet higher in the March and April prints. The BoC is stuck: cutting would stoke inflation, hiking would crush an already soft labour market (February saw 83,900 jobs lost). That being said, watching Pakistan announce a four-day work week because of a war between countries on the other side of the planet is a useful reminder that energy security is not an abstraction. It is the foundational input to everything.

The broader question nobody wants to ask: if the Strait of Hormuz can be shut for three weeks by a single state actor, what does that say about the resilience of a global economy built on just-in-time energy logistics? The answer is not encouraging. Law makers note though, I am fully supportive of a 4 day work week, packed lunches not so much.

Sentiment

Rest of World’s original reporting on Asian policy responses generated significant traction on X and Reddit’s r/worldnews. Al Jazeera and TIME provided ground-level reporting from affected countries. The dominant mood: this war’s second-order effects are arriving faster than anyone expected, and the people bearing the worst of it had no say in starting it.

There is a theory in linguistics that the more power you accumulate, the less you care about the rules of the language you use to wield it. The Wall Street Journal has now essentially proved it with a feature documenting the writing habits of the ultra-rich and ultra-powerful. Jeffrey Epstein’s correspondence was riddled with errors, including a congratulatory note that read “congragulations.” Larry Ellison, in the middle of orchestrating a multibillion-dollar play for Warner Bros Discovery, texted his team the name “Daivd” (presumably David). Trump’s “covfefe” tweet has become so iconic it barely needs context.

The piece goes further than just anecdotes. It argues there’s a structural reason for this: once you reach a certain level of wealth or influence, nobody corrects you. Your inbox is full of people trying to get something from you, not people pointing out that you misspelled “receive.” Hyatt heir and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker apparently signs off emails with the line “Please excuse my lack of typos,” which is either a deliberate power move or the most passive-aggressive email signature in American politics. Probably both.

For anyone who has spent time around boardrooms or deal tables, this tracks. I’ve reviewed financing documents where the principal misspelled the name of the asset they were buying. The lawyers fixed it. The bankers didn’t mention it. The deal closed. There is something philosophically interesting about a class of people who can afford to hire unlimited editorial support and choose not to use it. It suggests that precision in communication is a middle-class value, not a universal one. The people writing the cheques don’t need to spell. The people cashing them do. So if you start to notice, more and more typos, it means I am getting rich.

Sentiment

The WSJ piece went mildly viral on LinkedIn, where the professional class oscillated between amusement and existential dread. Reddit’s r/antiwork loved it. X was mostly jokes. The general consensus: this is funny, this is true, and this is why autocorrect exists.

The NBA Board of Governors meets Monday and Tuesday to vote on adding two expansion franchises: Seattle and Las Vegas. If approved (23 of 30 governors must vote yes), it will be the league’s first expansion since the Charlotte Bobcats joined in 2004. The price tag is staggering: franchise fees are reportedly in the $7 billion to $10 billion range per team, which would make them the most expensive expansion franchises in the history of professional sports. For context, the Minnesota Timberwolves sold for $1.5 billion in 2023. The Golden State Warriors were purchased for $450 million in 2010.

Seattle’s bid is the sentimental favourite. The Super Sonics left for Oklahoma City in 2008, and the city has been lobbying for a return ever since. The name and branding would be revived. Las Vegas, meanwhile, has become the league’s glamour market after successfully hosting the Raiders (NFL), Golden Knights (NHL), and the WNBA’s Aces. Magic Johnson is reportedly behind the Vegas bid, which would give the city a professional team in all four major North American leagues. The league is also exploring an NBA Europe concept, with ownership groups from PSG, AC Milan, and Newcastle among those bidding for franchises.

The financial mechanics are worth noting. Each existing owner would receive a proportional share of the expansion fees, estimated at $230 million to $330 million per franchise. That’s a direct cash payment for voting yes, which tends to concentrate the mind. The expansion draft, targeted for 2028, would allow each new team to select unprotected players from existing rosters, and play would begin in the 2028-29 season. That being said, $10 billion for a sports franchise in a city that didn’t have one three years ago is either a sign of peak sports valuations or a bet on media rights that hasn’t been priced in yet. Probably both.

For Canada, the expansion conversation inevitably raises the question of a second Canadian franchise (Vancouver or Montreal are the usual suspects), but that discussion isn’t on the table this cycle. The Toronto Raptors remain Canada’s sole NBA team, currently valued at approximately $4.1 billion. Also, Magic Johnson owning a Las Vegas basketball team feels like it was always going to happen. In the modern NBA, the real battle isn’t in the paint — it’s in the boardroom, where billionaires argue over whether a role player is worth 25 million a year while charging $50 for parking to “make the numbers work.”

Sentiment

ESPN and AP broke the vote timing. Seattle’s r/nba and r/Seattle communities are predictably ecstatic. Las Vegas sports media is treating it as a foregone conclusion. The expansion fee numbers have generated debate about whether professional sports are in a valuation bubble. General mood: excitement in both markets, sticker shock everywhere else.

Today is the day. The Indian patent on semaglutide, the GLP-1 receptor agonist behind Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic, expires. This means India’s generic pharmaceutical industry, the engine that famously slashed HIV antiretroviral drug costs for the developing world two decades ago, is now turning its attention to weight loss. Analysts expect approximately 50 branded generics to enter the market within months. When the diabetes drug sitagliptin went off patent in 2022, roughly 30 branded versions appeared within a month and nearly 100 within a year. Semaglutide will likely follow the same pattern, possibly faster.

The price implications are significant. Monthly treatment currently costs 8,800 to 16,000 rupees ($95 to $173). Generic competition is expected to push that down to 3,000 to 5,000 rupees ($36 to $54). India’s anti-obesity drug market has already grown from roughly $16 million in 2021 to close to $100 million, and that’s before generics arrive. Jefferies projects the domestic semaglutide market alone could eventually reach $1 billion. Doctors are reportedly already writing on prescriptions: “Come to me after 20 March when the prices come down.”

The export potential is arguably the bigger story. India is the world’s largest supplier of generic medicines, producing roughly 60,000 brands across 60 therapeutic categories and accounting for about 20% of global generic supply. It meets more than half of Africa’s generic drug demand, roughly 40% of generics used in the US, and about a quarter of medicines in the UK. The chairman of India’s Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council projects the US market alone could scale to $10 billion within a few years. That being said, doctors are flagging real concerns: gym trainers are already prescribing high doses, beauty clinics are advertising slimming “packages” for weddings, and online pharmacies are dispensing after cursory consultations. India’s drug regulator issued an advisory last week warning against direct-to-consumer promotion. We used to count calories; now we just count how many people at brunch are on Ozempic. That count is set to go way up.

Sentiment

BBC’s reporting was widely shared across Indian financial media and health communities. Reddit’s r/pharmacy and r/loseit are following the generic timeline closely. Seeking Alpha analysts flagged downside risk to Novo Nordisk. The general mood: excitement about access, caution about quality control, and a universal acknowledgement that the weight-loss drug market is about to get a lot more interesting.

For three decades, the world’s most famous anonymous artist managed to remain anonymous by doing things like sneaking a smiley-face Mona Lisa into the Louvre, planting an inflatable Guantanamo Bay detainee inside Disneyland, building a dystopian theme park in a derelict English seaside resort called “Dismaland” (tagline: “a family theme park unsuitable for children”), and remote-triggering a hidden shredder inside a painting frame the instant it sold for £1.04 million at Sotheby’s. The shredder jammed halfway. He later posted a video noting that “in rehearsals it worked every time.” The half-shredded piece resold three years later for $25.4 million. That’s the kind of career we’re talking about.

On March 13th, Reuters published the investigation that ended the mystery. A handwritten confession from a September 2000 arrest in New York’s Meatpacking District, where a man was caught defacing a Marc Jacobs billboard on a rooftop at 4:20 a.m. during Fashion Week. He signed his own name: Robin Gunningham. The cops had no idea who they’d booked because the Banksy pseudonym barely existed yet. After The Mail on Sunday got close to the identification in 2008, his manager arranged a legal name change to David Jones, chosen because approximately 6,000 British men share it. The art world notes that David Jones is also David Bowie’s birth name, which is being received as a deliberate cultural cross-reference.

Reuters also tracked Ukrainian immigration records showing a “David Jones” with Gunningham’s exact birthday crossing the Poland-Ukraine border on October 28, 2022, the day Banksy murals started appearing on bombed-out buildings near Kyiv. Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, long rumoured to be Banksy, was also in Ukraine that day, but Reuters concluded he’s a collaborator, not the artist. Banksy’s company, Pest Control, issued a statement saying the artist “has decided to say nothing.” His lawyer warned that publishing the investigation would “violate the artist’s privacy and put him in danger.”

The WSJ’s art market analysis is where this gets financially interesting. Collector Peter Brant, known for collecting Keith Haring, says he never bought Banksy because of the unknown factor: “It’s difficult to purchase work by someone who’s working so hard to avoid being known because you’re buying folklore.” Dealer Jean-Paul Engelen says the revelation could actually boost prices because “the marketplace tends to reward clarity.” Banksy’s record auction price was $25.4 million in 2021, but nothing has sold above $10 million since, and non-shredded versions of “Girl with Balloon” have fallen from $4 million to around $1 million. Now that he’s identifiable, he may face actual vandalism charges for future work, which could change what he produces. Or he could lean into it. When you’ve already built a theme park staffed by deliberately unhelpful employees where the Grim Reaper circles to Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” the logical next step is unclear. That Banksy you couldn’t afford, now got even more unaffordable.

Sentiment

Reuters’ investigation was the most-read piece on their site for three consecutive days. The art world is split between those who think the mystery was the point and those who think the work speaks for itself regardless. Reddit’s r/art and r/streetart are debating whether anonymity was a brand strategy or a genuine philosophical position. The general take: Robin Gunningham made great art, David Jones will probably make more, and the shredder bit was worth $25 million regardless of who pressed the button.

One more thing. Canada’s most valuable fish is not lobster. It’s baby eels. Elvers, as they’re known, fetch up to $5,000 per kilogram, more than a hundred times the price of lobster. They’re fished at night along Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rivers by people called “dippers,” shipped live to China via Hong Kong, and have attracted armed confrontations, balaclavas, and seizures at Pearson Airport. Next time you wondering if you want to add the lobster tail to your steak, count yourself lucky and do it. Next its going to be eels (kind of gross not going to lie). Have a fantastic weekend, and please forward this to friends and family and I welcome feedback.

Many thanks,

Sam

Sources

Rest of World, Fortune, Al Jazeera, TIME, Newsweek, NPR, Business Standard, Peoples Dispatch, Asia Media Centre, Wall Street Journal, ESPN, AP, CBS Sports, BBC, Reuters, The Walrus, CBC News, Global News, SeafoodSource, Mongabay, Le Monde, NBC News, CNN, Washington Post, Deadline, Military Times, Marathon Handbook, TMZ, Art Threat, Boing Boing, Euronews, Hollywood Reporter, Dazed, Artlyst, Semafor, The War Zone, War on the Rocks, IISS, Wood Mackenzie, Pharmarack, Jefferies, Trading Economics.