the inner voice

What are the chances that an extreme tail event like a pandemic is followed by another outlier? asked my senior colleague and further nudged, pretty low, right? wanting to engage all of us and stir up a conversation amongst colleagues and global fora. Before I dive into sharing my views please allow me to indulge in a bit of mathematics – what are the chances of another outlier post an extreme tail event? Contrarian, as my response may seem to be, I would argue its ‘High’. The world loves simplification because that is what a human mind can absorb and fit into its logical neural circuits. But that’s precisely where the problem lies. More or less all analytics, economic, financial, geopolitical, or otherwise assumes Normal distribution of outcomes. The number of studies done, starting from Mandelbrot and Fama, proves otherwise but still, we choose to regress, consciously or unconsciously, to this convenient simplification. This convenient relapse, an amenity, allows one to limit the pro...

The head of the division of the bank which I work for posted a discussion note on an internal discussion site ( and also on LinkedIn) - Quote Imagine it is 2040 and the exam question at school is "#Solidarity during the Corona crisis in 2020" - What will the next generation with the massive benefit of hindsight, assess as successful, and what might we have missed? especially on multiple aspects of #solidarity for e.g.  - was our #solidarity national / continental / global  - economic #solidarity with Italy  - was there any money left for climate change or was it just fashionable topic at summer conferences  - #solidarity with people suffering from mental illness due to the ubiquitous fear  - #solidarity with people getting laid off and prevention of stigma  - #solidarity with people more worried about livelihood than life  - were we given unbiased facts or fed worst-case scenarios and sensationalistic headlines  - #solidarity with pe...