The Silicon Valley. The world’s hub of innovation, the pinnacle of capitalism. Every time silicon valley hits the news, it’s either about some big tech startup or new unicorns or Facebook getting sued again, but today’s episode is not about any of that. Going off the conventional route, today we analyze the story of the biggest blunder Silicon Valley ever produced, which is also consequently one of the biggest frauds ever pulled off. Imagine watching people say that a company was supposedly going to change the world, only to watch it become one of the biggest frauds in history. Today we explore the story of ‘Theranos’ started in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford dropout who was believe it or not claimed as the next Steve Jobs. Receiving over 600 million dollars of funding for what was essentially a series of lies, Theranos proved to be a very crucial case study and a revelation for corporate America as a whole. A story about deceit, fraud, manipulation fueled by a sociopath of a CEO who would stop at nothing to make her pipe dream a reality and fail horribly at it while making thousands suffer along with it including actual patients to whom her actions proved fatal. A company once worth over 9 billion dollars, what did it promise to do and how did it go so wrong? Let's get right into it. And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

You know someone said, the world is a crazy place, and oh boy did were they right. The crazy part is that we often fail to realize is that anything like investing or business or real estate- anything in the domain of money is not about theory, it’s not about finance, it’s not about charts and statistics and graphs. It’s about human behaviour and human behaviour is what propels markets, businesses, the flow of money, and this gets rather peculiar at times. No, hear me out. Data maintained by the US Labour Department shows that more than 34 million American workers have quit their jobs this year, just around the time the economy began to properly open up in April.  The pace of people quitting has, if anything, kept increasing. The latest US Labour Department data says that 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September alone. 4.4 million, in a single month. Now isn’t this something you would not expect for an economy ravaged by a global pandemic? Shouldn’t some jobs be scarce? How are people quitting their jobs in droves and even if so, how are they managing their expenses? In today’s episode, we will answer all that while throwing some light on probably one of the most unusual phenomenons in the world economy this year- The Great Resignation. Let's get right into it. And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

Economic Growth. Something that every nation ideally seeks. The very increase in the production of economic goods and services are facilitated by several factors ranging from Politics to Demography. If we are to holistically look at Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship, what we soon realise is how varied the effects of Cultures, Institutions and Innovation are on economic growth. Thanking my friend Sharanya who sent me most of the material here and without whom this episode wouldn’t have been possible today, we will demonstrate the role of culture, institutions and innovation from a historical perspective and how it affected the differences of growth between developed and developing nations.  I acknowledge that all these factors are important in the growth of a nation, however, pinpointing any single factor as the main reason for economic development oversimplifies the complex nature of economics itself and I think we have pretty much established that over the past 6 months. Oh yeah, this, marking the 24th Episode, it’s been 6 long months already. On that note, let's get right into it! And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

The Rich get richer. Yes, I am sure you have heard that before. In fact, in our episode on taxes, we have even discussed the methods these people use to further propagate their wealth. But today’s episode is a bit different. It is in a sense, unfair by a big proportion. Think about it, the numbers are just out and the year-to-year Consumer Price Inflation in the United States is at 6.2%. That’s the highest it has ever been in 3 decades. Like if you think about it, even if your salary grew by 5% this year, you technically got a pay cut? Now on the other end of the spectrum, Billionaires got about 50-70% richer over this same period of time, particularly, in this 1 year. Take Elon Musk, for example, his one-year wealth growth has been at 70%. How is this even possible? If earnings are reduced, shouldn’t these Company’s revenues too? Don’t worry, I got you covered. In this confusing branched out frenzy of quantitative easing and market-economy disconnect, let’s take some steps back, about 250 years ago and trace this very problem as identified by its father- Richard Cantillon in his book “An Essay on Economic Theory” and the Cantillon Effect which was published 30 years after he was murdered. We will go into all that, from the Mississippi Bubble to the detrimental effects of money creation at the Federal level, we will cover all of it today. And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

Facebook is now Meta. Regardless of what you think about the company, this rebranding implies a lot of potential upheavals, both in terms of growth and defense. Although I'm not sure how the rebranding will help clear the implicit reputation Facebook has garnered over the last two decades, it certainly is a way to lure a younger audience into the platform. Facebook's old consumer base will fail to adapt to its 'Meta' ambitions going forward and for that, this may be considered a brilliant move. But you know what’s genius? The naming scheme. Facebook isn’t the metaverse, the metaverse isn’t Facebook but Mark did make sure that every time you hear its name, you think of him. In this ever-evolving world of NFTs and VR and Meta in the Metaverse, somewhere amidst the chaos, we forgot to hold back and understand what the Metaverse is in the first place, and in today’s episode, we will exactly do just that. The future of the internet as they call it. NFTs to Defi to Minecraft, we will cover everything. And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

There could not have been a better time to record this. Today's episode is special. So as you know, we just had Diwali a few days ago in India and you know what that implies? Thousands of grams of gold were purchased by the country. As per the World Gold Council, Indian households own 23,000 -24,000 tonnes of gold (valued at over US$900bn), which is almost equivalent to the market capitalization of Apple or Tesla. Additionally, Indian temples own around 3,000-4,000 tonnes of gold, which is offered to the temple deities by devotees. India consumes 700-800 tonnes of gold annually, with purchases driven by tradition, festivals, and other important family and social occasions and as I said, Diwali is a major festival among that. With so much gold in the country, there have to be certain implications right? In this episode we will try to understand the cause of this hoarding, how it started and why it continues, and if and how it affects the economy negatively. Lastly, we will also touch upon gold as an Investment option, the mere fragility of it. From the Gold Rush in the Malabar Hills to the drastic toll it has on Foreign Exchange reserves, we will cover everything. Let's have at it! And as always, Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

Twitter. Yes, I know how polarized we are regarding the platform and the people there, but love it or hate it, Twitter's very success story is an amazing case study that we just cannot disregard. The platform has cemented itself to voicing the opinions of those who matter, from world leaders to celebrities to ironically, media outlets. As it stands now, entertainment is attributed to sites like Facebook or Instagram but information, actual solemn information from those who matter is attributed to Twitter. But, as you can already guess, that was not exactly the situation from the ground up. From a baby startup in early 2006 SIlicon Valley to becoming a Mega Corporation, Twitter's journey has been quite fruitful and in today’s episode, we take an analytical approach to access the success story of Twitter along with understanding the very models and strategies that ensured its survival and dominance in the ever-evolving realm of Social Media. Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

Okay by this point, I am sure you have heard the word. N-F-Ts. Obviously, you open the news to find cat gifs selling for hundreds of millions of dollars and literal rock jpegs selling for twice that, it should blow your mind. The question isn’t even how that is happening or what is causing this huge market to spur even further by the day, the question is what on earth is an NFT itself. Believe it or not, this is by far, the most requested episode of this podcast and you all have been asking me to make this for quite a while now, so there you have it. In classic Cash Me If You Can style, everything you need to know about NFTs and ever so sporadic world of personalized crypto art. From blockchains to metadata to hundreds of thousands worth of toilet paper, we will cover it all. The implications are huge, as you are just about to find out. Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan

The Economy. Everyone thinks having an opinion on the economy or just saying the word between random unrelated sentences is cool, but that is about it. You would be surprised to know how many people have no idea how our modern economic system works; no not any particular economy but the economic system in general. What makes it the economy? What causes a recession? What is debt? What is credit? What is defaulting? See it all sounds so complicated but the thing is, you will be surprised to know how interconnected and simple all this is when understood with proper context. Well, that’s where I come in. Taking whatever Ray Dahlio said a step further, here is everything you need to know to understand how any economy functions and where it can go wrong- every fundamental you need to understand the Debt Cycles, Depressions, Recessions, Credit, Money, and even Market Cycles, all within just an hour.

Thank You so much for taking the time in listening as well as reading this. Do not forget to follow the podcast on any platform you are listening to and review it if you are on Apple Podcasts. If you want to get in touch with me, here is everything I am accountable for - Have a great day! > www.linktr.ee/neogyspandan