Viswanathan K's Thoughts

From Paris, we went to Amsterdam by the superfast Euro Train. Since my wife has been to the Netherlands many times from her Philips days, she knows the country (not just Amsterdam) very well. In Amsterdam, a huge number of the tourist’y sites are all close to each other (and to the railway station).   The Dutch are truly comfortable in English, so communication is very easy. After spending a few hours at the interactive science museum, we went to the street famous for its food and knick-knacks. I ordered the falafel and it was great, spicy as ordered. I also enjoyed the stroopwafels , a type of waffle. While I am not a fan of waffles, the Dutch variant is delicious. I’ve told my 12 yo daughter to learn the recipe and make them for me in Bangalore…   The next morning, we took the ferry across the river to the tour office for the bus to the Keukenhof Gardens. My wife had spoken highly of the beauty of the place, and she wasn’t exaggerating. Tulips for miles on end, in s...

Look at the history of the first European “global” powers, Spain and Portugal, and you’ll see it is based on military/naval might. But the next power, Holland, had another ace up its sleeve, writes William Bernstein in A Splendid Exchange : “Their most potent weapon was Dutch finance.”   Bernstein elaborates. In 1602, investors poured 6.5 million guilders (that’s $100 million in today’s money) into the Dutch East India Company: “The capital was permanent, that is, if things went well, it would yield profits that would go mostly to pay for the expansion of business.” Contrast that with the standard practice of the day: money put in a company had to be paid back after a fixed period… with interest. See how close the Dutch model is to modern day stock investing? This was a sign of an “extraordinary degree of confidence in Dutch financial institutions”.   But why was there so much confidence to begin with? Being a lowland country, the Netherlands had to laboriously ...