📊 EV’s Charts of the Week #75

Hi, I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies.

Dept of reversals of fortune

SPACs sent packing
Only five SPACs have seen an increase in share price over the past 180 days.

Source via Horace Dediu

The wisdom of Oogwe
Russia’s border with NATO is about to be doubled in size, if (or rather, when) Finland joins the Alliance. With its own troubled history with Russia, Finland invested in its military following the Cold War and has been a relevant ally to the West, but it never came this close to having popular support to join NATO. Until, that is, Putin invaded Ukraine. (The headline for this section is a reference to the wise turtle from Kung Fu Panda.)

Source: EVA

VC trouble
This year started with a wave of optimism toward VC, but by April 2022 Refinitiv’s venture capital index had fallen 45.8%.

Source: Financial Times

Dept of America

Country bumpkins
Although trust in the scientific community increased on the whole in 2020, this trend was strongly mediated by political affiliation in the United States. Go back 20 years to 1990 – the trend was completely inverted.

Source: Five Thirty Eight