The global economy, that bloated, wheezing carcass we’ve been dragging across the finish line of history, has hit yet another inevitable snag. It seems the two preeminent masters of the universe—Washington and Beijing—have decided that the best way to prove their respective superiority is to light their own curtains on fire and see whose house burns down slower. In the midst of this trade war, which is essentially a playground slap-fight between a geriatric bully and a paranoid hall monitor, the financial world’s ‘intellectuals’ have stumbled upon a new sanctuary: India. The consensus among the vulture class is that Mumbai might just be the haven we’ve all been waiting for. It is a sentiment so profoundly delusional it could only have been birthed in a boardroom fueled by expensive scotch and a complete detachment from physical reality.

To call Mumbai a ‘safe haven’ is to reveal an almost erotic fixation with high-risk comedy. The narrative being peddled by the financial press is that as the U.S. and China decouple—a process that looks less like a strategic shift and more like a messy divorce involving two hoarders—capital must find a new host to parasitize. Enter India, the perpetual ‘Land of Tomorrow’ that has been promising to arrive since the British finally packed their trunks and left. The logic is simple, if you’re a simpleton: if the West doesn’t want to buy from the autocrats in the East, they’ll surely buy from the bureaucrats in the South. It is a pivot born of desperation, a frantic attempt to find a deck chair on the Titanic that isn’t currently underwater.

Let’s dissect the ‘safety’ of this haven with the cold, clinical indifference it deserves. The Indian market is currently less of a financial ecosystem and more of a high-stakes casino where the house doesn’t even bother to hide the fact that the deck is missing several cards. The domestic retail investor base, a demographic characterized by a terrifying blend of blind optimism and a complete lack of historical memory, has pumped the markets to levels that defy gravity, logic, and common sense. They believe the ‘line goes up’ because the alternative—that they are trapped in a developing nation’s speculative bubble—is too grim to contemplate. Investors aren’t seeking safety in Mumbai; they are seeking a new flavor of chaos to distract them from the stale chaos at home.

Meanwhile, the Western proponents of this shift ignore the logistical nightmare that is doing business on the subcontinent. India’s bureaucracy is not a system; it is a sentient, malevolent entity designed to turn progress into a fine mist of paperwork and missed deadlines. The ‘Ease of Doing Business’ in India is a phrase used exclusively by people who have never tried to navigate the labyrinthine permit processes of Maharashtra. To move your supply chain from the controlled, if oppressive, efficiency of the Pearl River Delta to the vibrant, infrastructure-challenged streets of Mumbai is to trade a migraine for a lobotomy. You aren’t diversifying your risk; you are simply changing the language in which your quarterly losses are reported.

The trade war itself is a testament to the terminal stupidity of our species. On one side, you have the American political establishment, a group of people who couldn’t find their own dignity with a map and a flashlight, pretending that protectionism is a viable long-term strategy in a globalized world. On the other, you have the CCP, an organization so terrified of its own shadow that it would rather kill the goose that lays the golden eggs than risk the goose forming a democratic union. Both sides are committed to a zero-sum game where the only guaranteed outcome is that everyone loses. India is merely the latest third party to be drafted into this theater of the absurd, a place where capital goes to pretend it still has a future.

What we are witnessing is the fiscal equivalent of a rebound relationship. The global investor has been burned by China’s unpredictability and bored by America’s decay, so they’ve turned to India with the wide-eyed hope of a romantic who refuses to see the red flags. They ignore the volatility, the regulatory uncertainty, and the fact that the Indian market is priced for a perfection that no human endeavor has ever achieved. It is a haven only in the sense that a dumpster is a haven from the rain—you might stay dry for a while, but eventually, the smell becomes unbearable and someone’s going to set the trash on fire.

There is no safe harbor in a world governed by the short-sighted and the greedy. Whether your money is being incinerated in a tariff war or swallowed by the logistical abyss of the subcontinent, the result remains the same. The global economy is a closed loop of failure, and India is just the latest stop on our collective descent into the drain. So, by all means, move your capital to Mumbai. Hedging your bets on a subcontinent whose primary export is optimistic press releases and bureaucratic gridlock is exactly the kind of move this dying era deserves. Just don’t call it safety. Call it what it is: a more colorful way to go bankrupt.