Hello, I'm Leath
/leɪθ/ — rhymes with faith
I'm an economist working in regulatory finance at Smart DCC, the company running Britain's smart meter data network. Previously, I spent six years at the British Business Bank, where I helped secure over £1bn in government funding and led programmes that supported over a million businesses during the pandemic. I also serve as a Non-Executive Director at Wenta, a social enterprise supporting small businesses, and sit on the Council of the Society of Professional Economists.
I grew up between Iraq and Austria, studied economics in Vienna and Nottingham, and now live in London. This site is where I share what I'm reading, thinking about, and working on. I'm interested in economics, regulation, business, language, history, and philosophy.
Explore
My Notes
A reading log of books and essays across economics, philosophy, literature, and more. Full notes coming soon.
Listography
Curated lists of books, thinkers, ideas, and systems that shape how I see the world. 6 lists, 40 items.
Projects
Chrome extensions I've built — tools for the Financial Times, YouTube, and Letterboxd. All open-source on GitHub.
Latest Writing
Competition and Rivalry
The fire that never sleeps — and the question of whether we should let it burn
From Peter Thiel's contrarian take on monopolies to Girard's mimetic desire — an essay on competition across sport, philosophy, economics, and everyday life.
Notes
A reading log of books and essays I've been working through. Full reviews and notes are being written up — check back soon.
Notes coming soon
Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
Psychology
Book Review
The Use of Knowledge in Society — Friedrich Hayek
Economics
Reading Notes
Why Nations Fail — Acemoglu & Robinson
Economics
Book Review
On Writing Well — William Zinsser
Language & Writing
Book Review
The Hedgehog and the Fox — Isaiah Berlin
Philosophy
Original Essay
Ergodicity Economics: A Primer
Economics
Original Essay
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
Philosophy
Reading Notes
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Literature & Fiction
Book Review
Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari
History
Book Review
The Black Swan — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Economics
Book Review
The Prince — Niccolò Machiavelli
Philosophy
Reading Notes
Range — David Epstein
Psychology
Book Review
Listography
Making lists is how I make sense of the world. 6 lists, 40 items.
6 lists
40 items
Updated February 2026
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• The Ride of a Lifetime — Robert Iger
Recommended by three people I respect. Want to understand how Iger navigated Disney's digital transformation and media disruption.
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• Measure What Matters — John Doerr
OKRs keep coming up in conversations about organisational effectiveness at Wenta. Want to understand the framework properly.
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• Good Strategy Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt
A counterweight to all the strategy frameworks floating around. Rumelt's critique of corporate strategy is sharp and necessary.
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• The Goal — Eliyahu Goldratt
Theory of Constraints is everywhere in operations thinking. Want to understand it through the original narrative novel.
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• How to Take Smart Notes — Sönke Ahrens
About the Zettelkasten method. My current note-taking feels scattered; this might offer structure.
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• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — Thomas Kuhn
Paradigm shifts. Fundamental to how I think about regulatory change and disruption.
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• Playing to Win — A.G. Lafley & Roger Martin
Strategy from the Procter & Gamble perspective. Practical and grounded in real competitive dynamics.
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• The Art of Action — Stephen Bungay
Combines Boyd's OODA Loop with practical business strategy. Been meaning to read this for three years.
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• Permission Marketing — Seth Godin
Written in 1999 but still relevant to how fintech thinks about customer relationships and permission to engage.
• Tyler Cowen
His ability to connect economics to culture, food, and everyday life is unmatched. Marginal Revolution is a daily read.
• David Perell
Taught me that writing online is the most underrated professional skill. His essays on technology and culture are sharp.
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Antifragile changed how I think about risk in regulation and finance. Provocative but consistently right about tail risk.
• Adam Smith
More than just the invisible hand. His work on moral sentiment and social behaviour is deeper than most people realise.
• Isaiah Berlin
On pluralism, freedom, and the conflict between values. His essay on Herzen shaped how I think about liberty and tradeoffs.
• Friedrich Hayek
The Road to Serfdom is overrated, but his work on knowledge problems and dispersed information is fundamental to regulation.
• Paul Graham
His essays on startups, technology, and writing shaped how I think about progress. Clear thinking expressed simply.
• René Girard
Mimetic theory. Once you understand that we desire what others desire, you can't unsee it in politics, markets, and culture.
• Yancey Strickler
On creative independence and how to fund the work that matters. His writing on patronage and economics of culture is original.
• Hannah Arendt
On totalitarianism, power, and the political. Dense but revelatory about how societies can lose freedom slowly.
• The Dream Machine — M. Mitchell Waldrop
The story of J.C.R. Licklider and the birth of personal computing. Stripe Press at its best: deep history of an idea that changed everything.
• The Alignment Problem — Brian Christian
How do we ensure AI systems do what we want them to do? The most thoughtful book on AI safety and ethics I've read.
• The Roaring Twenties — Benjamin H. Hall
Economic history of the post-war boom. Relevant to understanding inflation, policy responses, and how economies recover.
• The Seafaring Tradition — James Nestor
On how maritime history shapes modern commerce and technology. Unique perspective from Stripe Press.
• Ergodicity
The insight that time averages and ensemble averages aren't the same thing. Changes everything about how you think about risk and ruin.
• Mimetic Theory
René Girard's idea that we desire what others desire. Once you see it, you can't unsee it in markets, politics, and relationships.
• Skin in the Game
Taleb's argument that people making decisions should bear the consequences. Fundamental to good regulation and accountability.
• Second-Order Thinking
Always ask: and then what? Most policy mistakes and market failures come from ignoring second and third-order effects.
• The Lindy Effect
Things that have survived a long time will probably survive longer. A useful filter for what to read, who to learn from, and what to build.
• Via Negativa
Improvement by subtraction. Often the best thing to do is remove something rather than add. Applies to policy, code, and life.
• OODA Loop
Boyd's observe-orient-decide-act framework. Useful for thinking about organisational speed and competitive advantage.
• Regulatory Economics
How do you design rules that protect consumers without stifling innovation? This is my day job, essentially. Endlessly fascinating.
• Iraqi History & Diaspora
Understanding where I come from. The modern history of Iraq is fascinating and underexplored in English literature.
• Small Business Finance
Six years at the British Business Bank showed me how much the SME lending market matters for the real economy and employment.
• Austrian Economics Tradition
Studying in Vienna gave me a different perspective. Hayek, Schumpeter, Mises, the whole tradition of thinking about markets and knowledge.
• Language & Etymology
Words have histories. Understanding them makes you a better writer, thinker, and communicator. Trilingual perspective helps.
• Triathlon & Endurance Sport
The discipline of training for three disciplines teaches you about consistency, marginal gains, and the importance of recovery.
• Second Brain (Notion)
I keep everything in Notion — reading notes, project plans, lists, research. It's how I think externally and maintain context.
• Spaced Repetition
Using Anki to remember what I read. Without it, most books would fade in weeks. Spacing out review forces deeper retention.
• Weekly Review
Every Sunday: review the week, plan the next one, update the lists. Simple but transformative for clarity and intention.
• Morning Pages
Three pages of longhand writing first thing. Clears the mind before the day starts. Unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness thinking.
Projects
Chrome extensions and tools I've built. All open-source on GitHub.
A Chrome extension that brings back the classic Financial Times comment experience. The FT's current comment system collapses all replies by default, making it tedious to follow discussions. This extension lets you expand or collapse all comments with one click, or set it to auto-expand every time.
Features
- Expand All — instantly expand every comment and reply with one click
- Collapse All — collapse replies while keeping top-level comments visible
- Always Expand — toggle on to auto-expand comments on every FT article you visit
JavaScript
Chrome Extensions API
Shadow DOM
MutationObserver
A Chrome extension that sorts your YouTube video tabs by duration — shortest videos on the left, longest on the right. Built for those moments when you have a dozen YouTube tabs open and only a few minutes to spare.
Features
- One-Click Sort — click the toolbar icon to instantly organise all your YouTube tabs
- Smart Duration Detection — uses multiple fallback methods to accurately detect video length
- Clean Organisation — YouTube videos sorted by length, other tabs moved to the right
JavaScript
Chrome Extensions API
YouTube Data API
ISO 8601
A swipe-style interface for quickly rating and managing films on Letterboxd. Browse through films as a card deck — swipe to mark as watched, like, or add to your watchlist. Actions happen in the background so you never leave the deck.
Features
- Swipe Deck — browse films as cards with mouse or keyboard controls
- Background Actions — rate, like, or watchlist films without leaving the deck view
- Auto-Advance — automatically moves to the next film after each action
- Auto-Next Page — when you finish a page of films, it loads the next page automatically
- Works Everywhere — popular films, decade browsing, genre pages, watchlists, and user lists
Controls
- Mark as Watched — left zone or left arrow key
- Like — top zone or up arrow key
- Add to Watchlist — right zone or right arrow key
- Skip — bottom zone or down arrow key
JavaScript
CSS Animations
Chrome Extensions API
Letterboxd
Work in Progress In Progress
Things I'm actively building, writing, or training for. Some are close to launch, others are still taking shape.
InfraMosaic
Podcast
A podcast about energy infrastructure, the energy transition, and the people building it. Currently in pre-production — studio scouted, equipment researched.
inframosaic.com
Substack Newsletter
Writing
My newsletter on economics, books, and ideas. Drafts in the queue on economic paradoxes, barriers to growth in developed nations, and UK institutional decline.
leathalobaidi.substack.com
Stripe Press Book Club
A reading community built around Stripe Press titles — 19 books on technology, economics, science, and civilisation, read across four seasonal quarters in 2026.