Some interesting commentary in the papers this week: Anantha Nageswaran’s opening salvo, in the newly launched Mint: Central bankers in most of the developed world have taken that to heart in dealing with financial markets. Financial markets, in theory, have more participants than those engaged in the economic marketplace. Hence, the outcomes of their buying [...]
Back in the late 1990s, economists were trying to figure out what it was that led to the secular acceleration of economic growth in the United States: the longest and largest peace-time economic expansion in the 20th century (see footnotes). How was it that a country could grow so much and for so long without causing inflation and [...]
How much of Dr Manmohan Singh’s talk on reforming agriculture will get translated into action? Inaugurating the Second Agriculture Summit 2006 organised jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and FICCI, the Prime Minister declared that the endeavour of his government would be to bridge each of the four deficit viz. the public investment and credit [...]
Farmers are killing themselves because the government has denied them economic freedom
But if the crisis is an opportunity to reform agriculture, will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh take it up?
Back soon folks. Till then, links to some great reading – Larry Summers’ speech at the Reserve Bank of India on 24 March, 2006 – Edward Leamer’s review of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat – Our friend, Joydeep Mukherji’s paper for the Center for the Advanced Study of India at U. Penn, titled Economic [...]
There is an interesting article in the Financial Times today about a delay in the plans to launch the Asian Currency Unit (Acu). Not unsurprisingly the delays have been caused by “political and technical arguments over which currencies to include and how the weighting system would work” (this according, as they say, to ‘sources’ familiar [...]
On Monday, the benchmark Sensex index of the Bombay Stock Exchange breached the 10,000 mark for the first time since its launch in 1986. Time to say Irrational Exuberance? I am sure a lot of you have an opinion on this, especially those of you who work in the capital markets. Comments are open.
Reader Raj Iyer sent us this article from the Economic Times titled How govt tries to dig out black money: The government is examining the idea of issuing special bonds to mop up black money without offering any amnesty to the subscriber. The issue has been referred to the law ministry to ensure that such [...]
Manmohan Singh has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required) a mini-manifesto, if you will. Regular readers of IEB will find nothing new. It’s an impressive to-do list, and includes many of our favorite things as well. So, are we going to see Mr Singh finally flexing his muscles and follow up with [...]
Consulting firm A T Kearney’s annual survey of FDI destinations reveals that For the first time in the history of the Index, which began tracking the FDI intentions of global executives in 1998, emerging market countries are ranked first and second as the most attractive FDI locations in the world. … China and India took [...]
Business Week writes about the success of two commodities exchanges in India. Two years ago government deregulation allowed two competing Indian exchanges, the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), which deals mostly with agricultural products, and the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), which mostly handles energy and metals, to open for business. The fully electronic exchanges [...]
Consider this experiment: you are a punter, and you get a letter from me saying that I have the ability to forecast the result of all cricket matches, and if you pay me Rs. 10,000, I shall tell you what will happen in the next game so that you can make a killing — perhaps [...]
It’s stale news by now that India is a favourite of the large global private equity firms. The recent announcements by Blackstone and Draper Fisher Jurvetson (of Hotmail fame) to invest $1 billion and $200 million respectively in India confirms this trend. Those who have followed this trend know that a good part of the [...]
Devangshu Dutta writes in DNA: In the Melbourne Test of 1907-08, the English last wicket pair of Sydney Barnes and Arthur Fielder needed to get 39 runs,while the Aussies, of course, needed one wicket. Most tailenders would have tried to hit the runs off and probably got out. After a mid-pitch conference, these two decided [...]
That excellent columnist, Ila Patnaik, writes in the Indian Express: The drama in the stock market has highlighted how India is still an immature market economy. It is the job of the stock market to fluctuate, to move in response to expectations. But in the media and in official circles in India, this induces disproportionate [...]
Powered by WordPress