Sunday Posts

BRICS, the acronym fashioned by Jim O'Neill to signify a special set of 'emerging' economies that would drive global growth, had better days. There was a time, in the immediate aftermath of the Global Credit Crisis, when these economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, for the uninitiated - held strong and showed promise. However, as the commodity prices and global demand slumped, the economies started fluttering; political mismanagement and corruption caught up as well. While the Russian and Brazilian economies went into recession, and South Africa teetered on the brink of Sovereign Debt crisis, China seemed to be heading to a hard landing and Indian government of the time lost the will and initiative. By 2014, people were writing obituary of the BRICS idea. Even Mr O'Neill moved on to the 'Next 11', smaller, faster growing countries, which are less diverse and politically more amenable, eventually settling down for another smart acronym - MIN...

Jim O'Neill has come up with a new acronym - MINT - and it has already hit the radio waves. Whether this ends up making waves as BRICS did, we will see: Famous as he is with these acronyms, his N-11, a list of 11 countries that were to become the next movers-and-shakers of the world economy, failed to gain traction. Perhaps, eleven countries were far too many to be optimistic about (and for bond traders, to focus on) and therefore, this new catchy shortlist making the memorable acronym, which has a good chance of success. It is interesting to see that people are getting excited about this new set of countries just as the previous set, BRICs, seem to be in some sort of trouble. Indeed, articles such as 'Broken BRICS'   and 'The Great Deceleration ' (with a memorable cartoon of BRICs countries drowning in a quicksand) have appeared during the course of last year, pointing out the many problems these economies faced once their stellar growth rates slowed down an...