Sunday Posts

India is facing a crisis in credibility. Right at the time when the world economy turns south, the Indian leadership continues to fiddle and confuse, and is allowing the country to drift aimlessly. After years of abundant jobs, swelling salaries and cheap credit, suddenly the Indian middle class arrives in the age of redundancies, penny pinching and ever-rising rates of interest: The end of dream may have arrived, so it feels. This may be the time we all feared: This is like putting a car on reverse while zooming ahead at 100mph. Much of the prosperity in India was only the feel-good kind, only a few people did really well. The others read about them and had a feeling of progress. Suddenly, all of that disappointment may all surface, tearing the country apart. Unless, indeed, everyone's attention could be diverted with something compelling. Like a war, perhaps. This is a classic setting for jingoist, misanthropic leader who can find someone to blame. This is not a time for reas...

If the stock markets are to be believed, the US and the European economies are on the verge of a double-dip, a second recession in three years, which will possibly, inescapably perhaps, lead into a long great depression, the second time in modern history. Whether or not that really happens, one thing is clear: If we thought the recession of 2008 would be a short-lived affair, it turned out to be far more persistent. With governments and central banks across the OECD countries frozen into a rudderless chaos, as against their initial strident response with big stimulus and matching rhetoric, we can only expect the worst now. And, if this happens, this will transform our societies completely and reshape history, remember the last great depression ended in a global war and ensuing detente lasting over six decades, and these days and weeks would go down in history when we brought this upon ourselves, through our collective senselessness. The warning signs were all there. In 2008, we kne...

The Greeks are at it again. It is not their fault: They, like everyone else, believed in the system they lived inside. But, if one cares to look, we have irreversibly reached the age of sovereign bankruptcies. This isn't new: This used to be common for princely states. But, succumbing to the same historical disease is mightily embarrassing for modern states, and for those economists who claimed to have seen the end of history. The world we live in, shall we now admit, isn't sustainable. What we are witnessing are not minor blimps, but the death pangs of an aged system which has been on life support for a long time. We are living with hope that an unlimited supply of oxygen, in this case, bail-out money, will keep us going. But we are very very close to bankrupting everyone. To understand what might be, and how we can get out of the mess, it may be a good idea to turn to, yes, Greeks. More specifically, to this ancient Greek statesman, Solon (638 - 558 BC). Solon, a worldly wise...

David Cameron is one of the more 'impressive' Prime Ministers Britain has had in the recent years. Young, handsome, articulate, someone with 'clear' views and a bias for action, who wins almost every PMQ and who has so far effectively dangled the debt question to transform almost all aspects of British life: What a contrast this makes from the unloved Gordon Brown who could get nothing done. Cameron's twelve months already make the preceding Labour years feel like ancient history, the charmed life of the boom years as well as the time of massive expansion of the 'collectivist' credo, and he seems destined, like Tony Blair, to leave a legacy, however long his coalition manages to cling together. But, like Tony Blair, this legacy may not be a positive one for Britain. Because, David Cameron, for all his posturing, is a hopeless populist, who succumb to every opportunity to please his home crowd. He has not stopped being a publicist and start becoming a Prime M...

The crisis that did not happen, will possibly be the way history will remember this. Indeed, if there is a history to be written still, and if the events of last two years are to get a place in the usual boom-and-bust ride of the market capitalism. I say this because this may just be the end of history, no return to life as usual may be around the corner; or, may be that's just too pessimistic, we will just be unleashed in a brave new world where such things won't matter. One would love to think the Irish crisis, which didn't happen, won't matter. After all, we have now learned to be prepared. The lessons were learned when one had to get Greece out of water, and we almost always knew Spain and Ireland were coming. It is after all, just a monetary thing, which can be solved by pumping money in. And, it was. The trouble is, it does not end there. When you pump money in, you are plugging a whole today by taking away the wealth of the future generations. Or of people's ...

The World Cup Football could not have been timed better: We needed a diversion from continuous bad news. For every good news these days, there seems be something darker lurking around the corner. The moment economies seem to be returning to growth, inflation starts to raise its head. As we hear the US jobless rates dropped, we also know that most of these new jobs came from US Government, primarily temporary positions created for the US census work. In fact, the job data turned out to be bad news and only indicated a precipitous fall in private sector job creation. The scare regarding European finances seem to be on hold right now. But Europeans seem to have taken the recovery for granted. While Spain was forced into a Greece-style austerity package, Hungary's government thought talking about Greece-style meltdown is a good idea and paid the price. That, however, did not stop Britain's David Cameron keep stoking up the fears of Britain defaulting at some future date, all to ram...

When I was writing about the economic recession in October 2008 [ Memoirs of A Recession , for a local literary journal], I expected a short, painful recession, which will be ended by splurges of public spending. I also thought this would be an unfinished recession, which will come back in a few years with sovereign bankruptcies. President Bush was still at the helm, and I thought about the mother of all bankruptcies, that of America, and how that will mean the end of economics as we know it. I likened it to the First World War, which was an unfinished war, only to culminate in the mother of all wars, in 1939. I fancied telling the story as if sitting in 2040, old and wise, reflecting on lessons learnt and not learnt. It seems now that I was optimistic. The world has been on a downward spiral since then. We failed to learn the lessons. We tried failed and discredited remedies to new diseases, not recognizing the limitations of our thinking nor the complexities of our situation. Mostly,...