The Gold Standard  

Called up Niranjan, editor of MINT and good friend, last afternoon to ask him whether he had seen any recent studies on India’s growth sensitivity to global growth. I remain concerned that India’s nominal GDP growth assumptions for 2010-11 up to 2012-13 – used in the budget – do not leave any room for disappointments.
He [...]

I shall start with mine. You can find it here. India’s Finance Minister presented the fiscal budget for 2010-11 on Friday, February 26th. He promised a vision document. It did not quite amount to that, to put it mildly. Given what had happened in Greece and given the fact that this was no ‘election year’ [...]

I used to wonder the point of this document and I increasingly do so. There is no connection whatsoever between what the survey says and what the goverment does the next day. It has never been the case. It is just the wish-list of the economist (Kaushik Basu, now) in charge of preparing it. Also, [...]

Say what you will, Simon Johnson and Peter Boone cannot be accused of being unclear and also cannot be accused of being reluctant to bear bad news. They name names. Agree on their recommendation to hike capital requirements on banks substantially. When and if would it happen? Worth reading the whole stuff, however.
In the meantime, [...]

This article by Geoff Dyer and this one in Bloomberg seem to have been anticipated by James Kynge in this piece written in February 2010.
Geoff Dyer writes this in the opening sentence:
A high school boasts an impressive indoor swimming pool and several of the region’s main universities have built large campuses. Pristine high-rise apartment blocks [...]

This Bloomberg story on Glaxo, Avandia (diabetes drug) and the risk of heart attack it causes, whether Glaxo was aware, informed patients, physicians, etc. has an all-too-familiar and depressing ring to it. GSK’s explanation on its web site appears convincing until you read this piece in NYT and the last lines:
In 1999, for instance, Dr. [...]

Swaminathan Aiyar’s piece on 15th Feb. on the budget speech that the Finance Minister would not make is an oustanding one.  How one dearly hopes that the FM would make such a speech. That would make India the beacon of sound public policy and development for the entire world. Well, if wishes were horses…
The second [...]

Reading the sentence below from this site,
My generation has grown up bombarded by CNN images of tanks, terrorists and children with swollen bellies covered in flies,” said sophomore Jacob Seigel-Boettner, 21, a global poverty minor currently studying in Croatia.
I was reminded of William Easterly’s post on ‘How to write about poor people’. He did a [...]

In the ‘India Today’ issue dated Feb. 8, 2010, there are two different articles with two common themes: one common theme is Gujarat and the other common theme is that of checkdams that Gujarat has pursued relentlessly. The first one about the second Green Revolution in Gujarat is a box-item in the cover story discussing [...]

The release of the monthly TIC data by the US Treasury was cause for some hyperventilation among journalists and others. China’s holding of US Treasuries Notes and Bonds had dropped by about USD35 billion. Is China dumping the dollar? Some wondered if it had anything to do with President Obama meeting with the Dalai Lama. [...]