Vedpuriswar's Blog

Vinayak Chatterjee, an infrastructure expert, writing in the Business Standard ( March 15, 2010) mentions that the total size of the Union B...

Writing in Business Standard (March 11, 2010), the reputed economist, Shankar Acharya has reiterated a basic flaw in the government’s approa...

John Samuel Raja of Outlook Business (March 20, 2010) has provided a comprehensive picture of PSU disinvestments in our country. Currently t...

Bibek Debroy one of my favourite economists (Business Today, March 21, 2010.) has come out with a wish list of items which should get implem...

The problems in Greece have alerted us to a fundamental problem with government accounting. It lacks transparency. The Greeks fudged their w...

T N Ninan writing in Business Standard, 6-7 March 2010 ( Mamata's China tour) has nicely captured a fundamental flaw in the recent budge...

In his recent budget, Mr Pranab Mukherjee announced that through disinvestment of public sector undertakings ( PSUs) , he would be able to c...

In my earlier blogs, I have mentioned that non plan expenditure is wasteful. Let us examine a few figures to understand this point. The rece...

In an earlier blog, I mentioned that the quality of spending is as important as the quantum. In the recent budget, the total plan expenditu...

Mythili Bhusnurmath, writing in The Economic Times, 1 Mar 2010,has come up with what looks to me to be one of the most incisive pieces of an...

After the budget weekend, people have started analyzing the various proposals more deeply. It seems the revenues on account of the sale of 3...

Fisal discipline does not only mean reducing the gap between revenues and expenses. It also means cutting unproductive spending and raising ...

It is quite clear that the recent budget presented by Mr Pranab Mukherjee had little by way of structural reforms. A few economists and busi...

In the recent budget, the finance minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee has sought to give the impression to the media and the general public that h...

If the Government was serious about fiscal discipline, it would have done a lot to bring unproductive and wasteful expenses under control. U...

A quick glance at the leading dailies after Pranab Mukherjee presented the budget on February 26 reveals that most of our top businessmen a...

In the budget presented to the Parliament on Feb 26th, Mr Pranab Mukherjee projected revenues in the coming year from disinvestment of PSUs ...

The key theme of this year's budget was supposed to be fiscal consolidation . We indians are good at making simple things complicated. S...

With a few lollipops here and there and some clever jugglery of numbers, our finance minister seems to have made a favourable impression on ...

Many economists/ media persons have tried to make the best out of Mr Pranab Mukherjee's budget. Unfortunately, their arguments are wea...

Before World War II, the developed countries were on the gold standard. For every dollar printed, there was a dollar's worth of gold in ...

Ref Financial Times dt March 6, 2009 The Hungarian forint has hit a fresh record low against the euro following comments from Jean-Claude T...

Ref Gillian Tett, Financial Times March 5 2009 In the past few weeks, concerns about a sharp decline in global economic activity have mount...

Ref : Dollar strength will linger, Mansoor Mohi-uddin, Financial Times March 4 2009 What explains the strong dollar? The inability of non-U...

Ref : Norma Cohen Financial times, March 5 2009 The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) cut its key interest rate by half a ...

Former Australian prime minister writing in the Financial Times has stressed the need for democratisation of the global financial governance...

Ref Ralph Atkins, Financial Times March 5 2009 Eurozone interest rates have been slashed by a half percentage point to the lowest level e...

Ref : AIG still facing huge credit losses By Henny Sender in New York Financial Times, March 3 2009 AIG has declared a $62bn fourth-quarter...

Ref Leader, Business Standard March 3, 2009 Land acquisition remains one of the key factors which is slowing down industrial growth in the ...

Ref The Economist dt Sep 11, 2008 According to George Cooper of JP Morgan, one of the main reasons for the global financial melt down is ...

Till the recent slowdown, we had taken India's growth for granted. But now circumspection has increased. It is a good time to look at s...

Ref : The Economist dt December 13, 2008 The assets controlled by Britain’s banking system amount to 450% of GDP. This has drawn inevitabl...

Ref : Financial Times February 27 2009 Indian economic growth slowed to just 5.3 per cent in the last three months of 2008, its lowest grow...

Ref The Economist, Jan 15, 2009 Volatility refers to the standard deviation of the returns of a portfolio. Volatility contributes to risk. ...

Ref The Economist, Feb 19, 2009 In 1980, more than 60 American non-financial companies qualified for the AAA rating from Standard & Po...

On February 27th, Citigroup and the Treasury reached a deal that took a big step towards partial nationalisation. Through conversions of ...

Ref The Economist dt Dec 13, 2008 The collapse of the krona and nationalisation of the country’s three largest banks in early October, 2008 ...

Spreads on the ten-year government debt of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain over that of Germany have widened sharply. Rating agen...

This is the title of an article which recently appeared in The Economist. Many East European countries seem likely to default on their debt....

The core of Swiss banking, namely client confidentiality and privacy is being challenged. In the rich world, the mood against all big banks ...

The merger of Citibank and Traveller's Group in 1998 was one of the most publicised events in M& A history. Now that Citi is in deep...

According to Percy Mistry, one of the champions of Mumbai International Financial Centre, India's financial sector reforms have to accel...

The Business Standard came out with a very insightful editorial recently. "Should the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM...

According to a McKinsey report prepared about 7 years back, three factors reduced growth by as much as 4%. Little seems to have changed sin...

The government is not making much progress in the crucial area of pensions. The existing formal pension channels don’t cover unorganised sec...

The absence of a bankruptcy law and labour reforms, especially the difficulty in retrenching workers, has reduced the competitiveness of In...

It takes 71 days to get all requisite clearances for starting an enterprise in India. The same requires just five days in the US, six days ...

Despite the claims by the Finance Minister, nothing much is being done by the current government for education as the following statment by ...

The Economist recently mentioned that according to official estimates, China's government ran a budget deficit of around 1%last year. Bu...

Will the US dollar fall further or will it stage a smart recovery? That is the big question for currency strategists as 2008 gains momentum ...

These are truly exciting times provided you are an analyst or academic and you do not have any major exposure to the market! On January 30, ...

In recent months, analysts have been hotly discussing the concept of decoupling. Have the emerging markets finally broken free of their shac...

Two insightful pieces in Business Standard dt January 29, one an editorial and another an article by well known economist Lawrence Summers, ...

Why the Communists are barking up the wrong tree Going by Indian media reports, one would think that the whole issue was about India comprom...