Globally, equity and bond markets are turning bearish. Analysts seem to be unanimous in their explanation: the era of cheap and abundant money, that was leveraged for investments in capital markets, is over. Governments and central banks are tiring of…
Its once again a time for exposés of big ticket scams. The headline hogger currently is the alleged huge Rs. 11,400 crore ‘scam’ unearthed in transactions through the Punjab National Bank (PNB) involving diamond merchants Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.…
In India, we tend to obsess a lot about the growth rate of national income, worrying if it drops even a tenth of a percentage point below market expectations, and checking fiscal and monetary indicators with respect to the value…
For India’s post-liberalisation poster-child, the software and IT-enabled services industry, recent developments in the global economy are bound to be disconcerting. Even as early signs of a synchronized global recovery emerge, fears of inflation and high interest rates have resulted…
This Debate contribution describes the promotion of digital rather than cash payments as a form of the financialization of finance, in its role as a payments system, with reference to recent Indian experience. The obsession with digital transactions as a…
When the government presented its third supplementary demand for grants to the winter session of parliament, the list of expenditures included Rs. 80,000 crore for a first tranche investment in equity of the public sector banks to recapitalize them. This…
A feature of banking in India that has not received the attention it deserves is the business reflected in the off balance sheet or contingent liabilities of banks. Typical of such liabilities are swaps, options and forward rate contracts involving…
Despite its clear violation of the law, telecom major Airtel appears to have been let off lightly by the government. And that story, though reported, has neither led to adequate punishment nor has it received the extent of media attention…
In most market economies, the disbursal of bank credit is usually a relatively reliable indicator of the extent of dynamism, of both expectations and actual economic expansion. So much so that it is often viewed by analysts as a better…
Bitcoin has left the world of finance gasping. Though the total market value of all of that cryptocurrency in circulation is only a fraction of the value of the world’s financial assets, the rapid rise in the value of the…
