There is a massive problem of external debt building up for the third world, of which the recent Argentine debt crisis was only one manifestation. At the root of the problem is the collapse of primary commodity prices in the…
In a trend which sees equity markets in the “emerging economies” imitate stock markets in the US, the MSCI Emerging Market Index that collapsed over the month ending 23 March, from more than 1,100 to just above 750 (Chart 1),…
Among the many damages wrought by the inapposite Central government policy response to the Covid pandemic in India is that on the fragile framework of economic cooperation between the Centre and the states. It is clear that the real task…
The inhumanity of the Modi government towards the people is matched only by its mendacity. And in both respects the Modi government is far ahead of most other governments in the world. Which other government would have passed off a…
Franklin Templeton (FT) has shut down six of its debt funds with an aggregate AUM (assets under management) of Rs. 25,856 crore (as on April 2020). Faced with such a situation, there are clamours for support from Reserve Bank of…
Despite repeated demands by the states the Centre still has not released what is their legitimate due, namely the compensation for their revenue loss owing to the introduction of GST; this has not been paid since August. Meanwhile the Covid-19…
In an editorial on April 3, The Financial Times of London wrote: “Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing the policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a…
Monetary policy can only make credit cheaper, it cannot bring money into the hands of workers. It cannot compensate for a fiscal stimuli, especially when India is in a liquidity trap. For such an unprecedented crisis, fiscal spending has been…
There is an exodus of finance from the third world at present, far exceeding in scale what had occurred in 2008 after the financial crisis. Even more important than the actual outflow is the desire on the part of finance…
At the recent G20 and IMF-WB Spring meetings held virtually in the third week of April 2020, a proposal for the IMF to issue an additional 500 billion of SDRs was blocked by the United States and – astonishingly –…
