India’s stock markets have revived and touched inexplicable peaks even while the real economy braces for what may be the largest contraction in post-Independence economic history. Having collapsed from a level in excess of 40000 in late February, when the…
Reactions have come in from different quarters after the Indian Government introduced new screening rules for foreign direct investment (FDI) in April 2020. The latest Press Note on FDI (Press Note 3, 2020) has made government approval mandatory for all…
What had been only a suggestion by several prescient members of the capitalist establishment till now, has become official policy, at least in Britain where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that his government will undertake public investment to stimulate…
There has been much discussion about how external debt concerns are likely to weigh heavily on developing countries in their attempts at economic recovery in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of this discussion has centred on emerging markets…
In the wake of the India-China conflagration at the border, the worst in more than five decades, the fault lines of India’s economic relationship with its northern neighbour are now wide open. Amidst the demands for boycotting Chinese products and…
Between, say December 25, 2019, and June 23, 2020, world crude (brent) oil prices have fallen by nearly 37 per cent. They had fallen by over 60 per cent between end-December and mid-April, but there has been some price-recovery since…
India’s central government was faced with a fiscal crisis even prior to the Covid-induced lockdown. Provisional estimates from the Controller General of Accounts of actual revenues collected in financial year 2019-20, or the fiscal year that ended March 2020, point…
Something very odd is happening in the United States. The coronavirus toll keeps rising with no end in sight. The economy has virtually collapsed with more than 40 million people filing for unemployment. Thousands are out on the streets protesting…
While forecasters grapple with predictions on the likely contraction in the world’s leading economies, big finance, especially in the US, seems to be prematurely preparing for its next celebration. Recall that while the post-2008 Great Recession was precipitated by the…
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…
