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…
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…
