On August 9, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan released the last bi-monthly monetary policy statement that would be drafted under his leadership. No changes were made: the benchmark ‘repo’ rate was kept at 6.5 per cent, the cash reserve ratio at…
In the fourth round of what has become a periodic exercise, the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), the “oldest and largest” trade union in the industry, has released a list of 5,610 wilful defaulters on debt they owe commercial…
One is witnessing the emergence of a strange and unprecedented phenomenon in the advanced capitalist world, namely the charging of negative interest rates. The European Central Bank reduced its deposit rate to -0.1 percent in June 2014, and since then…
In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed, two countries that were seen as crucial to propping up global economic growth and even ensuring a recovery were China and India. Prior to the…
On February 4, after meetings held at Dubai for security reasons, an IMF team arrived at an agreement with officials from Islamabad, which would permit the release of the last-but-one tranche of $497 million out of an SDR 4.393 billion…
Officers and other employees of the public sector IDBI Bank, organised under the banner of the United Forum of IDBI Officers and Employees, struck work for a day on November 27 protesting against the government’s decision to privatise the bank.…
2015 has not been a good year in India’s stock markets. The Sensex, for example, has declined from a high of around 29,680 in late January to a low of around 25,200 in early September. Despite evidence of fluctuations, that…
The Chinese central bank’s decision last week to let the yuan depreciate in three stages by almost 4 percent against the U.S. dollar, was officially explained as a move towards greater market determination of its exchange rate. Though this explanation…
At the end of July, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely placed a supplementary demand for grants in Parliament, which included Rs. 12,010 crore year to recapitalise public sector banks by enhancing their equity capital. This demand for recapitalisation funds was to…
On 27 July, 2015 the BSE Sensex dropped by 551 points relative to its previous closing value. The index fell by a further 102 points the subsequent day. Such single-day declines need not be a cause for concern. The stock…
