In the 1920s and early 30s, John Maynard Keynes was embroiled in a controversy with the ‘austerians’ of his time, who believed that balancing the government budget, even in a time of economic volatility and decline and financial fragility, was…
The large cryptocurrency exchange FTX went out of business on November 11. Many have likened this phenomenon to the collapse of the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis of 2008, believing the FTX collapse to be as…
There are fundamental objections to the plan of the government to privatise at least some of the public sector banks. They centre around the fact that such a move will change the pattern of deployment of credit, away from productive…
The long-standing debate on whether India’s public sector banks should be privatized has resurfaced in recent days. Two articles, besides numerous statements from advocates of ‘reform’, triggered this round of debate—one wittingly and the other, perhaps unwittingly. The contribution that…
Debt-strapped Sri Lanka has reached a staff-level agreement with the IMF, that promises access to $29 billion over a 4-year period under the institution’s Extended Finance Facility. Given Sri Lanka’s $51 billion external debt, that sum is extremely small. It…
India’s enforcement directorate, still preoccupied with unearthing corruption and money laundering among opposition politicians, has decided to turn its attention to those involved in the crypto business in the country as well. Raids on the offices of crypto-exchanges (which manage…
On August 10, the central government, in a rare gesture of magnanimity, released Rs 1,16,665.75 crore, which was the estimated equivalent of two instalments (as opposed to one) of sharable taxes it must release to the states. It claimed that…
The hegemony of the US dollar was based on the fact that the world’s wealth-holders considered it to be “as good as gold”, even when it was no longer officially convertible to gold at a fixed rate, as it had…
Financial markets in the so-called ‘emerging economies’ are in turmoil. At the end of May 2022, the Financial Times reported that the return delivered by emerging market (EM) sovereign bonds was around minus 15 per cent for 2022, the worst…
Exuding optimism at a time when most indicators point to economic stress across the world, India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry put out a press release on 20 May celebrating what it describes as the “highest annual FDI (foreign direct…
