Inflation has been a global problem since last year. Ever since Covid-related lockdowns were lifted and people started buying goods and services just like in the days before Covid-19. Except that thanks to the lockdown, manufacturing facilities couldn’t ramp up production levels to meet the surging demand. Neither could shipping companies handle the surge in… Continue reading How Stubborn Can Inflation Get This Year?
China has begun the New Year, 2023, by reopening its economy and freeing its people from the harsh Covid-19 lockdown conditions they had been under for the past couple of years. It had to happen sooner rather than later, I thought. Either the world’s second largest economy would cave in, forcing the government to abandon… Continue reading The Locked-Down Giant Awaketh
Even as last year ended, there were rumblings of the possibility of the free foodgrain distribution scheme being extended beyond 2022. This is the additional 5kg of foodgrain that was offered free to households eligible under India’s PDS (public distribution system of heavily subsidized foodgrain) during the Covid pandemic. It must have brought tremendous relief… Continue reading Indian Economy Once More in Election Mode
It will soon be a year since Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Besides the toll it has taken on Ukrainian lives and livelihoods, there is a huge cost being imposed on countries around the world. In terms of food and energy shortages, and their high prices. Thankfully Ukraine is able to export foodgrains under an agreement… Continue reading When E = R x NT²
Finished reading the second of the three books my aged father gifted me for my birthday this August, and as someone who has read Kazuo Ishiguro, I have to say it is completely out of character with anything he has written before. I could tell from the book’s title itself, When We Were Orphans that… Continue reading Neither Orphans, Nor Detectives
More importantly, can it afford to? At the start of the 2007/08 Financial Crisis, many international commentators talked of the possibility of deglobalization, perhaps out of fears that the global financial system had grown too large, too fast, and that tougher regulation might force them to shrink their operations. Whether the regulatory system forced them… Continue reading Is the World Deglobalising?
Reading about China’s 20th Communist Party Congress that took place last month in Beijing, it’s good to think about what its message is to the Communist Party, to the people of China and to the world. As the world’s second-largest economy and one of the most populous, if not the most populous, countries in the… Continue reading Cold War with China Not What the World Needs
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Even in ordinary times, it is too much to expect consistency in economic policies from many governments. And these are anything but ordinary times. Yet, it is in turbulent times that we need consistent and relevant economic policies. Emerging from two years of a devastating pandemic, the global economy has had to deal with wild… Continue reading Winds of Change Affecting Economies
It’s a year since the worst of the Covid-19 outbreaks, and with most people fully vaccinated in many countries, economies are getting back to work. The biggest concern, though, around the world is soaring inflation which is well-entrenched now and broadbased, so interest rate hikes to tame it are in full swing. The tightening of… Continue reading Recession, Recession, Why Such Confusion
Peripatetic Perch 