October 2008 - Posts - An Awkward Corner

October 2008 - Posts

A Short (And Partial) History of Dalal Street Crashes

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
The idea for this post comes from something I read in an Economic Times front page story on Muhurat trading for Samvat 2065. "A broker since 1957, (Jasvantlal) Shah, said he has never seen such a huge crash except in 1963 and in 1969, when forward trading was banned." What happened in in those years? There is not much information out there...

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Emerging Markets: The Next Crisis

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
The financial crisis began in US subprime mortgages in the summer of 2007 and has since then rapidly moved into every nook and crevice of the global financial system --- commercial banks, monoline insurers, wholesale credit markets, interbank lending markets, hedge funds, money market mutual funds... Are emerging markets next? It looks increasingly...

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The Keynes Revival

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has led to renewed interest in the economist who towered over all his clueless peers in those turbulent times --- John Maynard Keynes . Keynes' legacy has been controversial and many believed that the monetarist and rational expectations innovations in the 1960s and 1970s gave his brand of economics...

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More On Paul Krugman And Avinash Dixit

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
I had blogged earlier about how Krugman won his Nobel by building on work done by Avinash Dixit (in collaboration with Joseph Stiglitz). There were several comments to that post that indirectly suggested that the Nobel should have been shared by Krugman and Dixit. (Stiglitz already has his Nobel in the bag, for his work on information.) Dixit has now...

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Watching Children Walking To School

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
To get to Goa, you have to turn off the NH4 and drive east towards the Western Ghats. This is a completely different topography and economy. The roads are terrible. The villages on this route are far poorer than the ones we left behind as well as the ones we are driving towards --- they are neither in the prosperous sugar belt around Kolhapur nor in...

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High On Highways

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
I drove down to Goa with my family over the weekend --- and could not help once again marvel at the way the national highways progamme has changed the country. It took us a mere five hours to travel from Mumbai to Kolhapur, a distance of around 400 kilometres. The road that took us beyond Kolhapur and into Karnataka --- what is called the Kagal section...

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What is Capt Gopinath Really Up To?

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
The alliance between Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines is expected to change the game for the airlines industry, for consumers --- and for Capt G.R. Gopinath. There have been several reports after the alliance was made public that Gopinath may walk away and buy back Air Deccan, his pioneering low-cost airline, from Kingfisher. He had sold it to Kingfisher...

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Paul Krugman --- The Indian Connection

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
There is no doubt in my mind that Paul Krugman richly deserved the Nobel Prize in economics. The Nobel prize committee usually does a good job explaining in simple English what the prize has been given for. It's no different this year. Read this note on how Krugman helped us understand what goods are produced where. That led to a fresh and radical...

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Don't Worry, Be Happy, Sell Mortgages

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
The newspapers have a chilling front-page story today on an unemployed NRI who shot his wife, mother-in-law and three sons before turning the gun on himself. Karthik Rajaram was wiped out in the stock market crash. Suicides are not unknown during times of financial distress --- think of the farmers of Vidarbha and the stock brokers of New York in 1929...

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How The Gale May Blow Through India: Update

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
I have updated my previous post. Share this post: email it! | del.icio.us! | digg it! | newsVine!

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Back To 1929?

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
"The slump on the New York Stock Exchange ... is one of the spectacular episodes of financial history. A prolonged upward movement ... has been built up over a series of years on the amazing and unexampled prosperity of America. But some two years ago the speculative movement seemed to lose all touch with reality; and in spite of occasionally vigorous...

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Hedge Funds: The Dogs Did Not Bark

Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha at 
Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion's ability, but I saw by the inspector's face that his attention had been keenly aroused "You consider that to be important?" he asked. "Exceedingly so." "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention...

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