Indian Roads are living, thriving economic entities that not many Indians pay attention to. It takes an outsider to recognize how noisily vibrant the market on the roads is.
Is it simply a product of hype or is there an element of truth to the Banglore symdrome is something that I don’t know. But apparently Amazon thinks Bangalore is the place to be. Amazon has an office at Bangalore now! I hope they start offering free shipping within India or something!
AlwaysOn Network has an excellent discussion on the weakening of the U.S. dollar. It also hints at replacing U.S. dollar with gold. But as of now, only Euro is a strong contender for that place.
Deepak sent me this awesome article Joel Spolsky wrote on pricing. And if you cant understand economics from that article, my dear friends, I have no hesitation in labelling you a “Lost Cause”. It is hilarious and hits the nail exactly on the head!
Brad DeLong , as resourceful as ever, picks up an article on the horror that the world has to face with mounting U.S. deficits.
I can readily grasp the logic of the argument that, without non-japan asian countries, U.S. deficits would never have become as high as they are now. After all it takes two to tango!
Rajesh Jain quotes WSJ’s article on Mr.Doomsday of Oil, Colin Campbell:
More to the point, nobody knows how much can be gotten out of the ground. Much of the oil lies in places with volatile politics, including the Middle East, Russia and Africa.
First they attracted manufacturing industries in droves with low cost manpower, stable government and very less tax. But as manufacturing industries gauged the even more cheaper alternatives in other under developed East Asian countries, they fled Singapore (very few remain and do not function as manufacturing units but more like Head Quarters).
In this aspect, I would like to compare India wtih Singapore. Singapore citizens have thrived on the services industry. Most of the citizens earned (and still do earn) their money by providing services or by being owners of small shops in big malls. or simply an owner of a small stall in an “hawker centre”. Singapore’s vigilant health and welfare ministry ensures longevity and Singapore has an alarming number of senior citizens. Moreover, the savings of the Senior Citizens, are mostly spent on the higher education of their children.
This, of course, was a very haphazard arrangement. Different countries adopted different tactics to make their goods cheaper than the others and conserve the national gold reserves. During the First World War this system was abused by most nations, leading to its downfall.
Agriculture is the susbsistence of most developing nations. With low domestic demand, most of the developing nations look towards international markets for their agricultural products. But, the strict and heavy import duties levied by the developed nations (U.S, E.U and Japan) prevent agricultural exports and hence constrain the development of the poor countries. Moreover, U.S and E.U. also provide farm subsidies to their farmers that creates an artificial trade distortion and artificial lowering of prices of agricultural goods made in U.S.