Another year, another messy situation with inflation: we continue to suffer the consequences of faulty economic policy institutions. To get a sense of what is going on, be sure to ignore the standard year-on-year inflation data (which shows what happened in the last 12 months), and instead use seasonally adjusted month-on-month price changes (which show [...]

Popular myth and, allegedly, the laws of aerodynamics have it that the bumblebee should not be able to take flight. Yet still, our good bumblebee refuses to be pulled down by such details and year after year it takes flight as if nothing has happened. This allegory applies, with some imagination, to Japans economy too. [...]

Here’s a list of interesting readings for this week.
In NY Times, Paul Krugman discussed (link) the painfulness of financial crisis in Ireland and the U.S and suggesting what we should learn from banking regulation in Canada to prevent future crises of similar proportions.
In Waging War on Black Teens, Richard W. Rahn and Izzy Santa wrote [...]

A few years ago, when Percy Mistry’s committee was working on the MIFC report, I used to joke that of the two great industries in Bombay, movies will make it first to international customers. A few days ago in the New York Times, Anupama Chopra [...]

When central planners take the outcome away from the self-organising system of the market economy, we often get strange outcomes. At the end of June 2009, 32 foreign banks
were in India with 293 branches. In addition, 43 foreign banks were in India through `representative offices’. (Source: RBI Annual Report. Hat tip: Radhika Pandey).
In a news item [...]

Well, it might appear that my smug headline in the post below may not have been so appropriate after all. At least I find the news from the FT today that Eurozone members, headed by France and Germany, are considering to set up an internal IMF type fund very significant.
(from the FT)
Germany and France are [...]

In a week when the Greek leadership declares it a historic moment for the European Union that the ailing country has agreed to swallow an additional austerity plan which, so far, seems to have calmed markets it would almost be too much to continue picking on the Eurozone. Yet pick I am going to nonetheless [...]

Vikas Bajaj in the New York Times on privatisation in India.
I had recently written a blog post on India’s foolishness on visa rules for people coming into conferences. Siddharth Varadarajan has a great opinion piece on this in [...]

Financial stability, regulatory coordination, financial reforms
So far, in India, regulatory coordination was based on the HLCC. This has not been a particularly good experience. The HLCC was not statutory and there was no defined mechanism through which decisions would be obtained. Many inter-regulatory difficulties simply languished. One peculiar aspect of the HLCC was that it [...]

Even if you don’t usually read the Economic Survey, this year, the chapter titled Micro foundations of inclusive growth is well worth reading.