The Small Voice

“A long, long time ago... I can still remember How that music used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people dance And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.” Maybe not so long ago, we were in the BJP led coalition regime which had all but the very best of policies running for the corporate India . Thankfully, the saffron was stuffed where it belong to, in the puja rooms and the sadhus and politicians donned the reformist mantle, out to make the nation shine. Thus came the telecom reform (this time for the cell phone and the Reliance phone for the aam aadmi) and along with came a slew of well thought out guidelines, which till today, are the strong foundation for the sector to reach where it has today. We had the foreign money flowing in, thick and fast and suddenly, the sleepy, humdrum small towns woke up to improvements in the infrastructure drive. The trickle down effect hadn’t really started then, but the govt. from their New Delhi ...

The US slowdown looks imminent what with the leading indicators like the jobless claims as well as the housing rates all coming down not steadily. Right now, though one doesn’t question the Fed’s abilities and foresight, it seems quite unlikely that they will be able to do much to slow down or stop the slowing process. After all, Macro Economics rarely pays much respect to the Economists as well as the central Bankers. In a nutshell, if its is gonna slow down, it will slowdown and there aint pretty much you can do about it. However, with the anticipation and proper planning, you(the Fed) can only delay the inevitable or bring down to a soft landing with its policies and direction. So, in effect the only question is how bad the slowdown would be, how long it will last and whether the Fed is able to achieve some kind of a soft landing. The implications of the situation will have impact on the whole world, except isolated economies. India, today is quite a lot dependent or...