Economic statistics are famously cookable. So it i s usually wise to look behind the artificial screens and curtains they create. Simple spending spurts can boost ‘economic growth’ but it is the ‘how’ of the money spending rather than the ‘how much’ of it that really matters for ‘economic prosperity’ for everyone. Is Sri Lanka [...]
At its essence what does capitalism mean? Many people have different interpretations. For some it means the senseless exploitations of big corporations, the hegemony of global super powers or the controlled corruption of the financial system. For others it means the efficient allocation of resources and the supreme power of the individual to control his [...]
Student loans are crippling Americans. Education in the US is expensive because education is privatized, but that is not to say that community colleges with cheaper education do not exist. But the better jobs and opportunities go to students from more expensive universities because the perception is that these universities are better. And this is [...]
I remember when I did my O/Ls. I crammed a few months before the exam. And passed pretty well. At that time (which wasn’t so long ago!) the exam was a repeating pattern; most teachers knew the most common questions. So they focussed more on these areas when studying the textbooks. Exam questions also got [...]
From the guy who ‘helps’ you park at a random location in Colombo and then snidely asks for payment for a service you never noticed him doing, to the hustlers outside airports who get you taxis by yelling and waving their arms about, rent seekers are everywhere. Unless you want to pay someone for waving [...]
With the new budget the government has shown stores inclination to make the country more business friendly. The vast amount of tax concessions provided together with incentives for exporters make it more attractive for foreign companies to set up factories and obtain services here. But a lot depends on the global situation now and what [...]
Over the past several weeks the Euro zone has been steadily unraveling. A debt crisis that began in Greece has now moved to several other key nations like Italy and Spain like a virus. Even Euro giants like France and Germany aren’t safe anymore. What’s happening in Europe may seem like a distant dream to [...]
The new budget is meh. For those not in the know, ‘meh’ is internet-slang for a shoulder shrug. Other than the out the blue devaluation of the Rupee, the budget didn’t deliver any major surprises. This is probably a good thing, the surprises sprung in past budgets have seldom been happy, but this budget wasn’t [...]
There’s a lot of talk about cronyism in India, corruption in China and crony-capitalism in Sri Lanka. Many of the Newly Industrialising countries all over the world are accused of these things. Cronyism and corruption are a result, it is accused, of autocratic statism, of a fundamental failing in democracy but changing global conditions are [...]
I recently saw a picture of a whole Chinese apartment building that just toppled over as the topsoil got a little loose after the rain. This might say a lot about China’s construction boom. Construction and infrastructure, while building infrastructure is useful to the economy in the long run, it has to obviously be of [...]
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