Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

According to popular and probably unfounded belief, a Chinese curse wishes upon enemies that they may live in “interesting times”. Accursed or not, these times are nothing if not interesting. Policymakers have thrown away their maps and are leading us into the unknown. Each new initiative sets both markets and chatter aflutter, as people fret [...]

Athenian owls, Roman denarii, British sovereigns, US dollars.  There have been many pseudo reserve currencies down the ages.  Now the governor of the People’s Bank of China has called for a new global currency “disconnected from individual nations”.  Russia, too, wants to move away from a world dominated by the dollar. Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev [...]

Dubai must feel a little like Mark Twain, these days.  Upon reading his own obituary in the newspaper, Twain wrote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Dubai has had its share of obituaries as it suffers from a property bust and contagion from the global credit crisis.  Headlines from Cairo to London to [...]

Capitalism has been wounded by the global recession. Output, employment and earnings have all been hit by the crisis and will get worse before they get better. Nevertheless, even big downturns represent pauses in long-run progress if we keep the engines of long-term growth in place. This growth depends on investment in human and physical [...]

Asian elites have always looked at the world differently from western elites. And after this crisis is over, the gap in perspectives will widen. Asians will naturally view with caution any western advice on economics, particularly because most Asians believe that the crisis has only vindicated the Asian approach to capitalism.To be accurate, there is [...]