Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s Blog

In the Hindi blockbuster movie Gajini, the lead actor suffers from a disastrous aliment “Short-term Memory Loss”.  The current market euphoria across the world reminds me of a similar mental state for investors across  asset classes who are unable to grasp the toughest lessons of last year’s global economic crisis.  The crisis was predominantly about [...]

The recent debate about aid, sparked by Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid, has polarised the development community.  However, effective aid has an important role to play in the quest for sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction.
In her book, Ms Moyo suggests that government bonds can take the place of development assistance. This is probably unrealistic. [...]

It seems only yesterday that scarcity was the story. Energy and commodity prices were heading into the stratosphere. The oil was running out, food shortages loomed, Russia was resurgent and China was marching into Africa amid a scramble for dwindling resources.
Now? Prices everywhere are falling as recession bites. Investment banks have disappeared; and the global [...]

Sherman McCoy, the fictional 1980s “Master of the Universe” Wall Street bond trader, had his sights set on a deal that could earn him $ 1.7m in commission payments, money he needed to pay off the mortgage on a lavish Park Avenue apartment.  “The only real problem was the complexity of the whole thing,” readers [...]

The Asian countries learnt many valuable lessons from their financial crisis in 1998: do not liberalise the financial sector too quickly, borrow in moderation, save in earnest, take care of the real economy, invest in productivity, focus on education.  Hence, while America was busy creating a financial house of cards, Asians focused on their real [...]