Never a dull moment

Economists have not been able to predict the economic whammy which hit the South eastern Tiger economies in 1998. Reviews by World Bank and leading private analysts painted a very rosy picture a week before these economies tanked. The currencies of Thailand, Indonesia , south Korea and Indonesia dived to half their values overnight. How could this have happened with all the tools and prescience economics and analysts are supposed to have ? A similar thing happened again in USA and developed world in 2008. The housing sub prime crisis exploded. Now everybody says that this was waiting to happen but nobody cautioned for preventive action until the bubble burst. A few economists warned of the impending disaster waiting to happen due to poor quality housing loans being given to all and sundry with little or no income. But they were very few and theirs was a cry in wilderness. The vast majority were going gaga over the blooming economy brought on by the housing boom. When the borrowers defa...

I am not a great fan of Hindi movies. Since we have chosen to settle down in Delhi and kids are keen on Hindi movies, I have been a few movies with them in the last three years. I had been with them for the first show on the day of release of "tare Zameen Par". Recently, I had a colleague of mine visiting for a meeting and the meeting was postponed for a day. For want of anything better to do, we roamed around for some time and decided to visit a theatre which is a landmark in grandeur. But the film on show was "Dabangg". My colleague, an ex IAS officer nearing golden age was keen to see the theatre and we went to watch the movie. Salman Khan had us in splits of laughter from the word go. It was a hilarious movie where Salman Khan's deliberate non acting acting stood out. He has been cast in Rajnikanth mould and I should say Salman outshone Rajni style in "Dabangg". Every action of Salman is exaggerated. When his mother dies, he cries as though half th...