False bottom suitcases and $134 billion

134billion

It is hard to believe that anyone can be caught with $134 billion worth of bonds in a false-bottomed suitcase. I did a search for “134 billion” and even Google couldn’t believe it.
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Babysitting the US economy

Krugman is always good for a nice read. His June 14th NT Times op-ed, “Stay the Course“, does not disappoint. He writes, “For this is the third time in history that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts, the conventional way to perk up the economy, have reached their limit. When this happens, unconventional measures are the only way to fight recession.”
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Rajan Parrikar’s Photo Blog

My friend Rajan Parrikar has a photo blog which you must visit. Rajan’s photography site has breathtaking pictures of Goa, India, and California. Awesome. I particularly like his Death Valley National Park pictures.

The Lesson that the BJP needs to learn

“What exactly is ‘Hindu nationalist’ about the BJP?” asks T V R Shenoy in an excellent piece in rediff.com news.
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Favorite Bits from the Archives: Competition

Competition on the supply side is good if you are on the demand side, and competition on the demand side is good if you are on the supply side. Otherwise competition is evil. That is why governments of third world countries limit competition on the supply side — the better to extract rents from the economy.
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Favorite Bits from the Archive: Stuff and Ideas

Some good stuff gets buried in all the trivia. Here are a couple of posts from December 2007 that I feel makes a bit of sense.
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Wide-bodied Globalization

Hi from Edison NJ. Got here from Mumbai on Wednesday morning at 4:40 AM, nearly an hour ahead of schedule. Too damn early. I suppose if the flight was arriving at 11 PM, then it would have arrived an hour late. Natural perversity of the universe. OK, I am done with the complaining bits. Now for the good bits.
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Mr Kapil Sibal: Abolish the Human Resources Development ministry

It seems to be the season for focusing on education. I will do the conjecturing below but first here are a bunch of articles on what’s going on in education in India.
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