The countdown has begun. It will soon be 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 2009 and led to the final demolition of communism in Europe. Communism was the Big Idea that became the Big Lie. A lot can be written and said about its economic and environmental failures — but the eventual failure was rooted in the popular fatigue with living in societies where lying had become a way of life.
“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work,” was how an old Soviet joke went. Read more…

I remember that many years ago one of the major soft drinks multinationals was test marketing a new dispensing machine that would charge according to the weather — more for a can on a hot day and less on a cold day.

This machine reportedly had an inbuilt system to measure the outside temperature. In theory, prices could fluctuate every minute and in every market. Read more…

from topnews.in

As the new UPA government prepares to start work, we can expect a fresh round of debates on urban versus rural growth.

This paragraph from a recent essay by Robert C Allen, professor of economic history at Oxford University, provides food for thought. He is writing about the Industrial Revolution in Europe: Read more…

Who will lead India?

Two days before the actual results of the Lok Sabha elections are made public, it is clear that the race is going to be a very close one.

The numbers will decide who will be the next PM.

But who should be the next PM? That is an entirely different question and depends on what each Indian seeks in his new national leader.

One way to put things in perspective is to use a tool that management consultants have unleashed on an unsuspecting world — the 2X2 matrix. Read more…

What exactly did Europe’s top central banker mean when he said this?

“We are, as far as growth is concerned, around the inflection point in the cycle,” European Central Bank president Jean Clause Trichet told journalists on Monday after a meeting of central bankers in Basel.

The world’s top two financial newspapers have interpreted this as a sign of optimism. Here are their headlines:

Wall Street Journal: Global central bankers see turning point near

Financial Times: Downturn ‘bottomed out’ says ECB head.

Is that really so? No. Read more…