The Sensex has reached the dizzying heights of 14000 starting from around 3000 just after the dot com collapse. At the same time all the major indices have struggled to get up to the levels they reached around the time of the dotcom boom. Thus the DOW is just above 12000, the FTSE and the DAX have breached 6000 while the Nikei is still to get above 17000. Naturally the politicians are going around saying what a great job they are doing and how the economy will keep on growing like some dinosaur egg. About a decade ago the Nikei was trading above 35000 and the real estate sector in Japan was booming due to excess liquidity and Yakuza money being laundered into the construction sector. When the bubble burst the Nikei fell to below 10000 and Japan went into a long period of deflation resulting in bankruptcies and increasing unemplyment. Only today is Japan beginning to see the first signs of growth and the Bank of Japan has very timidly raised interest rate from 0 to 0.25%. Are there any parallels with India where land prices have increased by over 100% in the last few years. Plunder of the increasing tax collections can not be invested legitimately and land is the only avenue of hiding black money. I wonder if we will see a repeat of Japan. Only we have no Koizumi to rescue us.