The US economy is studied in great detail by many different organisations and individuals. There are official studies, think tanks, famous fund managers and brilliant economists, all contributing to an informed debate about the state of the economy, dangers facing it and what solutions to adopt. The US being the largest economy in the world such close scrutiny is desirable even if political fanatics choose to ignore realities as we saw in the most shameful brinkmanship during the debt ceiling crisis. In India, all we get is a stupid repetition of how strong the fundamentals are and a moronic debate about whether the growth rate will be 8.2% or 8.5%. Politicians like to dish out bromides to avoid a panic in the market, fund managers are dependent on rising share values for their bonuses and brokers earn higher margins from high prices. It is not that India does not have brilliant economists capable of analysing all the statistics, predicting the rate of inflation to expect in the medium term, calculating the amount of black money in the economy and how to tackle it and reading the global economy and chances of a global recession. Sadly everyone seems to be in employment and unwilling to write independent opinion for fear of being sacked. The only negative we hear is that growth has to be inclusive and poverty needs to be eliminated but how this can be done without eliminating black money, which is fueling inflation, and reducing absolute numbers of people is never discussed. This makes us like sheep. Buy shares, buy land, buy gold because their prices will increase infinitely. Is there a huge bubble liable to burst any moment? Sadly we do not know.