Thursday, September 13, 2018

Why are pundits against common citizens of India?

"Indian industry is in meltdown. Seventy-eight of the largest companies in India are facing dissolution under the Indian bankruptcy code," wrote PS Jha angrily. "As if these woes are not enough, loan default by small companies have also doubled in the past year, signalling an imminent crisis in that sector as well. Are all owners and managers of these companies, and their bank managers corrupt, as the government would have us believe? The idea is absurd" So whose fault is it? "A systemic collapse can only result from a systemic failure. In India, the RBI has dealt it by imposing and then maintaining a regime of very high interest rates for industrial borrowers since 2010, regardless of the rate of inflation." Apparently, South Korea had an inflation rate of 21% for 3 decades during which it became and "industrial powerhouse" and China maintained "stringent price controls on essentials". Park Chung-hee, a dictator, is credited with the development of Korea's economy Inflation was high in the sixties and seventies, reaching a high of 28.7% in 1980, but was brought down swiftly after the assassination of Park. Whether this was a cause or an undesirable result of South Korea's rapid economic growth we do not know. China adopted a one-child policy in 1979 which prevented 400 million births, which allowed vast numbers of women to join the workforce, brought down labor costs and resulted in double digit growth. It was the Indian government which set an inflation target for the RBI at 4%, plus/minus 2%, and appointed a Monetary Policy Committee to oversee interest rates. Former Governor of the RBI Raghuram Rajan explained how indiscriminate lending by banks during the growth years of 2006-08 resulted in promoters borrowing vast sums of money they could not repay when growth slowed down after the subprime crisis. The subprime crisis in the US, which nearly caused a global economic meltdown, has been ascribed to unnecessarily low interest rates by the Federal Reserve, known as the 'Greenspan put'. Low interest rates help the government by keeping borrowing costs low, help the rich who can buy assets with cheap borrowed money, penalise savers and transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. Asking for lower taxes on fuel "is especially ill-advised today because emerging markets (EMs) like India are on the edge of a financial precipice, and must take care not to fall off," wrote SSA Aiyar. Aiyar says that there is nothing to worry about a falling rupee as other EM currencies are also falling and the government must not reduce taxes on fuel because that will raise fiscal deficit. Each government is responsible for the mess it has created and the Indian government has extorted over Rs 2 trillion by extra taxes on petroleum products when prices fell in 2014. Rajan warned that Rs 6.37 trillion Mudra loans handed out by this government and Kisan Credit Card loans could turn sour. Indian politicians believe that taxpayer money is theirs to waste. Perhaps it will be less harmful if we cut their wings a little.

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