What started off as a crash in Wall street has had a cascading effect elsewhere too, and has claimed many corporates .Even countries are not spared, as witness Iceland.One hears that several pension funds through out the developed world including Oxford university have had their funds stashed away elsewhere. The lure was there, higher returns.And when the overstretched economy cracked, the effect was far-reaching.
What is the way out? No doubt the federal government has taken some remedial measures.They are halfhearted ones. Pumping more funds into an already ailing economy would not suffice.Somehow the people in the US as elsewhere are getting reconciled but grudgingly to the dark night of the economic growth.It is in fact a setback to the keynesian model also. Time magazine it was which coined that memorable phrase—- stagflation.Also followed by other portmonteau expressions like anticiflation.The time has now come for the wordsmiths to coin more words and newer words.
For greed , human, institutional and governmental, has pushed us to this brink.And the ones most exposed to US would be the worst sufferers.
Ensconced in the comfort of Bangalore , India I am not entitled to judge the pros and cons of the superpower economy or its working. Yet I am tempted to quote one example, a shining one, from the history of Mysore state during the royal era.
The villain of the piece was gopalarao , who was a bank employee. those were the days when the Imperial Bank, which is the predecessor of State Bank of India, was at the helm.The interest rates paid to the depositors was very low. Gopalarao, well-meaning no doubt, started a bank and offered hefty returns. He stuck to the promise so long as the deposits were reaching the institutions he could afford to meet the obligations.came a time when the deposits dried up and he found himself in deep trouble.Finally he was jailed .
Fortunately for the man, he died in prison while the trial was on.and gopalarao bank is today the synonym for failed financial ventures.
Among the distinguished losers in the bargain was Nobel Laureate for physics, Sir C.V.Raman. The scientist, it is said, had a puckish sense of humour. He met Gopalarao after the bank crash and remarked, " you are the genius who deserves the Nobel, not I".
We in India and especially Bangalore have lost a little and may lose yet more.Our sympathies are with the sufferers elsewhere who have unwittingly become victims of other people’s greed.
Talk of global economy! the ones who were reluctant are comparatively safe.
If only policy makers do heed the voice and caution of sages!.In a book published in the 1950s, a master of calibre has predicted the shape of things to come."America is in imminent danger of losing her wealth and in course of time she may almost be reduced to paupery:".
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