Read my other blog on International Relations cataloging my graduate work.
Excellent (and controversial) summary chart of the global macro-economic history of the past ~50 years by David Beckworth.
Of course, the chart has sparked some interesting takes by Paul Krugman and Alex Tabarrok, amongst others.
Here’s a slightly better attempt at creating a heat map, this time with the Google Gadgets API.
The heat map below is that of the Average Gross Yield (Nominal) of MFI institutions from various countries in the world. The yield is in percentage (i.e. .06=6% and .85=85%).
Data was sourced from MIX Market.
Lately, I’ve been playing around with some fun MFI data from around the world. In particular, I was curious to see what the Gross Loan Portfolio across various microfinance institutions were, and how they aggregated within each country of operation.
Luckily, I was able to source some rather excellent data from MIX Market.
Given this (and the fact that I’ve been playing around with Google’s Chart API for a while), I went ahead and created a little heat map of the global MFI rankings by Gross Loan Portfolio:
If you look at the above map, those countries with higher portfolios are in a darker shade of green and those with lower portfolios are in a lighter shade of green.
The list of the top all countries with more than 1% of the global MFI Gross Loan Portfolio is also listed below.
Debt as GDP % for the top 20 debtor nations — if you notice, despite our high debt, we are quite a bit lower on the totem pole.
Data was sourced from Index Mundi.
So, more debt stuff. Here’s a chart showing the comparison of debt between the US, China and the World, with percentages.
Data was sourced from Index Mundi.
Based on my previous debt pie chart, I’ve had several people ask me for a population comparison on the side. I’ve done one better – here’s a chart showing debt owed per person.
And shown below is a comparison of percentage debt with the percentage population. Click on the population chart to view a bigger version with values added.
Data was sourced from Index Mundi and Wolfram Alpha.
Here’s a comparison of world debt by percentage. Data is sourced from Index Mundi.
How much surface area would be needed to power the world, entirely through solar panels? Not all that much, it would seem.
(Source: Information Is Beautiful)
Dealbreaker recently talked about a rather fascinating yet disturbing article on a woman who was stuck in Dubai because her husband was arrested for losing his job and facing bankruptcy.
“Before I came here, I didn’t know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada’s or any other liberal democracy’s,” she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can’t pay, you go to prison.
“When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let’s take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go.” So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren’t covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.
While a landrover may certainly be bigger than an apartment in Manhattan, and while the story certainly has some open questions, I must add that there is a very good reason why folks in western societies trying to live in Islamic societies is a bad idea.
I mean, seriously. Sharia law mandates cutting your hands off for theft, and stoning people to death for sex outside marriage or for even giving up your religion.
Yes, they could have done several things differently — but the most important of them all? Not having left western civilization in the first place.
While it looks like the oil prices may not hit the $100 mark after all, I did read a rather bizarre article on the New York Times on a proposed Indian solution to help contain the rising oil prices.
M.S. Srinivasan, who is India’s Petroleum Secretary, is as worried as anyone else about the rising oil prices, despite steady demand and steady supply (we’ll ignore the temporary jumps due to oil rigs being closed in some parts of the world due to unfriendly weather in the seas).
His solution?
Why, taking the crude oil off the commodity exchanges, of course. The way he sees it, the speculators are driving up the prices of oil, fueled (pardon the pun) by investors from hedge funds, banks and other financial institutions that have poured a lot of capital into the oil market.
Not that it’s a bad idea, per se, but it does sound a lot like an Indian idea — when something does not work, regulate it until it does.
In its time, the Indian finance ministry has done a lot of good things. Agreed, most of them were fortunate mistakes (sorry, too much Taleb on my brain), but they still did a reasonable job of opening up the economy, especially after the 1991 economic crisis.
In fact, you would think that with the current Prime Minister being a former RBI Governor and being the former Finance Minister with a PhD from Oxford, and with the current Finance Minister being a Harvard educated economist/lawyer, India’s economic and fiscal policies would be a little more sound.
Currently, the US economy is in a downturn. To top it off, the federal rate cut has created liquidity in the market that’s been driving the FIIs to invest some place. So, all the FIIs have taken to investing a lot in India. This is further helped by the fact that a lot of capital account control measures are being relaxed to help these chaps. While the RBI did make a good call on trying to control the rise of the Rupee against the US Dollar, it does not seem to be enough.
If anything, FII investment has shot up to an all-time high of USD 11 bn this year. Wow. Yay. Way to go. Kudos. Etc etc.
Now, India also happens to be one of the worst borrowers from the World Bank. In fact, India moved into the list of the top 10 borrowers at World Bank sometime back. Well, it is a developing nation and there are some problems (you know, corrupt politicians, poverty, disease, politicians whose kids probably really need that luxury car etc). Well, that’s fair enough and understandable, too.
But do they really need to be stupid enough to try and pay off these debts using money that the FIIs have invested in the economy? Just what do they think is going to happen the moment the US economy recovers? That’s right, they are just going to go back to investing in the US.
One of the things that hit the SE Asian economic crisis of the late 90s was the absolute lack of capital control that these countries demonstrated, that led to their economies crashing. India was fortunate enough to have a fairly strict and tightly controlled (oh, sorry, regulated) market economy then.
Today, the story is slightly different. What would happen when the FIIs pull back and all the money that’s in the economy goes out of it? While I wouldn’t go as far as some people to say that the economy is at a financial risk, it is still a scary thought.
At least in the case of China, they have tangible assets (i.e. manufacturing industries). India has a very weak manufacturing infrastructure and very little in the name of tangible assets. Unless we create new assets, the continued rise will shoot the price of existing assets through the roof. Secondly, in the event of a market crash, there would have been some tangible benefit derived out of the investments that would go back into the system, e.g. infrastructure and industries.
It is indeed a policy dilemma for India. I do not know what the solution is — but what I do know is that we’d better find a good way of absorbing all this investment into the system. Otherwise, when the investors pull out and the stock market starts going down (and oh yes it will, at some point or the other), it could leave the Indian economy in a bad shape.
(Today’s pessimistic armchair economic forecast inspired by Blues from around the world and an over-dose of RSS feeds.)
Chaplains from various faiths and religions are sometimes invited to provide the opening prayer for the US Senate. While traditionally this has been done by a Christian Chaplain, this Thursday was unique in that it was the first time a Hindu Chaplain was invited to say the opening prayer in front of the US Senate. Unfortunately, this was marked by protests by some religious Christian folks who shouted down the prayer and kept interrupting it periodically. A video of the incident can also be viewed.
And as a side note, it is interesting how the right seems to want more religion, but only if it were their own. It is rather unfortunate that for a religion that is supposed to teach tolerance, its most fervent followers seem to be showing very little of it.
The President of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, had posted a question on Yahoo! Answers — What should we do to free our planet from terrorism?
Human society, from origin until now, has always been at war within and between groups and has led to two World Wars. Presently, terrorism and low intensity warfare are affecting many parts if the world.
As the current global population of 6 billion increases to 8 billion by 2025, national and international conflicts will continue to be a source of concern for humanity. When evil minds combine, good minds have to work together and combat. In this context, what are the out-of-the-box solutions to free the planet earth from terrorism?
Your answers when processed and implemented can lead to a peaceful, happy and safe planet earth.
And of course, like over 6,000 15,000 other people, I just felt that I had to pitch in too.
The latest airplane terror threat has everybody up in arms. Unfortunately, this affects some sections of the population more than others — for instance, I just noticed an article on the BBC which talked about how musicians are facing hell because of cabin baggage being banned.
Now, we all know how well the baggage handlers treat our luggage. Having flown to several continents on several occasions, I can assure you of one thing — baggage handlers destroy the strongest of baggages, and it’s pretty much the same all over the world. It’s nothing personal, you understand? They have nothing against you, they just hate your luggage.
I do not know what it is with them and my bags, but almost always, the strongest of bags has something or the other that gets separated/dismembered/broken/lost. It is particularly bad inside the US — just last month, I was returning from Denver when the handle of my brand new Samsonite suitcase was broken (I had purchased the bag while at Denver and it was the first time it was ever out). How? No one knows — baggage handlers just seem to treat all baggage like shit. Just like me, they also seem to be equal opportunity offenders.
Now, imagine these folks and a 300 year old Cello or Violin worth $20,000. Or your latest $2,000 laptop with all that data. Can the airports assure me of the safety and security of any equipment that is checked in? And what about Duty Free? Would you really buy anything at any Duty Free if you could not take it with you in your carry-on?
Questions, questions, questions!
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