The food price inflation in India, measured by the wholesale price index of food items, touched a 10-year high for the week ended November 28, 2009 when it crossed 19% on point-to-point basis over the corresponding week a year ago. The cereal prices were up by about 13%, but pulses are up by 42%, and vegetables by 31%, although potato prices shot up by 102%. This is getting way beyond...

After dedicating most of 2009 to jump-starting financial markets through stimulus packages, developed countries are now turning their attention to reforming the basic architecture of those markets, especially the incentives for risk-taking. In a major step towards regulating systemic risks, the United Kingdom last week announced a one-off 50 per cent “super-tax” on bankers’ discretionary bonuses exceeding £25,000. The move could raise £550 milli on, which would be used to...

For about a week after the Dubai crisis broke, international financial markets chose to ignore it. Stock-markets climbed, commodity prices rose and the dollar continued to be beaten down. It is not too difficult to explain this initial indifference. For one, the magnitude of the Dubai crisis appeared piffling, at first glance, compared to the “subprime” crisis or the meltdown following “Lehman’s bust”. When global banks had run up losses...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...