January 22, 2008

life in financial markets: of crashes & cronyists' ridiculous demands


So, the stock markets in India, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Germany, UK took a steep fall on Monday (21 Jan) and Tuesday (22 Jan) this week. Here, in India, the tendency to blame everyone else other than yourself for any crash continues shamelessly.

What makes it worse is the attempt to wriggle out of monetary tightness through deceipt and governmental influence. I just saw a news report wherein India's finance minister P.Chidambaram was quoted as saying banks should be pragmatic and accommodate brokers in this week's stock market crash to prevent a chain reaction of defaults. Why should deposits-funded banks bail out private brokers? Brokers have made 30-40 times more money in the 5-year old bull run than the bank depositors.

Defaults and bankruptcies are an integral part of true capitalism and should be allowed to occur. Those who earn private profits should never be bailed out by public funds when they make private losses.

In the last many years I have been noticing such phoney champions of capitalism like Chidambaram. They have always appeared to me to be cronyists rather than true capitalists. Recently, the land-grabbing-SEZ champion, Kamal Nath, was also reported to be in favour of bailing out exporters on their losses due to a depreciating dollar.

We are living in a time when these cronyists leave no stone unturned to forcibly grab the lands of the farmers, villagers and poor people of India through laws like the SEZ and British-era Land Acquisition Act. They grant SEZ-like huge subsidies to companies and the companies' political masters.

Will the Indian media please stop blindly cheering these fake champions of development? Not that others like the Modis and the Left's Modis like Buddhadebs are any better. Throw a torchlight on them all. Bring out the fact in true capitalism private property is not usurped by government or others. So why are the private lands of farmers, villagers and others in rural India being usurped in the name of development projects and SEZs?

These are just some of the many many clinks in the supposedly economic powerhouse that our country is. Again, not that others like US, UK, France, Germany, China, Japan are any better. They have their own versions of cronyism going on.

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