Monthly Archives: October 2014
Global economic growth
Evidence that the global economy may be unexpectedly stalling has jarred prominent economists and policy makers gathered in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. At a conference on Thursday, Lawrence H. Summers, the former United States Treasury secretary who now teaches at Harvard, highlighted this concern.“The defining challenge of our time, economically, is secular stagnation,” he said. “It is the risk of inadequate growth, leading to inadequate potential, leading to inadequate growth.”
Oil is at a four year low in LA and the S & P barely up for the year with volatility rising.
Can India with its ‘Make in India’ slogan revive the hope for growth back into the global economy. Manufacturing is just starting to grow under Obama after the great recession and its multinationals have finally fixed their balance sheets, and are ready for investing billions. India will need Nuclear Plants, Modern Railroads, Ports, Airports, Cities, Technology and infrastructure improvements for well into the next century. There is enough growth potential with its young population; that needs housing, schools, universities, healthcare, factories, retailers and all kinds of services.
There is no better source for cheap American gas to flow to India and the energy be converted into making a modern society. 100 nuclear plants would need to be built, to supply the forecasted demand for India over the next century, along with other renewal energy like wind, solar, bio-gas, tidal, hydro etc. Massive investment into India will provide much needed growth and a lot of money lying on the side at zero interest, would come into this new opportunity.
The only thing holding back the inflow has been the injudicious Indian taxation system; combined with the punitive courts that enforce often confusing archaic laws; forgotten even in the countries, that introduced them. Nightmares due to some random litigation, that could last decades; is just one of the minor hurdles of folks jumping in; as even dipping a toe was just recently allowed, in the largely socialist economy. Massive disinvestment is needed to raise capital from State run enterprises, without allowing associated corruption and litigation, to finance the investments required to close the budgetary gap, and to pay for the future infrastructure, so desperately needed.
“The drop in energy prices acts as a tax cut for consumers, by giving a small bump to real disposable income.” India as an importer will benefit from this drop and lower prices will help close their GDP gap, and reduce outflows and allow more investment at home. This could lead to a rise in Industrial production so badly needed; to get the economy out of the current doldrums, and boost much needed growth, for the hard pressed Mr. Jaitely. Will the US, China, Japan help him put the Indian train back on its track; to become the second largest economy in Asia in this century. In the next century a modern India will eventually become the leader of the free world; in keeping with its history from 1 AD, till the reign of Aurangzeb in the 18th century.
Immigrants all
How many great scientists have we stopped from working in the US; because of the outdated views on immigration, by certain sections of our society, and inability of our legislatures, to come together to improve our system? We are allowing some of the brightest thought leaders of tomorow; to not join in our struggle to make the next century, an American century against the surging Asia.
Indian-born Stanford University professor Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj and Indian techie Himanshu Asnani, pursuing research in mathematics at Stanford, will be honored in Washington DC Thursday by the US-based Marconi Society. Named after Nobel laureate Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), who invented radio, and this prize is to recognize individuals for “creativity in service to humanity”.
Paulraj, 69, is the winner of the Marconi Prize 2014 for his pioneering work on developing wireless technology to transmit and receive data at high speed.
Born in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, about 360 km from Chennai, Paulraj was also honoured with the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 2011, for his profound work on theoretical foundations of MIMO.
“Paulraj is the only India-born scientist to receive both the Marconi Prize and the Bell Medal — the two top global IT technology awards,” IndiaTechOnline.com editor Anand Parthasarathy told IANS in Chennai.
Asnani, 27, was chosen for the Society’s Paul Baran young scholar award for his outstanding work and contribution to point-to-point and multi-terminal channel coding and source coding problems.
“The prestigious awards will be presented to Paulraj and Asnani at our annual event Thursday at the National Academies of Sciences in Washington DC,” Marconi Society chairman David Payne told IANS from the US.
Tech pioneers who created Microsoft, Google, Facebook and so many other companies all acknowledge; that without these immigrants, the US cannot sustain, its eminent position in technology, where it is today. They complain that we have routinely turned away, potentially, thousands of such scientific brains; from our shores in the last decade, at a time we need them the most. They will just do their pioneering research elsewhere; leaving us so much poorer, than where we should have been. President Obama is correct; and I hope that Washington will gather its legaslative strength, to pass immigration reform now!