QOTD

Krugman today.

Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.

This comes a close second (from the same column):

But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries.

US Males 25-54 not part of labor force

US Males 25-54 not part of labor force as percentage of male population 25-54.

ISI Gen. Athar Abbas's greatest PR hits

In less than two years, the general has provided the media with a fairly impressive list of promises, assertions, and projections — none of which have more than a tenuous basis in reality.

ForeignPolicy.com has a list.

Is there age discrimination?

Employed men in the age groups 25-54 and 45-54 as a percentage of their numbers in the population. Source: http://www.economagic.com

US Percentage of employed Men and Women employed 25-54

Economagic is a cool site.

Prof DeLong has a post with a chart, that I reproduced below quite fast,



plus produced the male + female chart requested in the comments.



The trick now is to know what charts to produce.

PS:

Cricket and Islam in Pakistan

A strange brew, made in Pakistan - cheating in cricket is supposedly connected to its ruling ideology. Note the following:

1. The ball-tampering incident

And then there is Shahid Afridi or, to get it correctly, Sahibzada Mohammad Shahid Khan Afridi, him of the team of baboons chattering and jumping about as the Aussies systematically roasted them over large bonfires lit by the baboons themselves. Till mid-Jan this year, the man has played 293 ODIs 26 tests, 57 Twenty20s, is almost 30, if he is to be believed. Yet, in the 5th ODI, in the tense 46th over, he starts to tamper the ball, gnawing at it like baboons do. "I was smelling it," he says later. Oh please, Mr Afridi. He chews at the seam in the middle of a packed Perth ground with dozens of cameras capturing every moment in super slow-mo.

The terrible cricketing crime is seen by millions on TV. When confronted, as he was going to be, the Sahibzada apologises and says he was tampering the ball so that Pakistan could win the face-saving 5th ODI – "just one match," he pleads to Geo. Hello? "All teams do it," the genius next announces. That, of course, makes it right in Afridi's thin book of rules.

2. The incident's purported connection to Pakistan's Islamization

The Afridi ball-tampering incident can be traced back to the Pakistan state-sponsored education and socialisation project initiated in the mid-1980s by the military government of General Ziaul Haq. This pattern of education and socialisation lasted into the first decade of this century. State education, the state-media and the state’s reward system shifted the focus of young people from Pakistan as a nation-state, civic education in the context of citizenship, and cultural-religious pluralism to Islam as a transnational identity, religious-Islamic explanation and interpretation of the past and the present, greater attention to conservative Islamic ritualism, global conspiracy against the Muslims and admiration for militancy.

These policies produced a generation whose intellectual and psychological ties are weak with Pakistan as a nation-state and it invariably views the domestic and international processes within religious parameters. The main discourse of this generation is Islamic-conservative, and greater emphasis on public display of religiousness. Several cricketers have become Islamic preachers and there were reports of collective offering of prayers in cricket fields. This disposition has got nothing to do with professionalism and sports discipline.

With such a blinkered disposition, one can engage in offensive activities that cannot be condemned from a purely religious point of view. A ‘victory’ against the non-believers is a desirable objective from personal and collective perspectives. Therefore, the rules of the game and professionalism become secondary.

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So there is the question - did Afridi think that tampering with the ball was OK in order to get a victory over the unbeliever Australians?

PS: see this about the Islamization of the Pakistani cricket team.

PPS: Another explanation:

Afridi comes from an era, a cricketing culture, where ball-tampering is considered a normal cricket activity, the done thing on flat Pakistani pitches - an art form and not a sin. It's been a part of the Pakistan team's standard operating procedure......Calling ball-tampering unlawful and an offence is regrettable. If ball-tampering is being openly admitted by the players, and given that it is difficult to assign reasons for why reverse swing happens (since even tampering is often ineffective in generating reverse swing), shouldn't the authorities stop looking at the practice with suspicion and instead look to bring it into the cricket syllabus so that we can all move on?

Yet more Farhat Taj

Here.

There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run away from Waziristan. They want al Qaeda along with the Taliban burnt to ashes on the soil of Waziristan through relentless drone attacks. The drone attacks, they believe, are the one and only ‘cure’ for these anti-civilisation creatures and the US must robustly administer them the ‘cure’ until their existence is annihilated from the world. The people of Waziristan, including tribal leaders, women and religious people, asked me to convey in categorical terms to the US the following in my column.

One, your new drone attack strategy is brilliant, i.e. one attack closely followed by another. After the first attack the terrorists cordon off the area and none but the terrorists are allowed on the spot. Another attack at that point kills so many of them. Excellent! Keep it up!

....

Some people in Waziristan compare drones with the Quran’s Ababeels — the holy sparrows sent by God to avenge Abraham, the intended conqueror of the Khana Kaaba. Which other Muslim society has likened anything from the US military with a Quranic symbol? Only the Pakhtuns did that so publicly in this time of rising anti-Americanism across the Muslim world! What more does the US want from a Muslim society? Now please go ahead and do the needful as indicated by the people of Waziristan.

Secularism in Bangladesh

 The news-item.

A commentary.

On another matter, I want to preserve this timeline by Stan_S on BRF:


1) The deafening sound of gunshots broke the stillness of dawn on August 15, 1975 on road No 32 of Dhanmondi residential area. In less than an hour, the darkest chapter in the political history of Bangladesh was written on that fateful morning. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the following members of his family were assassinated in three separate attacks: his wife Begum Fazilatunnessa, sons Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Jamal and nine-year-old Sheikh Russel, daughters-in-law Sultana Kamal, Parveen Jamal, Bangabandhu's brother Sheikh Naser, brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat, 13-year-old Baby Serniabat, Serniabat's son Arif, four-year-old grand son Babu, a visiting nephew, three guests, four servants, Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni, a nephew of Bangabandhu, his wife Begum Arju Moni, and Bangabandhu's security chief Colonel Jamil Uddin Ahmed.

2) Khondaker Moshtaque Ahmad immediately took control of the government, proclaiming himself president. Several of the army officers, including Syed Faruque Rahman received promotions. Major General Ziaur Rahman was appointed as the army chief after removal of Major General Shafiullah. Khondaker also ordered the imprisonment of pro-Mujib leaders Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, A. H. M. Qamaruzzaman and Muhammad Mansur Ali. He proclaimed the Indemnity Ordinance, which granted immunity from prosecution to the assassins of Mujib. Mujib's daughters Sheikh Hasina Wazed and Sheikh Rehana were barred from returning to Bangladesh from abroad.

3) Pro-Mujib officers Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf and the Dhaka Brigade under Colonel Shafat Jamil made a counter-coup on November 3, 1975, and Ziaur Rahman was forced to resign and was put under house arrest. Khondaker Moshtaque Ahmad was ousted from power on 6 November, 1975 and imprisoned.

4) A third coup was staged under Colonel Abu Taher and a group of socialist military officers and supporters of the left-wing Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal on November 7, called the "National Revolution and Solidarity Day" (Sipoy-Janata Biplob) (Soldiers and People's Coup). Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf was killed and Colonel Jamil arrested, while Colonel Taher freed Ziaur Rahman and re-appointed him as army chief.

5) Following a major meeting at the army headquarters, an interim government was formed with Justice Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem as chief martial law administrator and Zia, Air Vice Marshal M. G. Tawab and Rear Admiral M. H. Khan as his deputies. Zia also took on the portfolios of home affairs, finance, industry and information along with becoming the army chief of staff.

6) Fearing that Colonel Abu Taher, who in fact rescued him few months earlier, would attempt to organise another revolt, Zia ordered his arrest. Following a secret trial in a military court, Zia authorised the execution of Colonel Taher on July 21, 1976. Zia became the chief martial law administrator following Justice Sayem's elevation to the presidency on November 19, 1976.

7) Major General Ziaur Rahman became the 6th President of Bangladesh on April 21, 1977 following Justice Sayem's resignation on grounds of "ill health." The Indeminity Ordinance proclaimed by President Mustaque was ratified in the Parliament when Zia's party BNP had a landslide victory in the national elction of 1979. The ordinance thereby became Indemnity Act. He allowed Sheikh Hasina, the exiled daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to return to Bangladesh.
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Interregnum with dances by Maj Gen Hossein Mohd Ershad following the assassination of Maj Gen Ziaur Rahman. During the tenure of President HM Ershad, the Indemnity Act was incorporated as the 5th amendment to the constitution. This is followed by BNP electoral victory in 1990 where nothing happens on the case-front.
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9) Upon winning the elections in 1996, the Awami League, led by Mujib's daughter, Sheikh Hasina, repealed the Indemnity ordinance. The Bangabandhu murder trial commenced, and Faruque, and some other coup leaders were arrested. Rashid, however, escaped arrest as he was reportedly in Libya.

10) On November 8, 1998, Dhaka Sessions Judge Golam Rasul handed down death sentences to 15 of the 20 defendants in the case.

11) A division bench of the High Court comprising Justice Md Ruhul Amin and Justice ABM Khairul Haque on December 14, 2000, delivered split verdicts on death reference appeals in the case. First judge Justice Md Ruhul Amin upheld the death sentences of 10 and acquitted five -- Muhiuddin Ahmed, Ahmed Shariful Hossain, Md Kismat Hashem, Nazmul Hossain Ansar, and Moslemuddin. Second judge Justice ABM Khairul Haque upheld the death sentences of all 15 convicts.

12) On January 15, 2001, Justice Mohammad Fazlul Karim was appointed as the third judge to adjudicate the appeals. He delivered the final High Court verdict in the case on April 30, 2001, affirming the convictions and death sentences of 12 of the 15 defendants. The three that he acquitted are Md Kismat Hashem, Ahmed Shariful Hossain, and Nazmul Hossain Ansar.

13) Following BNP-alliance's victory in the 2001 elections and formation of the four party government, case again goes into suspended animation.

14) The third Caretaker government in Bangladesh history is formed after the tenure of the government of prime minister Khaleda Zia ended in October 2006. The Caretaker government of Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed functioned without legislative authority as it continued to function after its scheduled tenure of 120 days ended on 12 May 2007.

15) On June 18, 2007, one of the conspirators who had been sentenced to death, Mohiuddin Ahmed, was extradited to Bangladesh from the United States. On August 07, 2007, the murder case hearing resumed after 6 years.

16) On September 23, 2007, a three-judge special bench of the Appellate Division comprising Justice Mohammed Tafazzul Islam, Justice Mohammed Joynul Abedin, and Justice Mohammed Hassan Ameen granted the leave to appeal petitions filed by the five convicts.

17) Convicts Lt Col (sacked) Syed Farooq-ur Rahman, Lt Col (retd) Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan, Lt Col (retd) Muhiuddin Ahmed, Lt Col (retd) AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed, and Maj (retd) Bazlul Huda, who were behind bars, filed the appeals with the apex court in October 2007 against their convictions and death sentences by a lower court. On October 5, the Appellate Division started hearing the appeals on five points - whether Bangabandhu was killed along with most of his family members as a result of a mutiny in the army; whether the witness statements were contradictory; whether the delay in filing the first information report had been reasonable as thought by the lower court; whether there was any conspiracy behind the murders; and whether disposal of the death references appeals of six defendants out of 15 by the 3rd judge in the High Court was correct and legal.

18) The national election of Bangladesh was held on 29 December 2008 under the Caretaker government and Sheikh Hasina Wajed wins overwhelming majority.

19) After 34 years of the brutal killings of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family members, the Appellate Division of Supreme Court [SC] finally delivers its verdict in the murder case on November 19, 2009.

----

20) Jan 28, 2009 - Five of the murderers were executed (named in point 17. above).

"The government is now focusing on the six other convicted coup leaders who are fugitives abroad. They are Noor Chowdhury, believed to be in the US; Shariful Haq Dalim (Canada); Faruk’s brother-in-law Khandaker Abdur Rashid (Pakistan); M.A. Rashed Chowdhury (South Africa); Mosleuddin (Thailand) and Abdul Mazed (Kenya).

A 12th man sentenced to death, Abdul Aziz Pasha, died in exile in Zimbabwe."

Country Trade Comparison - Pakistan, India, China

World Bank

Four measures, for the period 2006-2009:

1.
TTRI (MFN applied tariff) - All Goods
Trade Tariff Restrictiveness Index (MFN applied tariff) - All Goods -This indicator reflects the equivalent uniform tariff of a country tariff schedule that would maintain domestic import levels constant.

Lower value/rank closer to 1 means fewer tax & tariff barriers to imports.

Pakistan 12.2 (rank 103)
India 12  (rank 102)
China 5.33 (rank 63)

2.
MA-TTRI (applied tariff incl. prefs.) - All Goods
Market Access -Trade Tariff Restrictiveness Index (applied tariff incl. prefs.) - All Goods - This index reflects the equivalent uniform tariff of trading partners facing the exporter country, that would maintain the imports of the trading partners constant, including preferential tariffs.

Lower value/rank closer to 1 means fewer tax & tariff barriers to exports.

Pakistan 7.26 (rank 117)
India 3.47 (rank 70)
China 3.9 (rank 75)


3.
Ease of Doing Business - Rank
2010 Ease of Doing Business - Rank - This indicator represents a country’s overall business climate based on seven indicators, three of which are also reported in the WTI database: Starting a Business, Enforcing Contracts, and Closing a Business, (1 best -183 worst)

Pakistan rank 85
India rank 133
China rank 89

4.
LPI - Overall
LPI - Overall - This indicator reflects the overall perception of a countrys logistics based on over 1,000 responses to a survey of logistics performance. The overall LPI was aggregated as a weighted average of seven key areas of logistics performance (1 worst -5 best).

Pakistan 2.53 (rank 111)
India 3.12 (rank 47)
China 3.49 (rank 27)

----------

Surprisingly Pakistan is the easiest place to do business.  Either the World Bank is smoking something good, or else Pakistan's political instability and its reputation of being Terrorism Central is eroding its one major competitive advantage.

Also, Pakistan would do well to use its diplomatic capital trying to dismantle barriers to its exports rather than constantly harp on Jammu & Kashmir.

Steve Coll Interview

Perhaps I link it because it echoes what I understand and believe.

Quoting one section:

There are many, particularly in Pakistan, who believe that if you resolve Kashmir you take out the real cause of terrorism in South Asia. Do you agree?

I don't believe that at all. But Kashmir is an impediment to broader changes between India and Pakistan that are necessary to gradually eliminate the structural causes of persistent terrorism in India and Afghanistan. That is to say, change the practices of the Pakistani security services. In the medium run, how do you break the cycle of clandestine war between India and Pakistan, the use of jihadi groups? The only way you break that pattern is the same way similar conflicts have ended in other parts of the world - in the Balkans, in Southeast Asia - where economic integration and shared prosperity changes the incentive structure for the Pakistani army where they see that their own interests are better served by open, managed borders. Everybody in Pakistan knows that India's prosperity is the big story of the region in the next 20-30 years. Pakistan can either be an impediment to that or be a part of it.

And that probably reflects sentiments in Kashmir too where there is growing ambivalence about Pakistan...

Absolutely. In fact, your newspaper (The Times of India) has quoted Manmohan Singh as saying that India was "very close to a non-territorial settlement" in 2007. I love that language. Because that's the right way to think about this. What you're trying to do in Kashmir is to buy time for these other effects to take hold, and for both countries to share a period of war-free economic growth, middle class formation and cultural accommodation. It doesn't have to be peace, love and harmony. It just needs to be normalisation - the sort that you see between Serbia and Croatia.

In order to buy that 20 years, you don't have to settle every line on the map. You have to put in place a framework in which you agree on some broad principles and agree to no longer pursue those goals through violence. It's just creating a framework where the broader process of peaceful economic and cultural integration can occur. That's the only way forward. You have to be realistic though. When you announce peace, those who have an interest in the violence will react, they will try to blow it up. The question is how much capacity the Pakistani state has to do its bit. The problem is that India understandably doesn't believe that Pakistan has the will. If India thought Pakistan had the will, it would have a realistic approach to its capacity problems. But you can't accept the capacity excuse when you don't think the other side is serious.

Won't the Pakistani military establishment keep Kashmir alive?

Musharraf brought around the [Pakistani] corps command to this deal in 2007. It was interesting when I was reporting on this in Pakistan and you asked the question: What was the winning argument in the corps command meetings? First of all, Musharraf was at the peak of his authority, but there were three winning arguments. One was that if we want to modernise an army and defend Pakistan's territorial integrity while India modernises its army, we need more money than our current growth rates can support. We already take a huge share of Paksitan's GDP. We need the whole pie to grow. We need economic peace just to defend ourselves. The second argument was that we can achieve acceptable goals in Kashmir by political means that we cannot by guerilla violence. Let's accept it, our strategy isn't working. The Indians have defeated the insurgency, they have been able to create enough political normalcy in their part of Kashmir. We can keep throwing rocks, but why not create an outcome that history will recognise as just through political negotiations. The final argument was international legitimacy. The Pakistani army for all of it crazy self-defeating policies also craves recognition as a legitimate army, an unusually good fighting force. Musharraf personally wanted to go Oslo and be awarded the peace prize with Manmohan Singh (laughs). These factors are still there in the psyche, but the problem is that the Pakistani government is in no position to come back to that.

Afghanistan and India

Indrani Bagchi in the Times of India

India has refrained from using hard power in Afghanistan, and, in many ways, the Indian presence is guaranteed by the US' security role. As soft-power author, Harvard University's Joseph Nye says, "Achieving transformational objectives may require a combination of both hard and soft power.'' Soft power is only credible when it is matched by or surpassed by hard power. India is paying the price, because, beyond a point, roads and dams don't help buy influence. As one top-level Afghan official said, wryly, "We love India, but we fear Pakistan. That is a stronger emotion.'' India's power projection in Afghanistan has been primarily by showing its "goodness'' . Pakistan, on the other hand, negotiates with the world with a gun held to its own head. That, as India has discovered several times in its history, is far more persuasive.

For the moment, Pakistan has the upper hand, because both the UK and US need it more than ever. Pakistan is playing an adroit diplomatic game of chicken with the US - and winning. Islamabad may be hopelessly dependent on Washington's

money, but that doesn't stop it from refusing to give visas to US officials, refusing money that comes with 'conditions'. Pakistan has made it clear it will not stop supporting the Afghan Taliban; there is absolutely no attempt to tackle al Qaida; and Mullah Omar's Quetta Shura functions unimpeded. In short, it holds veto power over whether the Obama surge succeeds in Afghanistan. Washington, said an Indian official scornfully, is "kowtowing to Pakistan just like they did to China."

Harsh perhaps, but this view is prevalent in the upper reaches of the Indian government - to the extent that even the PM is believed to have remarked that if India and Pakistan have another fracas, Washington may not weigh in on India's side.

A. India doesn't have much hard power it can project directly to Afghanistan. Any actions it takes will have to be on the eastern border of Pakistan.

B. The Monkey in the Monkey trap holds a gun to its own head?

PS: One has to admire Pakistan's chutzpah to make demands with the weaker hand:

The Pakistani demand has been succinctly laid out by Munir Akram, one of its top diplomats: "Pakistan's cooperation should be offered only in exchange for tangible and immediate US support for Pakistan's national objectives: an end to Indian-Afghan interference in Baluchistan and FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas); a Kashmir solution; a military balance between Pakistan and India; parity with India on nuclear issues; transfer of equipment and technology for counter-terrorism ; unconditional defense and economic assistance; free trade access.''

(a) After the Gujral doctrine, I wonder if India is still messing about in Baluchistan. It would be stupid not to, as the above shows, you need all the bargaining chips you can find to deal with Pakistan.

As to Afghan interference in FATA - I really wonder what they're talking about.

(b) The Kashmir solution that is acceptable to India (formalize the Line of Control) is not acceptable to Pakistan. The US lacks any stick or carrot sufficient to make India budge. Indians do fear a sell-out by their leaders, as has happened a few times in history.

(c) After Pakistan's record of "Proliferation'R'Us" there is unlikely to be any support for bringing Pakistan upto parity with India; instead the attempt may be made to downgrade relations with India. But, IMO, India must become a massive coal-burner unless it has safe and guaranteed (i.e., not subject to international sanction) nuclear power.

(d) Military balance between Pakistan and India: a natural balance might be possible if Pakistan economically was Germany to India's Russia. But Pakistan's recent economic performance has been dismal. A balance might mean, military aid to Pakistan in the form of hi-tech weapons and a concommitant effort to strangle military supplies and technology to India. It will also require a permanent annual transfusion of money to Pakistan. As it is, Pakistan has now surpassed Israel as a recipient of aid from the US.

The counter-terrorism and unconditional defense aid are a part of this demand.

(e) Unconditional economic assistance: it means US taxpayers must give money to the government of Pakistan with no accounting. When US taxpayers are leary of their own government, I wonder how much they'll trust the government of Pakistan.

(f) Free trade access: this is perhaps something that can be addressed. As this World Bank brief states:

With Market Access TTRI (including preferences) rank near the worst at 117th (out of 125), Pakistan’s exports faces much greater barriers than other South Asian economies.

PPS: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/wti/1a.asp for the latest. Look at External Environment MA-TTRI (applied tariff incl. prefs.) - All Goods which means: Market Access -Trade Tariff Restrictiveness Index (applied tariff incl. prefs.) - All Goods - This index reflects the equivalent uniform tariff of trading partners facing the exporter country, that would maintain the imports of the trading partners constant, including preferential tariffs.

Re: Bush, Still Wrong

Via Andrew Sullivan, this TNR article by Jonathan Chait, tears into Hennessy's misguided attempt to rehabilitate Bush's fiscal policies.

Only subscribers can comment on TNR. So here is the comment:

Hennessy wrote:

You can see that budget deficits during President Clinton’s eight years averaged 0.8 percent of GDP. Clinton folks will tell you this is because of his brilliant policies, and in particular the 1993 budget law. I think most of it is the result of tech bubble-induced higher capital gains revenues causing total taxes to surge to record levels.

and Chait writes:

So, okay. Hennessey discounts low deficits under Clinton because the stock bubble helped cause them. I think there's a lot of truth to that but far less than Hennessey does.

We do not have to guess about this. We have the Congressional Budget Office numbers for the revenues the Federal Government received from the capital gains tax. This from a 2002 publication of theirs.

During the Clinton years, the receipts from the capital gains tax in billions of dollars were:
(fiscal year)
1992 - 27 (billion dollars) - 6% of income taxes
1993 - 32 - 6%
1994 - 36 - 7%
1995 - 40 - 7%
1996 - 54 - 8%
1997 - 72 - 10%
1998 - 84 - 10%
1999 - 99 - 11%
2000 -121 - 12%

This other CBO page tells us that the budget surplus in 2000 was $236 billion - so capital gains taxes accounted for half of the surplus. But notice that capital gains taxes went up by a factor of 4 in absolute terms (27 to 121 billion) while only a factor of 2 in terms of percent of the income tax (6% to 12%) - which means that income tax revenue was quite potent in creating the surplus (estimated 450 billion to 1008 billion).

Just how corrupt is the Senate?

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary "blanket hold" on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.
....
And why, pray tell, has Shelby decided to hold several dozen administration nominees hostage? It's not about qualifications, ideology, or party -- it's about pork. The conservative Alabama senator wants some defense earmarks for his state, and until he's satisfied, Shelby apparently won't allow the Senate to vote on just about anyone, including nominees ready to fill positions related to national security.

Read the details here and here.

PS: Krugman tell us the Senate resembles the Sejm of 17th century Poland.

PPS: The ransom note.

India and Bangladesh

Described by an Indian writer in a Pakistani publication. There appears to be a new beginning with recently elected Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.

However, read this negative view also.


The purported full text of the joint communique is here. The poster writes "[This text is from my personal collection, as I got it it is published here. I hope it is, as it is in the actual signed officially. I am unable to authenticate.-P. Munshe]".

The interesting stuff begins from point 18.

PS: World Bank report on Indo-Bangla trade (PDF)

Larry Pressler

Quoted in the Indian Express, retired Senator Larry Pressler:

“I have been disappointed in India not raising a voice about what’s happening in Afghanistan, what a mistake we are probably making,” Pressler, who was in India on a speaking tour, told The Indian Express. “We are creating a big problem for India because at the end of the day India is going to have on its border a highly armed loose canon in Pakistan, a rogue state whose government is not what we espouse or support. A rogue Pakistan on steroids of US money,” he said.

Calling things by their true names

Prof. DeLong, apart from highlighting the sad state of discourse that prevails, also illustrates when it is correct to call someone an ethics-free partisan hack.

PS: The ethics-free partisan hack is "the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics at St. Lawrence University", illustrating why economics is the Dismal Science.

Tujh Mein Rabb Dikhta Hai

An unexpected place to find a rendition of a Bollywood song!


The original Bollywood is thus:


In case you were curious, the lyrics and a translation.

The Monkey Trap

This is the best synopsis of the strategic situation of India with respect to Pakistan.

The essence of the monkey trap is its simplicity, which in turn is based on the limited strategic options available to Pakistan and the national character of its elite. Pakistan is caught in a self-destructive cycle with no way out, trapped between rhetoric and reality. It cannot abandon the anti-Indian crusade and Kashmir because too much has been invested into it and without the Indian enemy they have no identity and no method to maintain their rentier control of the Pakistani state. This fundamental basis of Pakistan can be understood within the context of the earlier section.

On India and Pakistan

There are three groups in India which are obsessed with friendship with Pakistan. The first group comprises elderly people born in that part before partition and who are nostalgic about Lahore havelis, halwa and mujra. The second group comprises Bollywood actors, directors and assorted outfits who look at Pakistan as a big market. Dawood Ibrahim’s gang has financed many of these useful idiots. The third group comprises bleeding heart liberals who hold candle light vigils and who cannot imagine India doing well without its ‘younger brother’ taken care of. All three have been proved wrong a hundred times but they unfortunately play an important role in moulding opinion. — R Vaidyanathan

Colorado Springs, CO descends into the abyss

Via Krugman, this story that starts like this:

"COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

IMO, Colorado Springs is headed for third-world town status.

Time machine

The notorious A Q Khan of  Pakistani nuclear proliferation fame has a historical time machine:

In 1666 Shivaji presented himself in the court of Aurangzeb and requested a 7,000 (Haft Hazari) rupees worth of Jagir. Aurangzeb arrogantly rejected the request and offered him a 5,000 rupees Jagir instead. When Shivaji objected, he was thrown into prison. He managed to escape by hiding under clothes in a bullock cart and later inflicted enormous damage to the Mogul dynasty, defeating the Mogul navy for the first time in 1664.

Pointed out by a BRFer where the writings of Copy Cat Khan, as he is fondly known there, are perused with great attention.

Fun & Games in the Land of the Pure

Lifted directly from bharat-rakshak forum:

Rs256bn loans written off since 1971, SC told

The State Bank informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday that commercial banks had written off loans of up to Rs256 billion

Of the amount written off...loans of Rs500,000 or more ... Rs202.5 billion due from 22,021 borrowers from 1997 to 2009. {Dont get fooled by "from 1971". This is the interesting number. So from '71 to 97 Rs. 55 billion has been written off. It is likely that these were genuine defaults.}

The report submitted by Iqbal Haider requested the court to ignore an earlier list compiled by 33 banks and four development finance institutions (DFIs) suggesting that Rs193.4 billion owed by 93 borrowers had been written off. { So 22,021-93 = 21928 borrowers defaulted on the rest of the 9.1 billion. Most likely these were corner chai dukaan owners who genuinely couldnt pay their loan because they went out of business. The 93 who owe Rs193.4 billion are the real culprits. The rest of the numbers are just "padding" to make sure the 93 are "lost". More over, how can one "ignore" submission to a court? Was it a lie? then it is perjury! was it incompetence of willful negligence? Then they have committed contempt of court!}

50,427 people, including politicians, civil and military business concerns and business tycoons of Karachi, Lahore and other cities had been favoured through the scheme to waive off outstanding loans in 2002. Soon after the October 2002 elections, the then finance minister Shaukat Aziz and his financial team at the SBP approved the loan write-off scheme after succumbing to pressures exerted by certain top leaders of the then ruling party to ease financial burden on their businesses.

No improvement

Jon Stewart still has tons of material. So things are not getting better, yet.