27 Oct 2008

Udayan Asks For $10 Bn

He wants the government to spare this amount and buy up what the FIIs are selling. Let's see. The government buys up all those shares in all those private firms. I'm guessing that it then becomes a major shareholder in said firms. So, it can decide what they should do and not do. Like keeping cement prices low.

I say, just do it.

24 Oct 2008

Free Markets 0, Greenspan 0

...in a tense exchange with Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the committee, Mr. Greenspan conceded a more serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Mr. Greenspan said.

Referring to his free-market ideology, Mr. Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

Mr. Waxman pressed the former Fed chair to clarify his words. “In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Mr. Waxman said.

“Absolutely, precisely,” Mr. Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”

OK, that's that then.