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I never thought I would never agree with anything in Mr Miliband's economic policy. If you are wondering who Mr Miliband (or Red Ed as he is sometimes called) is, he is the head of the Labour Party in the UK. In case you haven't been looking, there is a general election about to happen in the UK, which nobody in the world other than the most dedicated Anglophile (this blogger is one) has even noticed. Such is the UK's relevance in the world today - how far has the Empire fallen. Red Ed, is called so, because he is just one step short of being a Commie in economic policy. So how is it that I can agree anything at all with him ? Well, he has just announced that he will control the infamous zero hour contracts that seems to be so popular with big employers in the UK.  I have blogged on this before and I find this practice an abomination. Zero hour contracts are where you enter into a contract with a company which is as one sided as a contract can ever be. You are bound to the...

What do you call something who is passed from hand to hand ? Used goods ? Probably something worse ? Well, that is what we have to call Kraft these days. With a touch of slight (?) exaggeration, you could say that the land of mom and apple pie, could be stretched to include Kraft too ! Read on to see the list of brands this company owned at one time or the other, and even the Professor - he of the class war against processed foods - would have had one of those some time or the other. Its a quintessentially American company. And yet the way it has been sold and bought and sold and bought again makes somewhat depressing reading. As is usual with many of the well known companies, there is always a visionary entrepreneur in the beginning. There was a James L Kraft. He was born in Canada, but emigrated to the Chicago in 1903 and started selling cheese from a horse drawn cart. In 1916 they developed a new process for pasteurising cheese, enabling it to be shipped long distances and patented...

I am on my annual road trip and this blog will go to sleep for a while. I will instead be blogging on my travel blog which is here . Business can wait until I return !!

Sometime in 2015, or more likely 2016, or maybe 2017, India will overtake China as the fastest growing large economy in the world.  It could potentially be a historic moment, for India and the world. The opportunity is India's to grasp, or equally likely, drop. China's economy is slowing. Its GDP growth for 2014 (announced in an incredible 19 days after the year end) was 7.4 %. For the first time in 30 years, its GDP growth is below its own target of 7.5%. China's statistics are to be taken with a pinch of salt. Apart from the gargantuan task of measuring GDP for such a large country and number of people, its numbers are also, let us say, "approved" by the Communist Party. It was very likely that in the heady days, for a long period, China actually under reported its GDP. Growth was at such a frenetic pace that the Party was doing all it can to dampen the numbers. Now, its quite likely that the announced 7.4% is probably a tad overreported.  China's is a huge ...

Stock markets tumbled last Monday. Investors claimed they were worried by two things - Deflation and the possibility (yet again) of a Greek exit from the Euro. Even Rajalakshmi, she who is sitting in front of CNBC doing day trading, claimed to be concerned about deflation. Assuming that she can spell it, this is pure stuff and nonsense. Deflation refers to a sustained trend of falling prices. When this happens, demand tends to fall as people expect prices to reduce further and postpone purchases. Falling demand leads to unemployment, lower wages and therefore still lower demand and prices. When this is sustained over a period of time , economic growth collapses , much like what Japan has experienced over decades. But to consider the current circumstances as deflation and therefore hammer down stock prices is incomprehensible to this blogger. Yes, price indices have been falling in recent months, but that is solely on account of one factor - the price of oil. The dramatic drop in the pr...

The United States believes, sometimes, that it is so unique that it exists in Planet HIP 116454b (discovered yesterday). Some of its laws and practices are completely unintelligible to other members of the species Homo Sapiens. Chief amongst them is its laws relating to guns. A lesser dramatic field is the one on taxing global incomes of Americans (and now even green card holders). This blogger railed about it in the past here . Now it appears that the Americans are no longer alone in Planet HIP 116454b, at least in regard to the taxation law. The Chinese are also joining them there . World over, the principle of taxing income is that you pay income tax in the country where you live and not in the country you are a citizen of. So, if you are an expatriate living in another country, you pay taxes in that country of residence. This seems reasonable. You utilise the services of the state where you live - infrastructure, police, defence, healthcare, etc etc. It is therefore only right that...

What do you think the purpose of agriculture is ? To feed people, right ? Wrong ! The purpose of agriculture is to feed pigs. Very shortly more than half the crops grown in the world will be used to feed pigs. This was the astounding revelation I read in The Economist here . The problem is   China.   The staple diet of the Chinese is not rice or wheat – it is pork.   Pork is eaten in astounding quantities, every day, every meal.   In India, governments fall over the price of onions, in China they will fall over the price of pork. So much so that the Consumer Price Index is jokingly referred to as the Consumer Pork Index ! The Economist article throws out mind boggling implications of this Chinese fixation with eating a pig. The Amazon rainforest   is being cleared in Brazil to grow soya to feed Chinese pigs. The Chinese are buying up land all over Africa and Latin America, not to feed their people , but to feed their pigs. One of the biggest source of water and soil pollution in China...