ASIA: The former governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan has said that India can beat the virus with the right resolve and priorities by focusing on immediate needs and delaying less important expenditures. He also said that it will be hard to lockdown the country entirely for much longer periods as […]

COMMENT:  Is there a tax that I can pay to stop Covid-19, or does that only work for climate change ? 🙂 KL REPLY: No worries. They got that covered. Cash is dirty now. If you touch it you will die. I am sure they are working on a virus that flourishes with gold or […]

ASIA: A slow increase in output and new business, coupled with a steep decline in exports following the global coronavirus pandemic, pulled down India’s manufacturing activity to a four-month low in March, a private survey showed on Thursday. The IHS Markit India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) declined to 51.8 in March from 54.5 in […]

COMMENT: Dear Martin, In Portugal, we have since Q42015 a left government. The first 4 years were a Socialist government with a kind of explicit support of Communist and Extreme Left. Since last year’s elections, the Socialists are again in power but now with an implicit support from the other two left parties. Portugal enjoyed […]

COMMENT: Dear Martin, your public and private blog is the first I read every morning, it is my briefing. I received this email today (31.03.2020) from a friend living in Switzerland about sending me a package via normal mail … “this morning, I wanted to ship xxxxx and xxxxx to Greece, and as long as […]

ASIA: India’s policy makers are preparing a plan to carefully analyze a tough trade-off. They are considering a continued lockdown post-April 14, 2020, at the cost of longer-term economic devastation, or a rational “unlocking,” allowing India to return to work. Based on pre-COVID-19 projections of India’s GDP, the average daily GDP value for FY2021 was […]

ASIA India’s markets witnessed the biggest sell-off by foreign investors in a single month in March. The 21-day nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus raised fears of a devastating impact on an already-slowing economy. Foreign institutional investors sold nearly $16 billion worth of equity and debt as of Monday, according to depository […]

ASIA: In India, coronavirus cases continue to rise despite a complete lockdown and crossed 1,100-mark yesterday. India reported the biggest single-day spike in new COVID-19 cases at 200 today. As of Tuesday, the number of infected cases in India has increased to 1,300, with 102 recovered cases. The death toll from coronavirus in India has […]

ASIA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought forgiveness from the nation’s poor for his 21-day nationwide lockdown. During his address on national radio on Sunday, PM Modi said there was no other option to control this pandemic. The nation-wide lockdown has resulted in the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers working in the […]

ASIA:  The Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee met today and announced a series of measures to counter the economic slowdown caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The repo rate and reverse repo rate have been cut by 74 bps and 90 bps respectively. All commercial banks and lending institutions can allow a three-month […]