In the wake of one of the worst train accidents last Friday at Balasore, Odisha, journalists have turned an unsparing spotlight on rail safety. Many unsavoury features of Indian Railways now stand exposed in the glare of public scrutiny, ranging from the systematic underfunding of the rail safety fund and the snail -pace rollout of the rail safety mechanism, Kavach, to the damning CAG report on train derailments, and the sorry state of the Railways' finances.
The official GDP growth data hides the reality of tepid growth and a decline in good employment.
The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) announcement of withdrawal from circulation of the ₹2,000 currency notes has caused much incredulity. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin quipped, “500 doubts, 1,000 mysteries and 2,000 blunders”, and Rajya Sabha member P. Chidambaram said, “Demonetisation has come full circle”. The Union government has distanced itself from the decision by letting the RBI announce it.
The US hit the debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion on January 19 and as early as June 1, the US government may run out of money to pay its bills if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt ceiling. US treasury secretary Janet Yellen reaffirmed that defaulting on the US debt obligation would be a “catastrophe” and would put into question Washington’s “global economic leadership”. The debt ceiling refers to the maximum amount of money the government can borrow to meet its financial obligations.
Recently, numerous articles have been written on the demise of the dollar. The argument is that China, the second largest economy after the US, is increasingly convincing the world’s largest suppliers of energy, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela, to trade in Chinese yuan. This, according to the commentators, will usher in the demise of the ‘petrodollar’. It would then be a matter of time before the US economy crumbles, they argue.
5G is not just about faster speeds of data transfer. It is different from 4G on two other counts — massively more data throughput and low bounded latency. This combination could be leveraged to produce all kinds of innovations in education, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics and entertainment
Recognise AT1 bonds as insurance, rather than pure debt. Once AT1 bonds are understood as insurance by a bank that is still a going concern, against a calamitous loss, the expectation that they should be bailed in only after equity is written off would disappear
The high-decibel angst of investors in Credit Suisse’s Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds that were fully written off before selling the bank to rival UBS for $3.23 billion resonates with investors in Yes Bank’s AT1 bonds, who are currently litigating against such a write-off at the hands of the RBI-appointed administrator, before the troubled bank was transferred to State Bank of India.