Upgraded Asian Development Bank (ADB) growth outlook, a bubbling equity market, the sliding LSM growth, an improved foreign reserves position, the still reluctant FDI, and a persisting energy deficit is what the calendar year 2014 had in store for us. While FY14 GDP growth of 4.1% coupled with the expectation of a similar growth rate for FY15 is something to sing about, a deeper analysis may bring to surface …

  Oil, like the snake eyes, has a killer’s fascination. Economic booms, bubbles, and bursts, all taking shapes in the slimy womb of this slick monster. The oil story has been written by the master oil CEOs like John Browne of British Petroleum, the deceptive oil ministers of oil-rich countries like Ali al-Naimi of Saudi Arabia, the yesteryears Seven Sisters of the West, the counterforce OPEC, and above all, the …

  The October 1987 New York stock market crisis and the 2008 financial meltdown were controlled as fast as they came. That was in sharp contrast to the 1929-30 depressions that threw the world markets first into convulsions and then into a prolonged state of agony. The keyword separating the two sets of — pre and post World War II — financial crises was “liquidity.” The abolition of fractional reserve …

  Although sufficiently provided with natural resources like water, coal and sunshine, our energy issues remain unresolved even after 67 years of the creation of Pakistan. This has been one of the major failings of our leadership. We have failed to draw a line between pressing national needs and trivial political issues. Leaving the decision of making dams in the hands of divided political leadership is nothing short of suicidal. …

  Born of the parents that soon divorced after his birth, the bespectacled master central banker Alan Greenspan carries the baggage of a chequered reputation in the backdrop of 2008 crisis. When talking about him, people take to the two sides of the argument — some calling him “an antiregulatory zealot”, some respecting him as the “growth-oriented president of the Fed.” But almost all of them put at least “some …

  Pakistan’s Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector has witnessed tremendous growth during the last 15 years or so. Banking sector, though for the wrong reasons, has managed to keep pace with the ICT sector’s fast-paced growth. The abolition of fractional reserve system in 1971 and the post-crisis ‘Quantitative Easing’ have generated a spate of US dollars. These dollars, traveling on the vehicle of foreign trade, have infused the entire global …

  There is something sure sinister about the corporate charity. ‘Give away a few millions out of the billions earned unscrupulously’ is the common refrain. Why do the corporations and the corporate bosses value charity so dearly? It’s a question deeply rooted in psychology than economics. Some may say that charities are tax deductible and therefore offer a way to the giver to attract public attention for a small price. …

  Capitalism thrives on perpetual increase in consumption. It doesn’t much encourage savings on the one hand and advocates debt-based investment on the other. Leveraged investment generates comparatively rapid but high-cost and unsustainable growth. Investment funded by savings results in low-cost, sustainable growth. This is what the Austrian economists say while commenting on the destruction wrought by the Chicago economists during the last three decades. While global conscience, in the …

  A $2 trillion plus industry, Islamic finance is said to have progressed in leaps and bounds – a staggering average growth of 17.6% during 2009-13 and a further growth forecast at an augmented rate of 19.7% through 2018. While 80% of the finance remains deployed in non-interest-based, conventional banking transactions carried out through Islamic banks or Islamic windows of traditional banking units, 15% is taken up by Islamic bond …

  It is mandatory, to survive under capitalistic system, to record economic growth every year. This growth is predominantly expressed by a single macro indicator – GDP. The prevailing prices of the factors of production and market prices of goods and services consumed during the year form the basis of GDP calculation. Controlled increase in prices on a sustained basis is the key to the survival off the system. Situations …