If you’ve been tracking the regime change developments in the Arab countries over the past two weeks, you would know that the real heroes are the people who, with their aspirations of freedom clashing against the brute force of dictators, have hit the streets. Read more

Three key expressions define Barack Obama’s plan to fix the US financial system — consumer protection and compensation (both have 54 references) and financial stability (44 references). While the last two are rather too strongly entrenched in India, the first is something that Indian regulators and policymakers can learn and adopt. Financial stability is a crisis-specific need to revert from the receding tremors of the global financial earthquake that has shaken consumers, companies and countries alike and it won’t hurt Indian policymakers to know that we’re doing ok, though have a few steps to walk ahead. The first two are typical Obama signatures. Read more

The London air outside is cold but refreshingly so. The road outside Crowne Plaza at St James near Buckingham Gate is empty but for a sudden buzzing cavalcade that seems to be carting G20 leaders who are busy with four things — meeting the US President Barack Obama, meeting UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meeting the Queen and possibly meeting one another. Read more

Not that other countries have a position paper ready to dish out, but most of them have their stances clear. Between November 15 when the Washington Declaration was signed and today with the London Summit just 48 hours away, the positions — and the divides — are fairly clear. Read more

I hate to say ‘I told you so’, but I told you so — I really did.

Coming to a global congregation of the world’s largest economies and hoping 18 members to blindly follow what the US dictates and the UK furthers was nothing short of a foolish expectation. High on intent, reason and morals but low on humility, persuasion and mutual respect, the audacious spend-your-way-out-of-the-crisis proposal, born in the USA, grown in the UK and parroted by IMF, was destined to die. Read more

A March 20, 2009 paper from Yale has tips for Obama to negotiate this crisis. Written by Michael S. Solender, a senior research scholar and visiting lecturer at Yale Law School, How the Obama Administration Should Regulate the Financial Sector puts forth five key attributes that US regulators should have. These are:  Read more

Surprising for a superpower that still believes it leads a unipolar world, US President Barack Obama’s March 24, 2009 op-ed published in 31 newspapers was free of arrogance. Whether that’s a recognition of the emergence of a multi-polar world a quarter of a century down the road or whether that’s a true spirit of cooperation that Obama hopes to usher in following the country’s Bush-led isolation, we will know some day. Read more