American Periscope
Sending signals within the company
WHEN I was employed in a large multi-divisional company, I was given a significant raise and privately told by my boss that I was one of the very few in the company who was being given the raise. The company was in serious financial difficulty and
promotions had been put on hold. The company was negotiating a scheme of lay-offs with the unions and did not want to attract undue attention if the decision to give select increases were made known. The human resource department was also wary
of ill-will among the managerial employees since there was an official freeze on salary increases.
Economy
Too good to be true
LIKE a lot of things that were being talked about when the Internet bubble was bobbing across the global economy skyline, the Law of Increasing Returns has proved too good to be true. There was a brief moment, though, when the possibility of inf
initely increasing returns had a lot of people going...
The coming global chill
MR TONY Blair wins landslide victory but the pound sinks against the dollar as he is expected to lead the UK into EMU at a lower rate for the pound.
The wealth and poverty of nations
TWO years ago, the Harvard historian, Mr David Landes, wrote a book entitled The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. He looked into the reasons for the difference in the historical rate of growth of different countries and regions of the world. P
rof Landes particularly pointed out how, over the last millennium, starting from a world of great and little empires and kingdoms, more or less equal in wealth and power, we have become a world of nation-states, some far richer and stronger than o
thers.
Backseat for economy?
SATURDAY'S morning papers carried a report which said that the Government had decided to call ``an urgent meeting of public sector banks and financial institutions next week to chalk out a full-fledged revival strategy''. The details of t
he approach must, of course, wait for the strategy to be delineated first, but the rough contours are already visible.
Editorial
Sell-off drift
IT IS A long path to disinvestment no doubt. But in India, it is also tortuous, uncertain, and most times leading nowhere. There are enough straws in the wind to indicate the drift. For one the Balco controversy had dealt a body blow to the momentum to t
he programme the deal had generated and, despite claims to the contrary, pushed the sell-off protagonists on the backfoot.
Miscellaneous
Reparations
IT IS no exaggeration to say that the colonies of European countries such as Britain, France, Portugal and Spain, and the growth of Australia, Canada and the US to their present stage of development are largely the culmination of centuries of unspeakable
atrocities perpetrated on the indigenous people and the exploitation, for accumulation of personal wealth, of the inhuman practice of slavery. Not only were the native people deprived of huge areas of their land, and other property and possessions, the
entire corpus of their knowledge and culture was ruthlessly destroyed. To establish their dominion over others, whole populations of natives were physically wiped out in senseless massacres with the help of superior weaponry.
