> These days you have QE1 & 2 and rumors of an impending QE3. China may > have a trillion dollars worth of debt, but the US would rather > manipulate its currency to make it worthless rather than pay the debt. > Does the World Bank intend to step in to play referee when the US > performs currency manipulation?
Technically everyone's manipulating currency. China's done it for years, India has been doing it until Subbarao decided in 2010 that they won't intervene, a strategy that lasted exactly one year: Last December saw the biggest RBI intervention to strengthen the rupee since the Lehman disaster. (and the second highest ever) Europe is doing things far worse than the US now, accepting even toilet paper as collateral to bail out the peripheral economies. This is not to defend the WB. WB in fact drove some of the attempts to manipulate by suggesting, in the asian crisis of the late 90s, that asian economies should please hoard dollars and euros as "forex reserves" which will help them tide over moves later. What that did was just make the eurozone and America borrow a truckload more at cheap prices and eventually, we're here. > That said, to Manmohan's credit, his leadership has seen the > introduction of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and > the RTI (Right to Information) Act, both of which are hallmark steps > in advancing the social net and democracy. RTI is useful, but NREGA? All we're doing is helping people do nothing. You can't use a single piece of machinery in an NREGA project, no? How is that useful in any way? Btw, I'm also for removing tax concessions on housing, exports and fertilizer/oil subsidies. I think NREGA, like those, are evils and in the context of thinking beyond five years at a time, retrograde. > Real wages are falling in India like elsewhere in the world that has > swallowed the pill of economic progress. That the idli is being > replaced by the McAlooTikki if of little consolation. Real wages aren't falling in India at all, no matter how you look? Our per capita income is up, our wages in general are up and afaik, more than inflation. Do you have a source I can look at?
