QE is past its due date; India after the Maharajas; Lifestyle diseases may cost India $6 trillion

1 QE is past its due date (Heidi Moore in The Guardian) Is the Federal Reserve’s stimulus working to help the economy, or is it hurting? At most, it may be possible to make an argument that the stimulus known as quantitative easing is helping Wall Street stock prices, but after three years of money-pumping, QE is evidently doing nothing to bring the country to full employment, which is one of the two tasks the Fed exists to perform.

Another sad employment report has come from the bureau of labor statistics, which snaps a picture of jobs in the US every month. It's not just jobs: housing, which looked positive earlier, has hit the shoals of rising interest rates. Many economists have accepted that the economy has slowed in 2013. Last May, 41 economists surveyed by the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve expected the economy to grow by 2% this year; they conceded in August that it would likely be more like 1.5% – barely enough to be called real growth.

The Fed's QE stimulus policy has prevailed so long that, even if it was a boon at first, its magic has worn off. It has proven itself ineffective in achieving the one goal crucial to the economy: getting more Americans on payrolls. Here's the evidence. In August, the jobs picture was dismal: only 169,000 people found new jobs. That's not enough. When 12 million people are unemployed, 169,000 jobs won't change the picture. So, it's grim out there. Wallowing only gets you so far. What do we do about this?

The hard news is this: it's a smart idea for the Fed to taper, to start opening the door for the end of stimulus. It's not a smart idea because the economy is healthy – it isn't – but because the economy needs to come off life-support and breathe for itself. Quantitative easing is a drug that seems to be long past its due date. After three years, the returns are in: there are likely no more benefits coming to the economy from holding down interest rates and buying up mortgage bonds.

2 Maharajas and ‘maharascals’ (Frank Raj in Khaleej Times) In the bygone era of India’s Maharajas, each regal state had only one ruler who could loot the treasury. Today, India has an entire political and bureaucratic class of ‘Maharascals’, spread all across the nation and beyond, with their greedy hands in the till.

Author and journalist MJ Akbar in one of his recent columns writes that in its search for change, India has opted for ‘insurrection’ as its primary instrument rather than revolution. “An insurrection builds momentum in bursts, and ebbs from the surface during fallow spells. This can easily mislead an establishment, which quickly tends to believe that it has either managed to defeat or purchase a passing upsurge. But such ash is not dead. Its spirit smoulders, waiting for the moment to resurrect,” says Akbar.

It remains to be seen whether India succumbs to insurrections. But what is certain, is that our politicians have so indoctrinated the country with divisive ideologies that they can strategically pull strings periodically, to achieve their self-seeking objectives. The sectarian demon is always lurking in India and appears to be resurfacing with the Lok Sabha elections looming. Will 2014 see the return of the fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) backed BJP? Indians are easily goaded by their politicians to think along caste and religious lines. We are oblivious to what is going on in countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Lebanon.

Living in a never ending rat race, Indians do not realise or are not willing to admit the extent to which they have been corrupted — brainwashed by notions of superior caste, religion, status, etc. Probably more than anything else, this is the national outlook that plays into the hands of our ‘Maharascal’ netas who manipulate us like puppets on a string. So what awaits us in the future — more anarchy, a revolution or Ram Rajya?

3 Lifestyle diseases may cost India $6 trillion (Durgesh Nandan Jha in The Times of India) India's march towards being an economically stable nation is threatened not just by global financial issues. Poor health indicators pose an equally big threat. The Harvard School of Public Health has, in a study on economic losses due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), estimated that the economic burden of these ailments for India will be close to $6.2 trillion for the period 2012-30, a figure that is equivalent to nearly nine times the total health expenditure during the previous 19 years of $710 billion. 

NCDs, chiefly cardiovascular diseases (including heart disease and stroke), diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases, are defined as diseases of long duration and generally slow progression. They are the major cause of adult mortality and illness worldwide. 

China, the report adds, is estimated to face output losses of $27.8 trillion for 2012-30 - which is more than 12 times the total health expenditure during the previous 19 years of $2.2 trillion. "The economic impact of NCDs is estimated higher in China than in India mainly because of China's higher income and older population," said David E Bloom, the lead researcher. 

An earlier study conducted by the World Economic Forum and Harvard School of Public Health estimated that a 12.5% reduction in ischemic heart disease, for example, could lead to economic savings of $25 billion per year over the period 2011-2025.