So why hasn’t OPEC done more to lower prices, which have risen by 50% since the start of the year? The answer is that, in the short term at least, the cartel seems to have lost control over the market. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, its producers are pumping as much as they can—and Saudi excess capacity is in heavy crude that is harder to refine into the cleaner fuels demanded by rich countries. OPEC made a great show of raising its members’ combined quotas to 28m barrels per day (bpd) in June. But thanks to rampant cheating, they were already pumping at least that much, and possibly as much as 30m bpd, making OPEC’s promises little more than a carefully staged bit of public relations. (Perils at the pump | Economist.com)

I hope the libertarian cartel is more disciplined.

On Wikipedia.

Fascinating.

I haven’t seen DNA yet. I will sometime, but the reviews I’ve read sound disappointed. But folks, what did you expect?

I am not asking the question sarcastically or rhetorically. I really want to know, because I am curious about whether at all it is possible to judge a newspaper by a few issues. Also, it seems to me that the very fact that a new newspaper will be judged by its first few issues will give the newspaper the wrong incentives.
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Gaurav Sabnis reports on a deluge in Shanghai. Readers of my blog will know that I am not a fan of China. From that, they could conclude that I am not a fan of the Mumbai-Shanghai comparison either and they’d be right.
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A woman was sitting under a tree at an open-air restaurant, sipping a coke from a glass. There was a nest of crows on the tree. One of the eggs slipped from the nest and landed plonk into the woman’s drink. The male crow flew down, perched on her table and told her….
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There has been an argument going around that Mumbai contributes 58,000 crores by way of taxes each year and we get nothing much in return. I agree with the spirit of the argument, but the figure seems to have come from adding up income and corporate taxes from Mumbai. If so, then it is inaccurate. A company might have its plants all over the country, but it will have its headquarters in Mumbai. The corporate income tax that it pays will be on the value added all over the country, but counted on Mumbai’s account. The right way to calculate the figure is to look at the value added by Mumbai and try to find out how much we are paying out of it by way of taxes. I am guessing this calculation is much more complicated. If only we replaced all taxes, including excise tax, octroi and income tax with a single VAT…. (Also read Nilu’s proposal that all taxes should go to the states and then they should contribute a fixed percent of them to the Centre. I agree with it)

I am sure that even there it will turn out that the city is shortchanged by a large margin, but it is important to point out this inaccuracy nonetheless before others do.

Today is the 60th anniversary of dropping the atom-bomb on Nagasaki.

Some time back, I was inspired by the novel Cryptonomicon, to do some research on the Pacific war in World War II. The results were sickening – and the research had the practical effect of making me gain a new appreciation for the concept of rules of war.
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Simon Baron Cohen over at the New York times explains clearly the current state of research on male and female brains, autism, the ability to systematize and do well in Maths and Science. You can ignore the second paragraph, where he disagrees with something Larry Summers never said. But the remaining parts are interesting. I am excerpting a lot because the article might go behind a paywall sometime.
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My previous post was meant to be a prelude to a point I want to make now. The strategy that we need to get out of a crisis is very different from the strategy that we need to adopt to prevent the next crisis. When Mumbai got flooded, we could depend on the goodwill of its citizens to rescue it. While planning to prevent the next flood, we will have to contend with the selfishness of the same citizens. Impractical capitalist that I am, I am thinking of ways to make use of this selfishness, rather than just rail against it.
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It is a cliche to say* that a disaster brings out the best and the worst in people, but it is true. One of the things that disaster brings out is the ability to spontaneously help others, including those whom one has never met and will never meet again.

This fact gets some people’s hopes up. If people can spontaneously come together and help one another in difficult times, why can’t they do so in normal times?
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Because of heavy rains in Mumbai.

Nitin Pai correctly points out that the brutality in Gurgaon is a case for labour reforms, not against.

And by the way, all those who are trying to link the decline of trades unionism in India with its economic reforms, please stop. You are displaying not only your youth (which you may not mind), but also your appalling ignorance, which you might, unless you are a journalist.
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