2013: The Year in Review (Q3)

July: The book Steve Jobs read once every year. How high should top tax rates be? Bus conductor sues CNT for Rs15 million. Rezistans should ponder over alternatives.

August: How Robin Sharma beats laziness. Michio Kaku on civilisation paths. Civil service hostage of Finance Ministry.

September: Terminal 3 launched to a difficult crowd. Harbour bridge project should be scrapped. Ballmer finds quick way to make a billion: resigning from Microsoft. Inpe zafer ki totalman inprevizib. Wanted: new devil's advocate. Understanding our recent budget deficit numbers. Indian cinema turns 100. Better income distribution is route to shorter workweek.

Read the review for Q1, Q2 and Q4.

Shouldn't We Create a Fiscal Policy Committee?

Given how pervasive any changes to tax laws are. I mean we've seen what the flat tax of two university buddies have done to our economy and to the lives of our people. We've also seen how the same toxic bean-counting architects of probably the darkest pages of our economic history -- right up there with slavery -- have ended the part they played in it: the PM didn't exactly give them a standing o.

So, we could set up a committee with two persons on it: the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank. Each one would have one vote. In case of a tie the PM can cast a vote. What better opportunity to allow avowed Socialists to show their real stripes?

We could but we shouldn't. We already have way too many institutions doing overlapping work. What we need though is the institutional capacity to analyze proposed policies in a totally independent and most rigorous way: the PPO.

Sims and Sargent Win Economics Nobel

Was quite happy to read that Chris Sims had won it yesterday given that he has always been kind of a rockstar in econometrics. That's especially true when you consider how he provided policy makers in the beginning of the 80s with a simplified tool, the vector autoregression, to carry about their business. That was a huge improvement over the large and messy macro-econometric models like those built by Fair.

Incidentally, I was dragged into an econometrics symposium at the end of the 80s in Montreal by one of my university buddies where many of the discipline's Gods were meeting: Zellner, Pagan, Wallace, Geweke along with Sims, Sargent and more. There seemed to be some rivalry between Sims and Sargent and we got a little proof of that when Chris was running down his presentation. Indeed Sargent asked a question that appeared to me to be in quite an aggressive tone: What's the trace of this matrix? My friend too agreed that was rude but told me that she read in one of Sargent's book that he thanked Sims for teaching him all that he knows. Which is a bit what he said yesterday. He also doesn't seem to have any solution to the current global economic problems. I think we should have him as our next Financial Secretary.

And don't miss listening to Chris Sims talking to someone from the Nobel Foundation. Sounds a bit more down-to-earth.

Why Free Laptops Have Not Been Distributed Yet

Almost a year after they were promised by A2A. Because of budgetary restrictions says Minister Bunwaree. So that's essentially the same reason why Ramgoolam had to cut Mansoor to size last year when the FS wanted to freeze 2,700 promotions on the eve of the general elections. And it's the same dumb stuff Ministers said Sithanen had been singing to them between 2005 and 2010.

Now 42 police sergeants are going to court because their promotions are overdue by about a year too. No money here too?