Mozart of Chess Becomes World Champion

After beating Anand 7-4. So meet, Mr. Carlsen.

How Our Standards Bureau Can Save Lives

By making sure, for example, that no buses that are unfit for our roads are allowed to operate. It seems strange that NTC buses kept having problems over several years yet they were not left in their garages.

Also I don't understand how in the past as many as 400 people have been victims of food-poisoning after eating from the same street vendor. That's just one example. There have been many.

Here's another one. Fans burning down houses and killing twins. Standards need to be rigorously enforced.

UK Prime Minister Sends Letter to Forum

After heads of government of Mauritius, India and Canada announced that they wouldn't be going to Colombo -- the capital and not the detective -- because of the human rights record of the island state. David Cameron said it would have been better to raise the issue there than to boycott the meeting altogether.

Sri Lanka responded that she is not a British Colony. Anymore.

Watch Carlsen Challenge Anand

Cricket-crazy Nation Says Goodbye To Sachin

He is one of cricket's greatest and is ending a 24-year career this week. As I am totally ignorant about that game and hardly know anything about Mr. Tendulkar I youtubed his name and sure enough I stumbled on this interesting interview of Mr. Perfect telling us about his buddy. Enjoy it!

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.

Budget 2014: What Do You Think?

Here are summaries prepared by defi and l'express.

How did you find it?

Do Mauritians Need To Learn How To Save?

Not really. We were always big savers. For example the average savings rate during the 15 years preceding the Sithanen/Mansoor reforms was 26.4%. A few years into the reforms it had hit a 30-year low of about 12%. 

Hmm, so tax rates are cut by 50% and savings plunge by about an equal amount? That does make a lot of sense because people adjust their savings to keep their standards of living at about the same level.

So no, we don't need any advice on building a savings nest. What we need is to make sure that bean-counters are always kept away from policy positions. Because although they will sound the alarm they can also go on and screw up big time. Which is a darn good measure of their skill level.

15% Flat Tax is Enemy of Good Growth

Bean-counters' answer to their own manufactured lie was a promise of robust growth rates if we reduced taxes by 50%. That -- as expected -- didn't happen. They said well it's because of the financial crisis. Not really, the mess we're in was hatched in Mauritius: our economy didn't rebound in 2010 when the rest of the world did. Besides 57 countries had better growth rates than us in the first three years of the reforms -- which include, by the way, the years of 'early harvest' and 'bumper crop'.

But government has collected more revenue they say. Its revenue can increase if you have higher growth rates, better collections or if you are ripping us off with unreal prices. There has been better collections -- this can happen irrespective of tax rates -- but they did not make up for the shortfall caused by the string of ridiculously low growth rates of the reform vintage. Which is in any case what the PBB circulars have been telling us year after year. One is mostly a one-off thing, the other a cancer that spreads rapidly. You can find that out by recomputing the revenue government collected minus the stupid things (hedging billions, abusive energy prices, making SMS more expensive, high internet prices, wider-than-necessary interest rate spreads, etc). And have a look at the servicing of our debt and its structure for some additional clues that we need to add a couple of higher tax brackets on budget day. Having a good look at recent shutdowns of the US government is also not a bad idea.

And if unemployment has stayed stuck above 10% since the reforms began is it because our people don't have any good skills or is it because there are too many poverty-pay jobs on offer? And because the floodgates of stupidity have been opened? And no, we cannot increase productivity forever in one activity. We need to do other stuff. And use a range of tax rates to make intelligent bets.

Finally if our trade relationship with the rest of the world is unbalanced is it because we're not exporting enough or because we are importing things that we don't really need?

More Proof Crisis is Homemade

Recall that the bean-counters were quick to say that their 'reforms' had produced green shoots followed by an early harvest in 2007 and a bumper crop in 2008. That is easily disproved. They also said something else: that growth rates would have been a lot better had the Great Recession -- which began in 2008 and lasted 18 months -- not happened. And that as soon as conditions will get sunnier in the world things would improve for us because we're one of the world's most open economies. 

But as the above graphic shows, we didn't really rebound when times got better. Unlike the object of our economic fantasies: Singapore. We also know for a fact that a lot of the record poverty that was created has been produced well before 2008. And before Bheenick got appointed as Governor.

We also know what's holding us back.

Desvaux Says Illovo Split Switched After Meeting

With SAJ from two-thirds/one-third to one-third/two-thirds of the windfall gains in favour of the private participants of the deal. So he said on a private radio on Tuesday. Desvaux was the right-hand man of Berenger when the latter was Prime Minister between 2003 and 2005. And before that too.

Sydney Selvon has come to the rescue of the 'remake' by saying that JMD was a "Mr. Nobody in the media" on the FB wall of the LP. Maybe he was -- and that's irrelevant anyway -- but he also had the ear and the trust of one of our former PMs. So he doesn't exactly qualify as small fry. Even though his understanding of how the economy works is sketchy at best.

SAJ has denied the allegations made by JMD while Berenger was not too convincing at their press conference yesterday.

World's Most Beautiful Woman Turns 40 on Friday

Coutinho is Skillful Across Ball Sizes

And here's how Luis did.

Lou Reed is Dead At 71

Rose-Hill Transport Takes Service To New Levels

With its two brand new Yutong semif-floor buses which are according to Mr. Sharma structurally stronger and provide a more comfortable and secure ride. For only Rs6 more. They come with a camera and will set RHT back by Rs4 million a piece. Kind of happy to see this given what I said five years ago.

In the meantime the NTC is buying buses via a tender. Shouldn't we scrap this process and empower the CNT to buy buses that make sense?

Go Ahead, Make Some Good Mistakes

You can also read the amazing book.

Fama, Hansen and Shiller Win Economics Nobel

The Nobel committee just announced this. They are getting it for their empirical work on asset prices.

Munro May Write Again, After Winning Nobel

That's what the charming 82-year-old Canadian told Adam Smith a couple of days ago. I know next to nothing about the "master of the contemporary short story" so I was curious to read what other writers had to say. And here's some of her pieces to discover.

What I do know however is that the Nobel committee is discriminating against the ultra-short story writer. Maybe I should stop writing too.

P.S. The economics Nobel Prize will be announced tomorrow. Too bad they don't give a reverse Nobel Prize, eh?

Sat Mao

Dan enn interviu Ali Mansoor dir ki linn resi truv sa sat Mao ki konn maye lera la. Mo pe sipoze ki linn zwen ar sat la Minister Finans. Li ti pu interesan si li ti kav dir nu:

1. kan linn truv sat la promye fwa?
2. si sat la tuzur dan minister?
3. kuma sat la apele?
4. ki laz liena?
5. ki kuler liete?
6. sat mal sa uswa femel?
7. si enn sat maron sa?
8. si sat la konn zis maye lera uswa li ena lide lor reform elektoral usi?
9. si sat la ti pe visit so fami batiman trezor?
10. si sat la pa finn viktim trafik lorgan par hazar?
11. e finalman si sa sat la kinn fann sa bann gro dal la pandan wit banane?

Idiot Factories

I used to love laureates. A lot. Who wouldn't? They were the reason we could stay away from dumb teachers for one or more days. And taunt the other schools which did not have any in a particular year. Yep, if you want to be mean, start early.

But then we learn that some of them don't actually manage to finish their first degree. Which is fine. Or if they do they do so in a very average way. Which is fine too. Lack of ambition is one reason. That can change later. Peaking too soon is another. Relying on rote learning will not help them either because there is now way too much codified knowledge around to digest. 

And because there is only so much you can learn in the three years of your first degree. Compared to say the fifty or so years that you'll have on the clock after you promised to stay hungry and stay foolish. If you don't keep on learning you will be outsmarted fast because learning has never been easier. It's even better to learn different things. And stay out of narrow silos at all costs.  

The media can provide a nice platform for some to try -- to borrow from Ken Galbraith -- to make the ideas of your graduate days or of a Washington-based loan shark last a lifetime. But it will be an increasingly risky strategy. Worldwide. Besides maintaining a large ego is quite draining: you will have less energy to go to sleep everyday a bit less stupid than you when woke up. And it will hurt when you will come off that arrogant pedestal. 

So yeah, every year prestigious universities around the world will produce smart people and brilliant ideas. And idiots too. It will become increasingly easy to recognise them.