MFN, Bribes and Fast Cars

Pakistan has spoken about giving India Most Favored Nation (MFN) status, and Ajay Shah has written a post with a fairly optimistic assessment of the situation.

While I don’t share his optimism there were a few new things I learned there and the post throws good light on the role that Dubai plays in India – Pakistan trade.

You know that RBI has deregulated the savings account rate, and banks have already started offering higher rates on savings account – China has observed this move and has a list of things that they can learn from this move. However, these are all things that they should learn to avoid!

Transparency International has released their new Bribe Payers Index for 2011. Netherlands is perceived to be the least corrupt, US is at number 10, India is 19, China is 27 and Russia is 28.

I don’t think there is a single developed country which has a corruption problem, and yet economists sometimes talk of corruption and bribes greasing the economy.

Singapore is number 8 on that list, and they were happy to see their unemployment rate fall unexpectedly this week.

Finally, Scott Adams writes about how stressful it is to be the least successful person in your reference group, and how changing his reference group and doing something that he was the best in within his reference group helped him .

That’s it for this week – enjoy your weekend!

One thought on “MFN, Bribes and Fast Cars”

  1. What an assorted collection of links..
    Scott Adams writes about how stressful it is to be the least successful person reminded me of Rajat Gupta the McKinsey guy. Was reading in ET why he did insider trading and it seems that it was to catch up with his other IITans. If that’s true then what Scott Adams says make hell lot of sense.
    Quoting from the article Why did rich Rajat Gupta turn to grubby business of insider trading?
    The professor says the main theory he’s heard in a dozen conversations with people who know Gupta better than he does is that Gupta’s spying had less to do with friendship and more to do with trying to catch up with his old peers from IIT. Unlike the guys who went into the corporate world and did all right for themselves, his school buddies who went out to Silicon Valley as engineers became not millionaires but billionaires as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and it gnawed at him.

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