Archive for August, 2009

Open primaries and the BJP

Daniel Hannan, one of the brightest guys in British politics, urges the Tories to follow the Republicans by having open primaries. The BJP must now follow both – for a decentralized party structure is probably the biggest advantage it can have over the Congress which is by necessity stuck to the Family.
Any idiot can identify [...]

The Laffer curve – Dan Mitchell

SC okays permit raj in schools

The court also reiterated its earlier direction which stated that “each school is required to file a statement of fees every year before the ensuing academic session under Section 17(3) of the Act with DoE”.
“The school shall not increase tuition fee without prior sanction from the Directorate of Education, DelhiAdministration, and shall follow provisions of [...]

Antitrust negates the rule of law

My op-ed in the latest Pragati. Extract:
But antitrust has a fundamental defect – it is against the very essence of the rule of law. This is because whether an antitrust violation has been committed or not is not decided solely by pre-determined objective and quantitative criteria, despite pretensions to the contrary, but ultimately by bureaucrats [...]

Greed, overconfidence and the 20-20 vision

My fellow blogger’s latest MINT column asks bankers, investors and everybody in general to not be overconfident and be less greedy.
Maybe I am a sucker for precision, but what does “over” confidence and “less” greed mean? What really is the baseline and if there is one, is there an element of ex post facto baselining [...]