When Barack Obama was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2009, hope was in the air and audacity was abounding. Today, 32 months later (and two-thirds of the way through the Obama presidency), Hope is just a city in Arkansas, and austerity pervades. We are in the midst of a jobless economic recovery that is so exceedingly fragile that to even label it as such seems a misnomer. The sad and sorry spectacle that was the debt ceiling debate in Washington, D.C. sent chills through the public and the … [Read more...]
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Frank blogs regularly for the Huffington Post and writes occasional columns and articles for publications such as the International Business Times and The Economic Times of India.
Frank writes on a wide variety of topics that are critical to shaping the future of America and the American dream and to making the United States and the world a better place. These include: Business; education; poverty and inequality; politics and public policy; immigration; manufacturing; innovation; leadership; citizenship; and social commentary.
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India’s Unstoppable March Toward Greatness
WASHINGTON, D.C.: India celebrated its 65th Independence Day on Monday, with much fanfare. Among other things, the Independence Day of a nation is an occasion to pay tributes to its freedom fighters and founding fathers, celebrate its accomplishments and review its general direction. From a personal standpoint, there is no better day to pay tributes to the country of your birth than the day of its birth. Even though the last Independence Day I celebrated in India was when I was in my early … [Read more...]
US Investors Now Expect Deeds from Mukhurjee
Officially, the mission of Pranab Mukherjee’s just-concluded trip was to attend the second annual meeting of the India-US Financial and Economic Partnership. The finance minister brought with him perhaps the most star-studded Indian economic team to visit Washington for a bilateral event. The delegation included chieftains and key officials of nearly all major economic and regulatory institutions that oversee the $1.5 trillion Indian economy, among them, Reserve Bank of India Governor Duvvuri … [Read more...]
Woes on multiple fronts weigh down US economy
Nearly two years after getting out of a painful recession, the US economy continues to stutter along. Though multiple indicators have suggested that the recovery is real-the world's largest economy has registered an average growth rate of 2.8 per cent per quarter over seven quarters-the recovery is yet to be felt on the Main Street, USA. Middle-class Americans, who bore the brunt of the worst recession since the Great Depression, are still struggling financially. Many are still unemployed, or … [Read more...]
Sense of relief at the demise of Bin Laden
For someone who has been on the run for nearly 10 years, Osama Bin Laden’s end came swiftly. It took the U.S. Navy Seals just 40 minutes to eliminate America’s most wanted man, who was hiding, not in the treacherous mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border — as it was widely believed — but in a sprawling mansion just miles away from Islamabad. Within hours, his body was buried, somewhere in the North Arabian Sea. Not surprisingly, there was one common thread in the way most people around … [Read more...]
Insider Trading Shakes Investor Trust in Market
Since the 1980s, the issue of insider trading has rocked the Wall Street every few years, with a top executive of a company or a reputed individual getting caught while trading with what’s called ‘non-public information.’ What usually occurs at the end of these periodic scandals is a loss of public confidence in the financial system and, for the individuals involved, a loss of reputation and occasional jail terms, if found guilty. Now, more than six years after celebrity entrepreneur and … [Read more...]
At long last, Indians Revolt Against Corruption
In the first 63 years of its independence, India’s attitude towards corruption had been two-pronged: while one half of the nation displayed a remarkable level of tolerance for graft, the other was largely apathetic to the issue. Though front-page story after story had been exposing corruption that pervaded the country’s political system from top to bottom, the electorate’s response has been large yawns. Historically, few governments have been voted out on account of corruption, even though … [Read more...]
India’s rich should emulate Gates, Buffett
Two distinguished Americans are in India this week on a noble mission. William Gates, Jr. and Warren Buffett, the second and third richest individuals on the planet and also among its most generous, landed in the country earlier in the week to preach giving to India’s super-rich. The visits of Buffet, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and Gates, the Microsoft founder, are part of their “Giving Pledge” campaign, which was launched last year to encourage the world’s wealthiest … [Read more...]
India-U.S. trade: A frontier of possibilities
The final figures on India-U.S. trade in merchandise goods for 2010, which was released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division, are both encouraging and sobering at the same time. But, first, the hard, cold statistics: the volume of trade between the world’s richest country and its 11th largest economy was worth $48.8 billion last year; the U.S. exports to India accounted for $19.2 billion and its imports from the country totaled $29.5 billion. Exports to the United … [Read more...]
