Mishmash.

1) Another round of exams approaching tomorrow. Not all grades are out for term 1, but the ones out have done a trick or two on the student aspirations. Many: 'If half of 418 are to get a B, be the last in the 209, and get a life here.' Some: 'Missed the high grade by whisker, let's gun better this time.' A rare few: 'I've done well. I've raised the bar for myself .' Me: 'Which success do I need more?'

2) A very good session "Editors Round Table" being held at ISB the coming Saturday. Five inkmen talking about " Is the lack of political involvement amongst the youth a threat to economic growth?" If anyone's headed here, register here and drop in.

Alam Srinivas – Editor, Outlook Group
Kaveree Bamzai – Executive Editor, India Today
CRL Narasimhan - Associate Editor, The Hindu
Kumar Ketkar - Chief Editor, Indian Express Group
Niranjan Rajadhyaksha – Deputy Editor, Businessworld

3) Global Economics (Krishna Kumar, USC): The fav course this term for most. It's fascinating to know how Savings, Consumption, Investments link up to National Current Account (and that again is linked to Trade Surplus/Deficit), but it's so difficult to move beyond the equations and intuit about the underlying principles without thinking about those Marginal this and Marginal that graphs. A fed interrest hike will have many consequences... what factors improve and what don't? I can't answer without first jotting down MPK = r + d and drawing the Savings/Investment curves. Somebody please take the engineer out of me!

4) Watch Commanding Heights if you want to know everything about the World economy in 1900's. Krishna being from the Chicago school of Economists, has us convinced that Classical (von Hayek) rules, and Keynesian is outdated. Briefly:

Classical Economics says:
- Free trade, free markets ensure speedy movement of wages and prices towards new equilibriums.
- Unemployment is voluntary.

Keynesian view retorts:
- Prices and Wages are 'sticky' when going down (during recession) and unemployment is the result of this disequilibrium.
- Government expenditure has to step in to kick-start the sagging Capital Investment and Labour demand. WWII brought America out of the recession by Govt. military spending.

5) I seriously need to order my thoughts, and get my act together.