kishor Jagirdar

CII - 5th India Innovation Summit 2009 The News is NowPublic.com

Since about 1999, media pundits have been predicting the imminence of two things: breakdown of the US economy and the end of dollar hegemony. The first has more or less happened now. I have argued earlier in previous articles in this column that, in the long run, demographics will largely determine the economic/political shifts which normally follow major episodes of global recession. The recent meeting of the G20 called to discuss measures to tackle the current global meltdown, made all the necessary Keynesian noises and, most important, established the need for a continuing multilateral dialogue for economic cooperation. The second issue regarding the role of the dollar as the principal reserve currency also came in for some discussion with suggestions about the need for a second Brentton Woods conference to reform the global financial architecture. As in the 1940s, the discussion has centred around world liquidity and the dollar’s hegemony. Joseph Stiglitz is also reported to have m