June 15, 2019 Saturday
Bedtime Story
Niall Ferguson on Banking and the Empire
“Only when borrowers have access to
efficient credit networks can they escape from the clutches of loan sharks, and
only when savers can deposit their money in reliable banks can it be channeled
from the idle rich to the industrious poor.”
This was Niall Ferguson in praise of banks
and banking system.
I can understand this statement and such of
its likes to be highly inflammatory for the times like today when banks are
failing or are in spectacular distress under the burden of outstanding loans in
an economy like India where most of their loans (read as credit and asset) are
ending up as NPAs or nonperforming assets (note the word “asset” even in these
dire times and straits) grinding the entire economy to a gradual slowdown if
not an inevitable crunch.
But the most incendiary statement that many
would find disgusting but could well be true (he has also said that:
“Economic history is not politically
correct.
Many on the left therefore struggle with
its findings”) is this:
“I think it’s hard to make the case, which
implicitly the left makes, that somehow the world would have been better off if
the Europeans had stayed home.
It certainly doesn’t work for North
America, that’s for sure.
I mean, I’m sure the Apache and the Navajo
had all sorts of admirable traits.
In the absence of literacy we don’t know
what they were because they didn’t write them down.
We do know they killed a hell of a lot of
bison.
But had they been left to their own
devices, I don’t think we’d have anything remotely resembling the civilization
we’ve had in North America.”
Well, you need not agree to everything that
Niall Ferguson has to say or has written though I personally find his ideas
very convincing and enthralling in spite of it being very west European-centric.
In fact in his 2003 book “Empire: How Britain
Made The Modern World” he unabashedly and unapologetically attributes the
advancement and progress made in the world overall to the British Colonialism
(something which even long time ago while we were far less learned and far more
boisterous Mon Ami and myself agreed to):
“Without the spread of British rule around
the world, it is hard to believe that the structure of liberal capitalism would
have been so successfully established in so many different economies around the
world.
…the nineteenth-century Empire undeniably
pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of
slavery, free labor.
It invested immense sums in developing a
global network of modern communications.
It spread and enforced the rule of law over
vast areas.
Though it fought many small wars, the
Empire maintained global peace unmatched before or since.”
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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