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: CEA’s job

Kaushik Basu’s appointment as chief economic advisor has been postponed by a few weeks, we are told, but it is very much on. Those in the know say the US-based prof needs to get appropriate security clearances before taking up the sarkari job. Interestingly, Basu will then probably be joining when much of the work on Budget preparation and Economic Survey for next year will already have been done. Won’t he have a say, especially on the latter? North Block insiders say the CEA can put his stamp on the Survey by authoring one chapter, and for that there will be enough time. Some insiders also already have a joke going: Basu is Carl Marx professor of economics at Cornell. That’s Carl with a C not a K, please note. But, as finmin staff points out, imagine if Basu was CEA when the Left was a Congress ally.

Gold that glitters

RBI buying gold from IMF has got India’s foreign policy establishment quietly happy. What’s the link between diplomatic types and central bank’s macroeconomic insurance strategies, you may wonder.

The link is that IMF sells the yellow metal through a process where geopolitics has a large influence. Note that the Fund that preaches to third-world countries on governance, does not believe in issuing tenders for selling the valuable stuff. Anyway, China was supposed to get the gold. But apparently, PM’s chats with influential members of the US establishment swung the deal for India. Indian establishment types are happy because it is not often that India gets what China wanted in the first place.

That memo