Vivek Kaul

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest,” wrote singer and songwriter Paul Simon some decades back. Books on the current financial crisis which started in late 2008 are a tad like that. Until now they have tended to deal with certain aspects of the crisis without looking at the bigger picture of what really went wrong. That bigger picture of the ongoing financial crisis has now started to evolve. Easy Money captures this big picture. The history of money and the financial system as it has evolved over the centuries stand at the heart of this endeavor. It explores the idea that the evolution of money over centuries has led to an easy money policy being followed by governments and central banks across the world, which in turn has fueled humongous Ponzi schemes, which have now started to unravel, bringing the whole world on the brink of a financial disaster. The book also explains how the lessons of the financial crisis have still not been learned, and in trying to deal with it, governments across the world are making the same mistakes which led to the current crisis in the first place.

Evolution of Money from Robinson Crusoe to the First World War

Easy Money

India’s Big Government

The second book in the Easy Money trilogy discusses how the global financial system evolved in the aftermath of the First World War and how that finally led to the dot-com crash in the United States, in the early 2000s. It gives an overview of how in the aftermath of the First World War, Europe was in major trouble. The book also analyzes how the United Kingdom of Great Britain, which was once the premier nation of the world, lost out to its former colony, the United States of America. The dominance of the United States led to its currency, the dollar, becoming the international reserve currency. This led to the United States having an exorbitant privilege which it still continues to have. Over the years, this exorbitant privilege has led to many financial crises in different parts of the world. It has also been responsible for the current financial crisis as well. The book concludes with the wisdom of the legendary investor Warren Buffett, who was deemed to be a failure, during the heydays of the dot-com bubble, when his investment company Berkshire Hathaway could not generate the stupendous returns that dot-com stocks had been generating. Nevertheless, in the end, it was Buffett who had the last laugh. As he wrote to his shareholders: “But a pin lies in wait for every bubble.” The lessons of the dot-com bubble bursting were never really learnt, and soon the same mistakes would be made again.

Evolution of the Global Financial System to the Great Bubble Burst

Over the last decade, Indian banks in general and the government-owned public sector ones in particular have gradually got themselves into a big mess. Their bad loans, or loans which haven't been repaid for ninety days or more, crossed Rs 10 lakh crore as of 31 March 2018. To put it in perspective, this figure is approximately seven times the value of farm loan waivers given by all state governments in India put together. And this became the bad money of the Indian financial system. Why were the corporates unable to return these loans? Was it because they had no intention of doing so? Who were the biggest defaulters of them all? Are Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi just the tip of the iceberg? How much money has the government spent trying to rescue these banks? How are the private sector banks gradually taking over Indian banking? Is your money in public sector banks safe? How are you paying for this in different ways? And what are the solutions to deal with this? In Bad Money, Vivek Kaul answers these and many more questions, peeling layer after layer of the NPA (non-performing assets) problem. He goes back to the history of Indian banking, providing a long, deep and hard look at the overall Indian economy. The result is a gripping financial thriller that is a must for understanding a crisis that threatens our banking system and economy.

Vivek Kaul

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