A PRESCRIPTION FOR CAPITALISM

PART ECONOMIC HISTORY AND PART COMMENTARY ON RECENT ECONOMIC EVENTS, SHARMA’S BOOK IS ALMOST A FLY-ON-THE-WALL ACCOUNT, AT TIMES

- SURABHI

CAPITALISM IS NOT WORKING for any generation, however, because it has been twisted into a distorted form. An expanding state is undermining economic freedom and individual opportunity worldwide…,” so writes Ruchir Sharma in his latest book, What Went Wrong with Capitalism.

No stranger to how big business, governments, and central banks work, Sharma—who is the Chairman of Rockefeller International and Founder of investment firm Breakout Capital that focusses on emerging markets—writes about how capitalism has been changed and, in fact, ruined over the years by the use of easy money, often as sops and bailouts. Low interest rates, easy money, government intervention in crisis after crisis leading to high deficits have often created the perils of capitalism that we are seeing today.

The prologue of this fifth book by Sharma starts with why he fell for capitalism as a young, idealistic boy who was born in the mid-1970s in India, and saw the liberalisation of India’s economy by the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh. It is then divided into three parts: the first describes the rise and rise again of big government; the second delves into the perils of constant relief; and the third prescribes the path to balance and highlights economies like Switzerland, Taiwan, and Vietnam, where capitalism is still working and, in fact, thriving.