Sharma Family Journal

AFP is carrying this article referring to India’s partition today.

When British colonial rule ended in 1947, India was divided along religious lines. Muslims settled in West Pakistan and East Pakistan — now Bangladesh — while India was dedicated for Hindus.

Since the article was about Pakistan’s independence, this is probably their Pakistani correspondent repeating the stuff in his text books. It shouldn’t be very hard to figure out the stats for yourself.

It seems to be widely accepted that the percentage of Hindus in Pakistan has dwindled to < 2%, whereas the percentage of Muslims in India has increased to 14%. The electorate (or whatever is left out of it through the years of miliatry dictatorships) was till recently partitioned between Muslims and non-Muslims.

I find it surprising that this passed through AFP's editorial scissors.

The more practical minded Pakistanis will realize that it's in their economic interest by working out some kind of a loose federation with India, instead of letting the country used as a tool by both western governments and Al-Qaeda.

You might be tired of reading about the credit crunch for the Nth time on your favorite financial website and you might still be scratching your head about making sense of all of this.

Asians make most of the goods consumed in the US, take all the money and invest it right back in American banks which lend the money to people who’re not credit worthy and that hurts Asian markets? There must be something wrong with this logic you think.

I’ve tried to make sense of all of this by compiling some data myself (I think all the data is out there, but is not presented this way because of the political sensitivities). Also, I’m not sure how trustable the data is i.e. has it been verified independently from multiple sources.

But here it is. Emperor’s clothes. So every month the US persuades other countries to sell goods/services that are really worth ~900B USD for around 500B, then pursuades them to buy things for around 300B.

At this rate, the US should be running a deficit of 200B per month = 2.4T per year. But it doesn’t. Why? Because some of the richest countries invest the money right back in the US.

Did you know that China is the richest country in the world already? This is according to the CIA, based on their bank balance.