Death by taxes
It took a two page report and a video on their website by the New York Times to demonstrate to many young people the abysmal state of tax collection in Pakistan. Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook were awash with outraged tweets and posts of the article which described how only 2.5 million people...
HATING ZARDARI
Recently whenever people ask me what the funniest Asif Zardari joke I’ve heard, my response is always, “that he is the most successful President in the 63 year history of Pakistan.” I can picture readers cringing, noses wrinkling, and people asking to be passed the sick bag. What makes this nauseating sensation worse for most...
DIGITAL ADVERTISING IN 2010
The year 2009 was a disaster of businesses across the globe. Precipitated by a financial crisis which began brewing at the beginning of 2008, it turned into a full blown financial tsunami by the beginning of 2009. The rest is history. Businesses found their credit lines dried up, budgets were slashed, people fired, and the...
ADVICE FROM DISNEYLAND
The Shaukat Tarin/Hina Rabbani Khar budget for 2009-10 is no different from any other Pakistani budget presented in the last two decades. There is nothing in there which will tangibly do anything for the 180 million wretched Pakistanis who find it difficult to make ends meet. Pakistani budgets are like Pakistani movies where viewers can...
THE HARD ROAD AHEAD
Nothing like a hard dose of reality to kill the initial euphoria after the routing of the PML-Q and the metaphorical slaughter of half-baked politicians like Ejaz-ul-Haq (or is it Chaudhry Ejaz-ul-Haq now?), who couldn’t win an election on their own legs and needed the intelligence agencies to prop them up. The truth is that...
IT’S ALWAYS THE ECONOMY, STUPID
It’s August and finally Mr. Musharraf has called it a day and decided to spare the nation and himself a drawn out impeachment drama which would have gone through. On Wednesday the deadline for the judges issue comes up and hopefully one way or the other even that will be resolved. And now to the...
HOMECOMING
According to financial circles in London, Islamabad is going to be graced with financial royalty when Shaukat Aziz arrives. And before people begin to get all excited that he’s coming to play another round of spectacular golf at the Islamabad Golf Club and repeat his hole in one at the 16th hole televised by the...
THE DOMINO EFFECT
From New York to Paris, the financial sector has been rocked with scandals, scams, massive oversight by regulators, and an erosion of shareholder value at a scale that the international financial markets have never witnessed. Bear Stearns, a name which could evoke such passions in young Pakistani bankers to which even 40 virgins couldn’t compare,...
THE HARD ROAD AHEAD
Nothing like a hard dose of reality to kill the initial euphoria after the routing of the PML-Q and the metaphorical slaughter of half-baked politicians like Ejaz-ul-Haq (or is it Chaudhry Ejaz-ul-Haq now?), who couldn’t win an election on their own legs and needed the intelligence agencies to prop them up. The truth is that...
AN ODE TO SHAUKAT AZIZ
Since about October 12th 2007 the news in the country and internationally hasn’t really allowed us to pay homage to a great patriot who gave us 9 years of his life and has recently left with a heavy heart for greener pastures. I speak of Shaukat Aziz who has recently left for London and then...
MARTIAN LAW
If you woke up one day and found out that little green men from Mars had invaded Pakistan in their whacky spaceships and had imposed Martian Law throughout the Land of the Pure, it wouldn’t be all that different from what we’re witnessing today. The theater of the absurd continues which leaves almost every citizen...
HOW MUMBO-JUMBO CONQUERED THE WORLD (AND OUR COUNTRY TOO)
I’m stealing this title from Francis Wheen’s excellent book, “How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World”, because I think it is very relevant to Pakistan as it is to the rest of the world. The book describes how we live in an age where intellectual dishonesty, conjured statistics, charged emotional rhetoric, and absolute nonsense can be pawned...
