The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat Under President Trump , the United States of America did not invade any country. On the contrary, the US army started drawing down its operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria along with other engagements around the world. Afghanistan saw the biggest drawdown with now only 2500 troops in Afghanistan .  The big question now is if the Biden Presidency will go back to previous years and start again the policy of invading far away places to help cement its imperial role which was reversed by Trump’s America first policy .  Mr Biden supported the Iraq invasion by voting for the war and by supporting President Bush . When Mr Biden was a vice president to President Barack Obama , he supported increasing troop numbers in both Iraq and Afghanistan . Clearly, there is a tendency where Mr Biden tilts in favour of foreign wars .  If there was one good policy pursued by President Trump, that was to stop engaging in foreign wars and concentrate on America and Ame...

By Sikander Hayat  There is a perception that Trump is the logical conclusion of all that has been happening in the world and in the United States of America for last 10 years.  It has been argued by many that democracy acts as a vent and allows societies to show their frustrations without resorting to bloody civil conflicts . It is also true that it allows demagogues to use people’s frustrations to their advantage and instil hate into the minds of populace. It is always easy to blame a particular outcome on particular outsiders/others. It is very well documented that Trump used the pain , anger and helplessness of ordinary citizens to make a case against globalisation , free trade and environmental protection agencies. Both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pointed at the same symptoms for the malaise in society but both of them have proposed different remedies for these ills. Some of the main differences are as follows: 1.    ...

By Sikander Hayat The problem with forecasting a financial crash is that no two crashes are the same. Causes could range from bingeing on collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) as the largest banks and insurance companies did before the crash of 2007/2008 (which lead to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and countless smaller market players) to run on the banks to rigidly sticking to Gold standard in the early 1900s. It is possible that remedy for one disaster  results in another disaster which was not envisaged at the time of enacting such remedy.  We know crashes do happen and will continue to happen despite our efforts to contain the risk. It is also true that we can moderate the risk but we cannot hope to eliminate the risk. We can shift the risk from highly regulated markets to markets where attitude to regulation is blasé and sometimes actively risk seeking in order to snatch the business from other parts of the world. This is where the world of...

By Sikander Hayat Trump’s decision to move US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was long overdue. Congress passed the law to move the embassy toJerusalem , but it was being periodically vetoed for last 22 years by every  president of United States . United States was never a trustworthy partner for Palestinians and is the biggest reason that Israel ( despite being a small country with a population of 8.5 million people) receives an annual aid of three billion US dollars . This amounts to United States paying roughly 500dollars to every Israeli citizen. How can Palestinians trust United States as a partner in peace process when it pays American tax payer dollars to support occupation of Palestine which has been declared illegal by United Nations. By moving embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem , Trump has now come out in open and basically declared his intent to support occupation of  East Jerusalem openly rather than just paying for it financi...

By Sikander Hayat  Trumptax cuts may help big corporation but these won’t help lower and middle class Americans . One positive outcome could be that largecompanies which are hoarding money outside United States will hopefully declare their profits in US and will start paying their due share of corporate tax which has now come down to 20%. Google,Amazon, Starbucks e.t.c. do not pay their fair share of tax anywherein the world. They make a lot of money around the world but concoct atax evasion system which is barely legal and yet does not come out very well against any moral code. Apple has a sweatheart dea l with Republic of Ireland where Apple pretends to pay tax and Irishgovernment pretends to collect tax . Irish tax rate is probably lowest among the OECD member states and is sucking a lot of good money from hard working people around the world. Compared to United Kingdom, UStax rate was really high but it is now at the same level at 20%. Some o...