Of course we can, as long as we stay away from shoving our ultra nationalist opinions down the throat of other person with different nationality having 180 degrees variation in certain opinions.
BTW: "Got Mitt Uns" Richard fox or some other author I forgot.
I am all for that...in fact I came here to engage on quality material debate/discussion past the usual stuff most members seem inclined to these days.
Gott mit uns, not sure which authors have quoted or used it....but its a Prussian/German military motto "God with us". Their militaristic history and tradition has appealed to me, studied it quite extensively and I also appreciate the irony in that every side says this in the end.
If not for aid and loans, I imagine we'd invest internally again
This is very key actually to understanding the whole problem in the end. If you think about it, price of currency (relative to others, i.e exchange rate) is determined by its supply/demand in the world at large...set about largely because it is legal tender only in the source country (and the defacto world currency is USD...an interesting exception, but a larger story to get into).
The basic force then driving this is how much you demand from the world compared to what they demand from you (as far as goods + services that both have on offer).
As a developing country, since one is relatively behind the world average (hence developing)....there is always going to be more structural raw demand from the rest of the world's goods+services compared to what you can supply to them (or they demand from you).
This means generally the currency you print will be shaped by this interaction in the mid and long term esp if you internally "favour" consumption over saving (most noticeably evidenced by current account deficit).
Current account deficit is not a bad thing (intrinsically by merely existing, which is somewhat ignorantly picked up on by lot of people) as it just weakens your currency to a new equilibirum by way of reverse flow in the capital account (current + capital have to add to zero).
But what is a problem is
how that capital flow composition looks like.
Aid and loans puts the raw scope in the hands of the govt+bureaucracy for that capital flow. The govt and bureaucracy in developing countries are varied degree of mess as far as institutional crediblity and efficiency goes....so often this is where the elastic "status quo" finds room to operate and perpetuate as far as the raw numbers go.
If you have no aid and loans (or minimal) which are essentially part of the capital flow process (generated from current account deficit pressure), basically the capital flow will take on hue of more private player/business interaction (who tend to value basic economic sense lot more and are more attuned to efficiency and reality on ground etc).
It is a basic institutional question and strategic decision. How much is the govt essentially willing to forego macro and micro control of capital account flow and pressure. Generally the more institutionally weak a country is, the more it has root psychology/strategy for its govt (and grey area of oligarch top dogs and underlying power centres) to keep tight hold of as much of this capital flow as possible (hence loans and aid reliance and their general deployment on raw infra rather than production, rather than FDI, FPI etc which tend to focus on production first and infra backlog after). India compared to Pakistan is interesting insight in this....Indian institutional framework and private sector raw scope (which you mention in your post) and standards/exposure determining that is largely quite below the world average...but its better than Pakistan's in the current timeframe...so yes the results bear out. Pakistan ultimately needs a deep cleanse of real deep set fundamental reforms (in the institutions and bureaucracy especially) to sort this out structurally....otherwise it just matter of noise of the day + musical chairs (both inside and outside the country) layering on top in trivial (more noise generating) kind of way with no real instrumental change.
@Oscar @Chak Bamu @VCheng @ps3linux @The Accountant
....yes I share lot of your basic take on these things....having looked into lot of argument, counter argument...and then having to dig out the actual quality vetted data.
