PARTLY FACETIOUS: An accountant's common sense?

Business Recorder

24-05-2025

'One must change with the times, don't you think!'
'C S Lewis, the well-known author of children's books said isn't it funny when day by nothing changes but when you look back everything is different.'
'Hmm, that is so apt for our political leaders – one day they are strutting around and the next day they are in jail.'
'Right, but don't you think if one's circumstances change, then so must the strategy.'
'Hmmmm.'
'What I said was common sense.'
'And chapter 1 of Freshman economics does note that economics is really common sense and common sense is really nonsense.'
'And that means?'
'Well, GPS was into common sense…'
'Common sense as an accountant. An accountant for an industrial complex borrows money cheaply from wherever he can, but for a country like Pakistan to borrow cheaply from abroad without taking account of the fact that repayment would mean the usual annual depreciation of around 3 to 4 percent of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar…'
Anyway if you insist he has common sense then I will concede that he has an accountant's common sense.'
'OK, but what about some economists we lured from their lucrative foreign jobs and conferred the finance portfolio to? Did they display common sense? Or did they display à penchant towards nonsense?'
'Hey, the rating agencies never ever rated us in the investment grade, so I leave you to draw your own conclusions.'
'Right, and twenty-four IMF programmes later plus our very fragile economy today…'
'Right, but our prime minister says growth prospects are good.'
'Growth prospects for what?'
'Don't be facetious. He should read the fine print in the 160 plus documents uploaded at the Fund website that his economic team leaders have signed off on.'
'Perhaps the Law Ministry…'
'No, they are busy with drafting the twenty-seventh amendment to the constitution, though first they must get the two-thirds majority and that case is still…'
'Let me give you some advice: maturing is realizing how many things don't require your comment.'
'Do or don't?'
'Put that in your pipe and smoke it.'
'I heard GPS wants the N portfolio as well.'
'Stop.'
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