Aswath Damodaran likes to describe himself as the “Lady Gaga of finance”. A professor of finance at Stern School of Business at New York University, he explains that the flamboyant pop star, unlike most music companies, instinctively understands the world we live in today and does her best to relate to it. Similarly, he seeks to shape the way he teaches so that his lessons are easily accessible on the internet. In a free-wheeling interview with Ashish Kumar Sen, Damodaran contends that the global recession is a consequence of globalisation, which he describes as the new world order. Excerpts:
Is the current global economic situation more vulnerable to shocks than during the post-2008 crisis?
Oh, absolutely. We have no buffer built in, especially in our financial service companies. They have used up the buffer in the last crisis and they haven’t had a chance to build it back up. So if nothing else, our banks and investment banks are precariously close to coming apart at...
