Third party help

In an offline chat with reporters in Delhi recently, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs suggested that the US needed a third party because the two contenders in the upcoming Presidential elections, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, were skirting the real issues confronting the economy. Would a third party work, Sachs suddenly asked our correspondent. Well, India had a multi-party system but there was little progress on the economic front, he replied tentatively. “This means an end to my hypothesis,” came Sachs’ good-natured riposte.