A load of crap from an idle brain

Been a while since i updated my equity portfolio.  Some of the stocks were already at their highs; and i felt it was appropriate time for me to liquidate them and invest in others.

Bought the following

Sold the following

Hoping for the markets to correct sharply once the much expected double dip recession hits the US economy.  There would be lots of great bargains out there then.

Above stock price history courtesy:  Yahoo Finance

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Even though the country as a whole imports more oil than what is produced locally, India is now the top petroleum products exporting nation in Asia.

India is now the largest petroleum products exporter in Asia, surpassing South Korea. According to the data compiled by oil and metal information provider Platts, India’s gross exports currently average 1 million barrels a day, inching past South Korea which exports 0.9 million barrels a day.

With the commissioning of a new refinery by Reliance Industries at Jamnagar and Essar Oil increasing refinery output at Vadinar, India overtook South Korea by mid-2009 and has since then consistently maintained the lead position.

India’s average petroleum products export grew from 0.77 million barrels a day in January 2009 to one million barrels a day in August 2009. In the current year, the average oil products export from India stands at 1.07 million while South Korea exports average 0.88 million.

In fact, India’s refining capacity at 3.69 million barrels a day is the third largest in Asia after China and Japan, which have a refining capacity of 9.6 million bpd and 4.64 bpd respectively. Platts’ compilation is based on the data from individual countries.

“Both Reliance Industries’ Jamnagar and Essar’s Vadinar refineries contribute more than 90 per cent of the petroleum products exports while the rest is by public sector oil companies,” said Ms Vandana Hari, Asia Editorial Director, Platts.

Read the full article here

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Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd said Wednesday it expects to complete the acquisition of South Korea’s Ssangyong Motor Co. Ltd in four months and that the two auto makers may share vehicle platforms, helping reduce vehicle development costs.

“While we will maintain a distinct identity between Mahindra and Ssangyong vehicles, there is a potential for sharing platforms,” Pawan Goenka, president incharge of Mahindra’s automobile and tractor business, told reporters at a news conference.

Mahindra was selected as the preferred bidder by Ssangyong’s creditors on Aug. 13 to acquire a majority stake in the Korean firm, which has been under court-led bankruptcy protection since early last year after experiencing a severe cash shortage due to a slump in sales of its mainstay SUVs.

Goenka said synergies between the two companies might help bring down vehicle development costs. He refused to elaborate on the likely deal size or on the stake it plans to buy in the Korean auto maker.

But Goenka said Mahindra may consider introducing in India Ssangyong’s new sport-utility vehicle, Korando C, which goes on sale in South Korea by December.

Ssangyong is likely to sell between 70,000 and 75,000 of its vehicles in its home market this year, more than double of the 35,000 units it sold in 2009, Goenka said.

Read the full article here

Above pictures courtesy: Businessweek & 4theloveofjeeps

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Wishing all of you and your loved ones a very Happy & Prosperous Onam.

Though am back in Singapore and have no chance of celebrating Onam at home with friends and family, i had the opportunity to have an early Onam lunch.  Mum made sure to make parippu, avial, thoran, sambar, pappadam, injicurry, pachadi and rice payasam for us last week itself.

Back at work after a 2 week hectic trip to Hyderabad.  Had no chance to meet any friends in person and even call them up.  Am sure most would be angry and disappointed with me.  I promise to make it up on my next trip home

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Will be back in Singapore on 22nd August.

Meanwhile, hearty National Day wishes to everyone in Singapore and Independence Day wishes to everyone in India.

Hope to have lots of Haleem this time around.   Yay Hyderabad, here i come.

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We can choose our friends, but not our neighbours.  This statement was famously made by our previous Prime Minister, AB Vajpayee. How true.  Given a chance we would like to pack Pakistan and dump them into the sea for being such a pest.  Why not?  Afterall, a country which has terrorism as its national policy against its neighbours, a country that drills hatred into its citizens brains 24×7, a country that doesnt mind soiling the plate that hold its food, Pakistan is nothing but a big pain in the butt for the world community now.

After the leak of more than 90,000 secret documents on the Wikileaks website, more and more sordid exposure of the Pakistani leadership are coming to light.  It was always known that the rogue intelligence agency of Pakistan, the ISI, was hand in glove with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Lashkar-e-Toiba and many other terrorist organisations fomenting teror in India.

But what takes the cake is the ignorant America feeding the Paki army so that it can fund the terrorists which in turn stab the American and other NATO troops currently in Afghanistan in the back.  The same money that the Americans provided the Pakistani government is now being fed by the ISI and Pakistani Army back to the Al Qaeda backed terrorists who are in turn killing the American soldiers.

I wonder how the American citizens are tolerating their government feeding the same scums who are killing their soldiers. Any civilized government would have re-looked at the horrors of the backstabbing that Pakistan has been doing to their soldiers…but not the US government.  The game of strategic reach that the US likes to play so much has stretched its resources so badly that the US economy is on the verge of a collapse.  Still, it refuses to learn from its mistakes.

Inspite of the evidence put forth by the intelligence, that the biggest snake in the hole is nothing but the Pakistani Army/ISI, the Americans seem to have no qualms sharing the same bed with them.  Pakistan has mastered the art of holding a gun to its own head and threatening to kill itself.  Its time the Americans call their bluff.

If the Americans want to withdraw from Afghanistan in 3-4 years as they predict, its best for them to rein in the Pakistani Army/ISI and strengthen the Afghan govt’s hands in developing a strong defence against not only the local insurgents but also the Army/ISI.

As for India, the best thing for it to happen would be the breakup of Pakistan.  I have always believed that a strong and economically stable Pakistan is a bigger headache for India than one which is broken up into pieces.  I love Manmohan Singh and really appreciate the hard work he is putting in trying to find a peaceful solution with Pakistan.  But he doesnt realise that he is barking up the wrong tree and that Pakistan is like the dog whose tail will always be curled.  No matter what we cant straighten it.  Its not a civilized society and probably we need to wall off the borders between the two countries and cut all strategic, business and people to people ties.

According to Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander…

Gen. Kayani is saying he wants to call the shots in Kabul. To do so, he is prepared to support the principal outfit launching suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s cities. He is backing the Islamic Emirate’s effort to wreck an Afghan-led nation-building process.

The Pakistan army under Gen. Kayani is sponsoring a large-scale, covert guerrilla war through Afghan proxies – whose strongholds in Baluchistan and Waziristan are flourishing. Their mission in Afghanistan is to keep Pashtun nationalism down, India out and Mr. Karzai weak.

It has nothing to do with Islam, whose principles they trample; indeed, the flower of Afghanistan’s ulema (religious leaders) have been among their victims. Gen. Kayani and others will deny complicity. But as the WikiLeaks material demonstrates, their heavy-handed involvement is now obvious at all levels.

To understand the context of this fraught relationship, read a report called The Sun and the Sky: The Relationship of Pakistan’s ISI to Afghan Insurgents, by Matt Waldman, a former Oxfam policy adviser now at Harvard. It is a chilling tale. When the scale of this complicity is fully exposed, it will rank high on the list of modern scandals.

The USA seems to have no qualms cutting off all funding to Iran, North Korea and any other country that doesnt toe its line.  But when it comes to Pakistan, it strangely behaves like an Ostrich who buries its face in the sand.

Tunku Varadarajan hits the nail on the head when he says…

We are now at a crossroads with Pakistan, a point at which we need to pull out old words from the Bush playbook. It is time to state to them—to state, in particular, to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani, the Pakistan army’s chief of staff—that Pakistan is either with us, or against us. There can be no caveats, no exit clauses, no fine print, no weasely handwringing about Pakistan’s need to retain “strategic balance” in Afghanistan.

Some more articles on the leaked documents

On WikiLeaks, Pakistan and Afghanistan; the tip of an old iceberg

Above pictures courtesy: Pakistanisforpeace & omjiyadav

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Iam a strong believer in the theory that the government has no business doing any business.  The government has no business running steel companies, textile mills, condom companies etc.  All that the government has to do is to manage the law and order machinery, keep the country safe and to create laws and an environment that is conductive for its people do do business and prosper.  The government exists so that the common man can use his skills to run his own business and employ people.  More than 60 years ago when the country got its independence, it was ok for the government to get into all the industries so as to kick start the process of industrialisation.  As time went by, the citizens of the country got into the business of making money and it was time for the government to sell off the businesses and do what it was mandated to….and that is to govern the country.

But under the socialist regime of our succesive governments, the economy has been screwed up badly and sadly even 63 years after independence, we have millions of our citizens going hungry every day while millions of tons of foodgrains rot in open grounds for lack of storage space.

Meanwhile we have a food and agricultural minister who is busy hobnobbing with the glamour of industry and entertainment and involving himself in cricket. Not to mention monopolising the sugar business in his home state of Maharashtra. All this at time when foodgrains have no place to be stored and are left to the mercy of rains and heat in some open lands.

Even though the Supreme Court has woken up late, its good to see that the apex court has now come out with a ruling stating that not a single grain should be wasted and if the government cant do the needful, it must distribute the food to the poor free of cost.

The Supreme Court has observed that not a single food grain should be wasted. In a strongly-worded ruling, the apex court has told the government that foodgrains are rotting and if you can’t do anything about it then distribute it among the poor. The court has also sought government’s response on this.

Meanwhile, as the government faces flak over letting close to 30 lakh tonnes of foodgrain rot across the country, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on food has reportedly decided to sell an additional 30 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat to 11.5 crore Above-Poverty-Line (APL) families through ration shops.

Didnt such a though occur to the incompetent government and the food minister earlier?

PS: Remember the days of waiting for 2 years for a land line, booking periods for a Bajaj scooter or a Maruti car?  That’s the kind of pathetic performance only our government can do.  That’s why agriculture, retail and everything to do with logistics needs to be deregulated.  So that the private sector can do in a few years what our government hasn’t been able to do in decades.

Picture courtesy: Poonam

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The Bhopal gas tragedy, the 1984 Sikh riots, the Bombay riots, the Gujarat riots, various corporate and stock market scandals (Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh) are just a few examples where the Indian judicial system as well as successive governments have failed miserably.

Today’s news reports that 5 people involved in the Satyam scam have been given bail. Dont be surprised when Ramalinga Raju who is living like a king in the NIMS hospital but refuses to appear in courts or even take part in a televideo trial will soon be released on bail too.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry can make out that the various excuses given by criminals and undertrials are fake and yet our courts accept those excuses and keep pushing the dates of the cases.  A friend of mine who was working under a famous lawyer in Hyderabad used to tell numerous stories of how his boss used to hoodwink the courts with fake medical leaves, out of station kinda excuses to not attend the court.  Heck, the lawyer even used to give excuses like his car’s tyre got punctured and excused himself from attending court.  I wonder if the judge didnt remind the lawyer that there is something called autos, taxis or other public transport that he could have taken to attend court.

Till the government amends the laws to ensure that every case needs to be wrapped up in a certain amount of time no matter what the excuse, this charade will keep going on.   It took 26 years for the courts to find the guilty in the Bhopal gas carnage.  People are still suffering the after effects.  The wounds of the survivors of the Sikh riots led by the Congress ministers, the muslims killed in Gujarat with the active participation of the ruling BJP and the current CM Narendra Modi, the riots of Bombay perpetrated by the Thuggerays….the list goes on.

Till the feet of our leaders are held to the fire and action demanded from them, i dont see any closure for the millions of people on whom the actual crime is not the injustice, but the judicial system and the government that was elected to keep them safe from harm insults them repeatedly by denying them justice.

Fraudulent sales, inflated invoices, accrued interest and understated liabilities were some of the major methods that Ramalinga Raju and his henchmen used in order to make Satyam Computers Services Ltd appear highly profitable and keep the share price high, so that he could take away a whopping Rs2,743 crore out of the company. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) explained this and other intricacies of its investigation into Satyam at a media workshop in Mumbai.

JL Negi, general manager, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on deputation to the CBI explained how Ramalinga Raju falsified facts and puffed up results. He said, the company benchmarked its performance to that of Infosys. The financial numbers were massaged through fraudulent sales- invoices generated through “Excel porting”, which allowed the founder of Satyam and his co-conspirators to raise invoices bypassing the regular system and obfuscating an audit trail. In the period from April 2003 to December 2008, 7,561 fake invoices were created by a set of people close to Raju, who had access to the system. The fake invoices generated without purchase orders were shown as “hidden” and could only be accessed by a chosen core group. The CBI alleges that Mr Raju even asked his software team to develop certain products for seven non-existent customers.

These were Mobitel, Cellnet, E-care, Synony, Northsea, Autotech and Hargreaves. Fake revenue was recognized for these products by generating fictitious email as if they originated from these customers.  A domain was created in rediffmail to send these emails and 63 invoices were generated to raise Rs430.66 crore. The company even booked Rs31.18 crore as forex profit on account of fictitious sales.

Read this full article in livemint on how Ramanlinga Raju used his position in Satyam to perpetrate the scam.  You have to simply say hats off for the way he manipulated the scam.

Not to mention a big kick on the backside of the regulators, law enforcement agencies who let the scam happen for years and kept their eyes shut.

Past articles on the Satyam scam

The Satyam shocker continues…
Ramalinga Raju – The fraud King
Satyam’s pack of lies crumble
The Satyam – Maytas flip flop

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