A load of crap from an idle brainPersonal, Movies, Music, IT, India, Singapore, Politics, Fun

Took a week off from work to rest, relax and recharge my batteries.  We are already into the 8th month of the year and i had yet to take a single leave this year.  Not to mention haven’t fallen sick for more than 18 odd months and (touch wood), would like that to remain that way for a long long time to come.  It means that i hadn’t been taking any break from work.

Work has been too tough and nerve wracking ever since i moved into the new department more than 5 months ago (ya, time flies), not to mention colleagues who are of no use to the team but somehow manage to survive at work inspite of doing nothing productive. Ya, life is a big bunch of surprises.  The ones who work are questioned when there is a lapse on their end, but some people just laze around at work and unashamedly take the salary at the end of the month and no one even bats an eyelid.

Anyways, over a period of time have steeled myself to ignore such characters and sideline them.  There are others who are enthusiastic about work and they are the ones who really encourage me to look forward to going back to work daily.

But this week off was a much needed one.  Have been doing nothing but having good home cooked food, having my regular post lunch naps, wandering aimlessly around the city, reading books on the couch and most importantly watching the financial markets melt the world over.  Watching this self inflicted wound by the US not only to itself but criminally exporting its problems to the worldwide economies is simply mind boggling to watch.  Not to mention morons like Alan Greenspan openly bragging that this debt ceiling is of no issue to the US as they can print as much dollars they want.  Now beat that.

The funniest part of the whole debt problem is the reaction from China which blasted the US for its uninhibited funding of its consumerism by debt.  But why is China so worried about the debt downgrade of the US from AAA to AA+ by S&P ?  Its because China holds more than a trillion dollars worth of US debt.  The more irony comes from the fact that just a few months ago, some so-called Chinese thinkers were threatening to dump dollars that China is holding in the form of its foreign reserves to show who the boss is.  Which makes one wonder, if China dumps the dollar, which moron in the world wants to buy it?  And if it dumps the dollar and the value of the dollar takes a nosedive further eroding the value of the reserves its holding, who is China threatening in the first place?  Its like cutting the nose to spite the face.  The whole fracas reminds me of the saying that i had posted sometime earlier in this blog….

“If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” – J Paul Getty

China today finds itself between the devil and the deep sea.  On one hand it needs to keep the yuan weaker by buying up all the dollars else the export oriented economy that China has carefully built up over the decades will collapse.  With thousands of riots happening countrywide, the Communist government doesn’t want another disaster on its hands.

And its not easy to make a complete turnaround of the economy from an exporting one to a local consumer led economy.  The transition takes years to happen. So, it keeps buying up dollars to keep its own currency cheaper and with the US dollar collapsing to newer lows, everyone is at their wits end trying to hold things together.

So, what to do now?  Nothing much..if you have money sit tight or start buying into blue chips in small tranches.  For the ones who sold off their equity holdings a few months earlier, i have nothing but admiration for your foresight.  For those who plan to sell during the collapse now, there is nothing more foolish decision than that.

Gold is scaling new heights daily as the US dollar loses its value.  Its gonna be a turbulent few months ahead.  Sit tight, there is much more trouble ahead.  Like the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett once said…

“Its only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked”

Pictures courtesy: Now Public, Guardian, wmpoweruser

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1911 marked the beginning of 2 brands that no one would have believed to still be around 100 years later.  Two world wars, countless recessions and booms later, they still exist. And not exist at the fringes of the industry or in nostalgia of someone’s minds.  But active leaders in their respective markets.

My dad introduced me to the blue box of Nivea when i was in school.  3 decades later, i still use it.  Not only do i use their moisturizer, but body cream, chap stick and not to mention Nivea face wash. I love their soap too and wish that they come out with a shower soap soon so that i can use that.  Iam a complete Nivea person.

The other company IBM is considered the grandfather of computing.  Go here to see the wonderful site of IBM chronicling the 100 years of its history.  Some of the best innovations that have come out from the company, the website is a must read.

Laptops, PCs, Mainframes, Supercomputers, Messaging software, Webservers, Artificial Intelligence, Routing, Switching, Backend…you name it, IBM does it.

For many people believe that IBM is a pure IT company.  Not true. go to this website to read about the super work it does in the field of Biotechnology, Medicine, Space, Sports, Chemistry, Mathematics etc.

I started off my career working on IBM software, Lotus etc.  After having worked on competing products, you have to admit that there is something about the things that IBM makes that make them tick.  Afterall, to clock $100 billion revenues per year is no small feat.  At a time when companies with barely any revenue are quoted at 100 odd P/E on the stock markets, IBM’s stock is at a rock solid US$ 170 with a P/E ratio of about 14.

Here’s wishing many more decades of success for both companies.

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The jury has given its verdict: the rupee will retain its Indian character with an international flavour. The five-member panel has chosen IIT post-graduate D Udaya Kumar’s design from among five shortlisted symbols and recommended it for Cabinet approval.

Kumar’s symbol (on the left) is an amalgam of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without the stem, very much in line with what Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had envisioned. “We intend to formalise a symbol for the Indian rupee which reflects and captures Indian ethos and culture,” Mukherjee said in his Budget speech this year.

The chosen symbol has the Finance Minister’s approval, said a Ministry official.

The Ministry had organised a symbol design competition with a prize money of Rs 2.5 lakh with the condition that it should be applicable to the standard keyboard, be in the national language script or a visual representation and should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country.

Full news here

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Finally, i finished reading this book.  Have been reading it on and off for the past 6 odd months.  In the meanwhile have finished reading a few others too.  Odd, because the book is a very good read and written with lots of historical references.  For someone who loves to know the Roman, Greek, French, British and American history, this book is a treasure trove.

The authors of this book are Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin who have been writing the free daily newsletter, The Daily Reckoning for more than 10 years now. The newsletter covers a lot about the daily economy, world politics, investment strategies, gold, stock market etc.  Bonner is also the founder and president of Agora Publishing.

The authors believe that the America of today has left the values of its founding fathers far behind and has become an imperial power instead of being a country.  Bonner also believes that the end of America is also coming soon.  The author talks about the dollar crisis, the coming end of the US economy. He writes about how successive US governments have gone to war and wasted all resources, the decoupling of the dollar to the gold standard, the federal reserve under Alan Greenspan with his inflationary policies totally wrecked the US economy.

Quoting from Amazon,

Bonner and Wiggin view ancient Rome as the classical model of empire. Running an empire was an expensive business; the folks in the homeland needed to be mollified with government handouts (bread and circuses), while a large military had to be maintained in the frontier. Rome used its military power to exact tribute from neighboring states; it was a protection racket, no different from the Mafia. Nevertheless, this scheme generally kept the central state solvent and the territories at peace. The United States is also an empire, Bonner and Wiggin maintain, but it does not follow the classical model. It placates its citizens with massive distributions of government largess while using its powerful military to exert influence and keep peace abroad. However, “[i]nstead of getting paid for providing protection, the United States is on the receiving end of loans from its tributary states and trading partners ” (p. 77). This is how the United States became the Empire of Debt.

Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis
Authors – Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin
Pages – 384
Publisher – Wiley

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The Indian economy roared past estimates to post a whopping growth rate of 8.6% in the January-March quarter of 2010. The quarter’s strong showing also helped India end the fiscal year with 7.4% growth, beating the earlier estimate of 7.2%. Manufacturing led the way, with a whopping 16.3% growth in the quarter and 10.8% overall, while even agriculture, which was expected to decline, ended with marginal growth of 0.2% year-on-year after growing 0.7% in Q4.

The GDP growth rate had slowed to 6.7% in 2008-09 following the global economic crisis, after topping 9% in the previous three years. On Monday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee reiterated his confidence that the economy would grow at 8.5%-plus in 2010-11.

Finance secretary Ashok Chawla also pegged economic growth at 8.5% in 2010-11. “The growth numbers are pleasant but not really surprising, because we were expecting them to be robust which they turned out to be. This clearly indicates the momentum which is in the economy and the expectations that the 8.5% estimation for 2010-11 is going to be a clear possibility,” he said.

Full article here

Above picture courtesy: Moneymint

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