Metro work is on full swing, roads are being widened and construction of flyovers have started mushrooming all over the city - All in the name of providing better infrastructure to (of) the people, by the people and for the people, and of course to make Bangalore an international city.
It feels the city is being plundered! The soothing plush feel is gone. It's now hot and dusty while cranes dot the skyline. Couple this with power cuts and serpentine traffic queues, which seems to get longer and move slower with every passing day, and the metamorphosis of Bangalore seems to be complete.
And, this pains me no end to see my city being killed "slowly, silently and softly."
And, here in lies a point! Why not create a new city named as “New Bangalore”?
Bangalore's history shows that the city metamorphosed in two phases: First, during the late 1960s when the government decided to make the city as the hub of country's Research and Development activities sprinkled with pubic sector enterprises. And, the second phase was when technology companies drove to Bangalore in hoards to set-up their bases.
What it created other than jobs was demand for housing and goods!
While the first growth movement was planned and fuelled by public money, the second was "laissez-faire" or incremental growth fanned by private money in pursuit of profit generation.
Real estate developers cashed in on this second phase of growth. Towers of residential blocks along with sprawling tech parks started coming up wherever land was available leading to unplanned growth and infrastructure bursting at the seams.
Data by Bangalore Development Authority shows that the population of the city grew by nearly 40 percent to 8 million over the past decade to 2010. And, is expected to touch 10 million within the next decade.
So, what are the options?
Urban town planners say the government should try to bring a "marriage" between the two phases of growth. Which means create the space and hand it over to the private enterprises or in other words a "Public Private Partnership" or PPP venture.
Globally PPPs are involved in a wide range of social and economic infrastructure projects. And are mainly used to build and operate hospitals, schools, prisons, roads, bridges and tunnels, light rail networks, air traffic control systems, and water and sanitation plants.
The International Monetary Fund refers public-private partnerships as "arrangements where the private sector supplies infrastructure assets and services that traditionally have been provided by the government." And Standard and Poor’s defines PPP as any medium- to long-term relationship between the public and private sectors, involving the sharing of risks and rewards of multi-sector skills, expertise and finance to deliver desired policy outcomes.
PPP projects are already being executed in Karnataka in public-utility sectors such as sanitation and drinking water.
So lets take this partnership one step forward: Lets create the "New Bangalore" city, which is similar to New Delhi where everything was planned and executed.
Let the government aggregate land and plan the new city. And, then form ventures with various infrastructure and housing development companies to build roads, building, sanitation and et al.
What these public-private ventures will also do is reduce the financial burden from both the parties and at the same time accelerate delivery of projects while maintaining quality.
The World Bank says that over the last decade the number of countries including both developing and the developed ones has significantly relied on PPP projects as the preferred financing scheme for infrastructure projects.
Analysts, however, caution that PPP projects should not lose sight of their goal and that is to deliver better quality services for the same amount spent by the public sector.
"We need to constantly innovate regulatory and financial structures for PPP projects to be successful as these projects are also looked through a political glass and involves both public and private money," explained Prakash Mallya, former chairman and managing director of state-run Vijaya Bank.
Jane Jacobs, an activist in urban planning and communities wrote in the Death And Life of Great American Cities "the essence of urban life lies in the exuberant diversity...the planner, who in addition to planning the physical environment, also wants to plan the lives of the people who will live within it."
And, that is exactly where the modern day government comes to play. Let the government be our planner as it has been entrusted to shape our future and make our life better.
In the winter of 1863, US President Abraham Lincoln had famously said, "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Let’s hope that the types of government that Lincoln meant are still in existence. Otherwise, those words may well be the President's famous last seen in the context of Indians.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Monday, June 7, 2010
ECONOMICS OR ASTROLOGY!!
Another interesting read on the subject called ECONOMICS and the tribe that practices it!!
"Why they failed to predict the global economic crisis—and why their help is still crucial to a recovery?"
Have also dug out some striking similarities between economics and astrology -- one, most of the times astrologers like economists fail to predict an outcome ...two, both are good at explaining an event/outcome in retrospective even though two fellowmen will hardly agree on the way forward.
And, third, inspite of all their shortcomings..we still flock to them or seek their advice.
Enjoy the read..and yes, am back after a hiatus!
What Good Are Economists Anyway?
By Peter Coy
Economists mostly failed to predict the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Now they can't agree how to solve it. People are starting to wonder: What good are economists anyway? A commenter on a housing blog wrote recently that economists did a worse job of forecasting the housing market than either his father, who has no formal education, or his mother, who got up to second grade. "If you are an economist and did not see this coming, you should seriously reconsider the value of your education and maybe do something with a tangible value to society, like picking vegetables," he wrote on patrick.net.
Take that, you pointy-headed failures! Go jump off a supply curve!
To be fair, economists can't be expected to predict the future with any kind of exactitude. The world is simply too complicated for that. But collectively, they should be able to warn of dangers ahead. And when disaster strikes, they ought to know what to do. Indeed, people pay attention to economists at times like this precisely because of their bold claim that they know how to prevent the economy from sliding into a repeat of the Great Depression. But seven decades after the Depression, economists still haven't reached consensus on its lessons. The debate has only intensified in recent weeks.
To fight the downturn, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers are attempting an unprecedented combination of massive fiscal stimulus and extreme monetary policy. If it produces a sustained recovery—and there are some early signs of hope—they will look like heroes. For now, though, it's disturbing that they've had to resort to policy measures that in scale and scope are way outside what the economics profession had studied or even contemplated in recent years.
The rap on economists, only somewhat exaggerated, is that they are overconfident, unrealistic, and political. They claim a precision that neither their raw material nor their skill warrants. Too many assume that people behave like the mythical homo economicus, who is hyperrational and omniscient. And they take sides in quarrels that freeze the progress of research. Those few who defy the conventional wisdom are ignored.
Critics are scathing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the scholar of rare events who wrote Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, says: "We have to build a society that doesn't depend on forecasts by idiotic economists." Says Paul Wilmott, a quantitative finance expert: "Economists' models are just awful. They completely forget how important the human element is."
In the face of such withering criticism, it's tempting to ignore the whole profession. But that won't do. For one thing, getting out of this mess and making sure it doesn't happen again will require the very best thinking of a generation. Macroeconomists—that is, those who specialize in business cycles and growth—have made important contributions. For example, research in the 1970s helped many countries eliminate chronic high inflation by highlighting the importance of having a strong, independent central bank.
Even now, progress is being made. Scholars of all stripes are belatedly getting up to speed in modern finance. Because they are trained to think of financial markets as efficient, most economists weren't primed to spot the dangers posed by lax mortgage lending, overleveraged financial institutions, and impenetrably complex derivatives. "The time is absolutely right for new ideas to come in, much as they did in the 1930s and the 1970s," says Roger E.A. Farmer of the University of California at Los Angeles.
Besides, even if you're suspicious of economists' value, they are impossible to ignore. Here's why: Every idea you can think of for coping with this crisis is based on some supposition about the way the world works. Whether you realize it or not, all of those suppositions come out of one school of economics or another. As the British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."
So we had all better hope that the profession can get its act together. It won't be easy, because this crisis is rubbing salt in old wounds. It is reopening debates about one of the most contentious questions in macro, namely, the ability of government deficit spending (i.e., fiscal policy) to stimulate demand and get people back to work.
In January the fight over fiscal policy broke out in public after then-President-elect Barack Obama made what probably seemed to him a safe claim, saying: "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy." Not long after, some 250 conservative economists, in an open letter published in major newspapers, wrote: "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true." Middlebury College economist David C. Colander, who himself is suspicious of the stimulus package, says: "The debate is reasonable. What's unreasonable is that we're undertaking it at this time" rather than decades ago.
Economists' worst sin is hubris. In the 1960s, free-market economist Milton Friedman persuaded virtually the entire profession that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve. That seemed to imply that better policy by the Fed, guided by economists, would prevent a recurrence. Bernanke, then a governor of the Federal Reserve, said as much in a 2002 speech for Friedman's 90th birthday that acknowledged the Fed's role in the Depression. He told Friedman: "You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." Famous last words.
Believing in the power of the Fed, economists mostly stopped researching the use of fiscal policy to fight recessions or depressions. What's more, recessions had become rarer and milder—the so-called Great Moderation. So who needed stimulus? Says New York University economist Xavier Gabaix: "Up until a year ago, you would look very old-fashioned if you were talking about optimal fiscal policy."
Mainstream economists' adherence to orthodoxy was also apparent in their casual dismissal of worries about bubbles in housing and stocks. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied that a national housing bubble was even possible, since housing was not a single national market. He also brushed off the dangers of Wall Street concoctions such as derivatives. Only last year did he concede he was wrong. In Senate testimony, he said he was shocked to have found a "flaw" in his ideology, adding: "I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."
Politics compounded the trouble. As a rough first cut, you can divide macroeconomists based on how concerned they are about economic instability. One group, in the tradition of Keynes, worries about self-perpetuating economic declines that leave the economy in a deep trough it can't escape. Members of this group say government needs to break downward spirals with the kinds of aggressive policies the U.S. is following now—cutting interest rates and raising government spending. The group includes Paul R. Krugman, the Princeton University economist and Nobel laureate; NYU's Nouriel Roubini, who was early in predicting a severe recession; and Yale University's Robert J. Shiller, who predicted the housing bust and the tech-stock bust.
Other economists have more confidence that the economy is self-equilibrating. They believe low interest rates and heavy deficit spending will be ineffective while leaving the U.S. with a mountain of debt. Count Harvard's Robert Barro in this camp, along with Chicago's Robert E. Lucas Jr., Arizona State University's Edward C. Prescott, and the University of Minnesota's Patrick J. Kehoe and V. V. Chari. No surprise, the equilibrium school mainly leans Republican, and the interventionist school seems to be crawling with Democrats.
Before this crisis, it seemed that economists might resolve their differences. The oft-combative Krugman, in the first edition of his textbook Macroeconomics in 2006, wrote that "the clean little secret of modern macroeconomics is how much consensus economists have reached over the past 70 years."
The mood now is uglier. On the left, Krugman says: "This is really fairly shameful, that we should be wasting precious months as a profession retracing debates that were settled 70 years ago." On the right, John H. Cochrane of the University of Chicago dismisses those who advocate Keynesian stimulus, saying: "Professional economists, the guys I hang out with, are not reverting to ancient Keynesianism any more than physicists are going back to Aristotle when they can't understand how fast the universe is expanding." There are some middle-of-the-roaders, such as Columbia University's Michael Woodford, who argue that macroeconomists are converging on a methodology for asking questions. But even Woodford agrees that "recent debates don't particularly make the field look unified."
The easiest criticism of macroeconomists is that nearly all failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs. In early September 2008, the median growth forecast for the fourth quarter was 0.2%, according to a survey by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. The actual outcome was a 6.3% annualized decline. The Fed didn't do any better. In July 2008, Fed officials projected unemployment in the fourth quarter of 2008 would end up between 5.5% and 5.8%. The actual number was 6.9%. Their projection for the fourth quarter of 2009, done at the same time, was for a range of 5.2% to 6.1%. Today, with unemployment at 8.5%, most forecasters expect the rate to be nearing double digits by the end of 2009.
Now that fiscal policy is back on the table, economists are fighting over the size of the ripple effect—or "multiplier"—of increased government spending. Interventionist economists think multipliers are large when the economy is operating below capacity—and it certainly is now. According to a Fed report on Apr. 15, one-third of manufacturing's productive capacity is going unused, the biggest share on record back to 1948.
Obama Administration officials believe that their fiscal policy is on the right track. The stimulus program "is putting a little more energy into the consumer," National Economic Council Director Summers told Maria Bartiromo. "Two months ago you couldn't find anything positive." Christina D. Romer, Obama's chief economic adviser and a historian of the Depression, said in March that "at some point, recovery will take on a life of its own." Until then, she said, government should watch closely "to make sure the private sector is back in the saddle" before easing off.
Other economists say increased government spending may actually depress private employment. At a Council on Foreign Relations event on Mar. 30, Chicago's Lucas called the Administration's multiplier math "kind of schlock economics."
The truth is, even backers of stimulus can't be sure it will work. As World War II ended, many economists worried that growth would lapse as military spending fell. Sewell Avery, the CEO of Montgomery Ward, was so anxious about a postwar depression that he refused to open new stores. Economists still aren't sure why he was wrong, so they can't say reliably whether fiscal stimulus will end this recession or just interrupt it. "Is it possible to engineer a durable recovery with fiscal expansion, or are you just buying time?" asks Krugman, who favors coupling stimulus with drastic action to fix the banks.
What, then, is the way forward? Once this crisis is past, the next agenda for macroeconomists will be to help make the economy far more robust—enough to survive the blunders of politicians, bankers, and economists of the future. Taleb, the scholar of unpredictability, notes that nature achieves robustness through a redundancy that economists would consider wasteful: two hands, two eyes, etc. Blake LeBaron of Brandeis University suggests preventing huge crises by tolerating small disturbances, the way foresters use controlled burns to eliminate flammable underbrush. Perhaps out of the ashes of failure will emerge a better macroeconomics profession.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_17/b4128026997269.htm?chan=top+news_economics+subindex+page_economics
"Why they failed to predict the global economic crisis—and why their help is still crucial to a recovery?"
Have also dug out some striking similarities between economics and astrology -- one, most of the times astrologers like economists fail to predict an outcome ...two, both are good at explaining an event/outcome in retrospective even though two fellowmen will hardly agree on the way forward.
And, third, inspite of all their shortcomings..we still flock to them or seek their advice.
Enjoy the read..and yes, am back after a hiatus!
What Good Are Economists Anyway?
By Peter Coy
Economists mostly failed to predict the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. Now they can't agree how to solve it. People are starting to wonder: What good are economists anyway? A commenter on a housing blog wrote recently that economists did a worse job of forecasting the housing market than either his father, who has no formal education, or his mother, who got up to second grade. "If you are an economist and did not see this coming, you should seriously reconsider the value of your education and maybe do something with a tangible value to society, like picking vegetables," he wrote on patrick.net.
Take that, you pointy-headed failures! Go jump off a supply curve!
To be fair, economists can't be expected to predict the future with any kind of exactitude. The world is simply too complicated for that. But collectively, they should be able to warn of dangers ahead. And when disaster strikes, they ought to know what to do. Indeed, people pay attention to economists at times like this precisely because of their bold claim that they know how to prevent the economy from sliding into a repeat of the Great Depression. But seven decades after the Depression, economists still haven't reached consensus on its lessons. The debate has only intensified in recent weeks.
To fight the downturn, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers are attempting an unprecedented combination of massive fiscal stimulus and extreme monetary policy. If it produces a sustained recovery—and there are some early signs of hope—they will look like heroes. For now, though, it's disturbing that they've had to resort to policy measures that in scale and scope are way outside what the economics profession had studied or even contemplated in recent years.
The rap on economists, only somewhat exaggerated, is that they are overconfident, unrealistic, and political. They claim a precision that neither their raw material nor their skill warrants. Too many assume that people behave like the mythical homo economicus, who is hyperrational and omniscient. And they take sides in quarrels that freeze the progress of research. Those few who defy the conventional wisdom are ignored.
Critics are scathing. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the scholar of rare events who wrote Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, says: "We have to build a society that doesn't depend on forecasts by idiotic economists." Says Paul Wilmott, a quantitative finance expert: "Economists' models are just awful. They completely forget how important the human element is."
In the face of such withering criticism, it's tempting to ignore the whole profession. But that won't do. For one thing, getting out of this mess and making sure it doesn't happen again will require the very best thinking of a generation. Macroeconomists—that is, those who specialize in business cycles and growth—have made important contributions. For example, research in the 1970s helped many countries eliminate chronic high inflation by highlighting the importance of having a strong, independent central bank.
Even now, progress is being made. Scholars of all stripes are belatedly getting up to speed in modern finance. Because they are trained to think of financial markets as efficient, most economists weren't primed to spot the dangers posed by lax mortgage lending, overleveraged financial institutions, and impenetrably complex derivatives. "The time is absolutely right for new ideas to come in, much as they did in the 1930s and the 1970s," says Roger E.A. Farmer of the University of California at Los Angeles.
Besides, even if you're suspicious of economists' value, they are impossible to ignore. Here's why: Every idea you can think of for coping with this crisis is based on some supposition about the way the world works. Whether you realize it or not, all of those suppositions come out of one school of economics or another. As the British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."
So we had all better hope that the profession can get its act together. It won't be easy, because this crisis is rubbing salt in old wounds. It is reopening debates about one of the most contentious questions in macro, namely, the ability of government deficit spending (i.e., fiscal policy) to stimulate demand and get people back to work.
In January the fight over fiscal policy broke out in public after then-President-elect Barack Obama made what probably seemed to him a safe claim, saying: "There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy." Not long after, some 250 conservative economists, in an open letter published in major newspapers, wrote: "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true." Middlebury College economist David C. Colander, who himself is suspicious of the stimulus package, says: "The debate is reasonable. What's unreasonable is that we're undertaking it at this time" rather than decades ago.
Economists' worst sin is hubris. In the 1960s, free-market economist Milton Friedman persuaded virtually the entire profession that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve. That seemed to imply that better policy by the Fed, guided by economists, would prevent a recurrence. Bernanke, then a governor of the Federal Reserve, said as much in a 2002 speech for Friedman's 90th birthday that acknowledged the Fed's role in the Depression. He told Friedman: "You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." Famous last words.
Believing in the power of the Fed, economists mostly stopped researching the use of fiscal policy to fight recessions or depressions. What's more, recessions had become rarer and milder—the so-called Great Moderation. So who needed stimulus? Says New York University economist Xavier Gabaix: "Up until a year ago, you would look very old-fashioned if you were talking about optimal fiscal policy."
Mainstream economists' adherence to orthodoxy was also apparent in their casual dismissal of worries about bubbles in housing and stocks. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied that a national housing bubble was even possible, since housing was not a single national market. He also brushed off the dangers of Wall Street concoctions such as derivatives. Only last year did he concede he was wrong. In Senate testimony, he said he was shocked to have found a "flaw" in his ideology, adding: "I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well."
Politics compounded the trouble. As a rough first cut, you can divide macroeconomists based on how concerned they are about economic instability. One group, in the tradition of Keynes, worries about self-perpetuating economic declines that leave the economy in a deep trough it can't escape. Members of this group say government needs to break downward spirals with the kinds of aggressive policies the U.S. is following now—cutting interest rates and raising government spending. The group includes Paul R. Krugman, the Princeton University economist and Nobel laureate; NYU's Nouriel Roubini, who was early in predicting a severe recession; and Yale University's Robert J. Shiller, who predicted the housing bust and the tech-stock bust.
Other economists have more confidence that the economy is self-equilibrating. They believe low interest rates and heavy deficit spending will be ineffective while leaving the U.S. with a mountain of debt. Count Harvard's Robert Barro in this camp, along with Chicago's Robert E. Lucas Jr., Arizona State University's Edward C. Prescott, and the University of Minnesota's Patrick J. Kehoe and V. V. Chari. No surprise, the equilibrium school mainly leans Republican, and the interventionist school seems to be crawling with Democrats.
Before this crisis, it seemed that economists might resolve their differences. The oft-combative Krugman, in the first edition of his textbook Macroeconomics in 2006, wrote that "the clean little secret of modern macroeconomics is how much consensus economists have reached over the past 70 years."
The mood now is uglier. On the left, Krugman says: "This is really fairly shameful, that we should be wasting precious months as a profession retracing debates that were settled 70 years ago." On the right, John H. Cochrane of the University of Chicago dismisses those who advocate Keynesian stimulus, saying: "Professional economists, the guys I hang out with, are not reverting to ancient Keynesianism any more than physicists are going back to Aristotle when they can't understand how fast the universe is expanding." There are some middle-of-the-roaders, such as Columbia University's Michael Woodford, who argue that macroeconomists are converging on a methodology for asking questions. But even Woodford agrees that "recent debates don't particularly make the field look unified."
The easiest criticism of macroeconomists is that nearly all failed to foresee the recession despite plenty of warning signs. In early September 2008, the median growth forecast for the fourth quarter was 0.2%, according to a survey by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. The actual outcome was a 6.3% annualized decline. The Fed didn't do any better. In July 2008, Fed officials projected unemployment in the fourth quarter of 2008 would end up between 5.5% and 5.8%. The actual number was 6.9%. Their projection for the fourth quarter of 2009, done at the same time, was for a range of 5.2% to 6.1%. Today, with unemployment at 8.5%, most forecasters expect the rate to be nearing double digits by the end of 2009.
Now that fiscal policy is back on the table, economists are fighting over the size of the ripple effect—or "multiplier"—of increased government spending. Interventionist economists think multipliers are large when the economy is operating below capacity—and it certainly is now. According to a Fed report on Apr. 15, one-third of manufacturing's productive capacity is going unused, the biggest share on record back to 1948.
Obama Administration officials believe that their fiscal policy is on the right track. The stimulus program "is putting a little more energy into the consumer," National Economic Council Director Summers told Maria Bartiromo. "Two months ago you couldn't find anything positive." Christina D. Romer, Obama's chief economic adviser and a historian of the Depression, said in March that "at some point, recovery will take on a life of its own." Until then, she said, government should watch closely "to make sure the private sector is back in the saddle" before easing off.
Other economists say increased government spending may actually depress private employment. At a Council on Foreign Relations event on Mar. 30, Chicago's Lucas called the Administration's multiplier math "kind of schlock economics."
The truth is, even backers of stimulus can't be sure it will work. As World War II ended, many economists worried that growth would lapse as military spending fell. Sewell Avery, the CEO of Montgomery Ward, was so anxious about a postwar depression that he refused to open new stores. Economists still aren't sure why he was wrong, so they can't say reliably whether fiscal stimulus will end this recession or just interrupt it. "Is it possible to engineer a durable recovery with fiscal expansion, or are you just buying time?" asks Krugman, who favors coupling stimulus with drastic action to fix the banks.
What, then, is the way forward? Once this crisis is past, the next agenda for macroeconomists will be to help make the economy far more robust—enough to survive the blunders of politicians, bankers, and economists of the future. Taleb, the scholar of unpredictability, notes that nature achieves robustness through a redundancy that economists would consider wasteful: two hands, two eyes, etc. Blake LeBaron of Brandeis University suggests preventing huge crises by tolerating small disturbances, the way foresters use controlled burns to eliminate flammable underbrush. Perhaps out of the ashes of failure will emerge a better macroeconomics profession.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_17/b4128026997269.htm?chan=top+news_economics+subindex+page_economics
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
SKYPE SET TO CHANGE HANDS
http://seekingalpha.com/article/159381-skype-sale-confirmed
The website claims that Skype is being sold to an investor group led by Andreessen Horowitz. Also, involved in the deal making are Index Ventures and Silver Lake Partners.
The website also reports the cost of acquisition will be around $2 billion and that Silver Lake Partners will foot the majority bill. The Andreeseen Horowitz fund can make single commitments of up to $50 million.
FAQs on SKYPE:
1. Josh Silverman is currently the CEO of the company..although its unclear whether he will continue to lead the firm post acquisition.
2. Skype reported revenues of $551 million last year and expects to touch a billion dollar revenue by 2011. Earlier, eBay, the current owner of the tech firm had said it will spin Skype into a separate company for listing purpose supposedly in 2010.
3. eBay had earlier acquired Skype in 2005 for $4.1 billion, although about $1 billion of that, an earnout, was never paid.
4. Skype is now in litigation with a company controlled by Skype's founding partners -- Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friisover -- over the key VoIP technology.
The website claims that Skype is being sold to an investor group led by Andreessen Horowitz. Also, involved in the deal making are Index Ventures and Silver Lake Partners.The website also reports the cost of acquisition will be around $2 billion and that Silver Lake Partners will foot the majority bill. The Andreeseen Horowitz fund can make single commitments of up to $50 million.
FAQs on SKYPE:
1. Josh Silverman is currently the CEO of the company..although its unclear whether he will continue to lead the firm post acquisition.
2. Skype reported revenues of $551 million last year and expects to touch a billion dollar revenue by 2011. Earlier, eBay, the current owner of the tech firm had said it will spin Skype into a separate company for listing purpose supposedly in 2010.
3. eBay had earlier acquired Skype in 2005 for $4.1 billion, although about $1 billion of that, an earnout, was never paid.
4. Skype is now in litigation with a company controlled by Skype's founding partners -- Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friisover -- over the key VoIP technology.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF INTEREST RATES -- 2002-2009
The Indian economy is probably on the last leg of the contraction curve i.e if we go by the latest government data. The New Delhi-based Central Statistical Organisation or CSO says the GDP grew 6.1 percent y-o-y and by 0.3 percent sequentially.
With the growth curve moving into the expansion phase...its a matter of time before the excess M3 supply in the system stokes inflation. Which, technically means going forward the RBI/government will be training its guns to tame inflation and hope that growth will ride on its own...or in other words RBI will look upto Bernanke to fuel expansion.
Historically, however, thats been the story...economic growth in India was more a fallout of a global story and been hardly driven or planned by the government/RBI. But, then thats another story for another day.
So, are the days of lower interest rates on consumer loans over? My guess is that we have seen the last of rate cuts, which means interest rates from here on will either be steady or on the upward curve. Interest rates will hold steady for the next six months -- any tinkering in rates might stifle growth -- and then a 50 basis point hike.
Having said that..lets review our interest rate curve over the last seven years (Jan 2002-Sept 2009), which withstood the cycle of boom-to-near-bust.
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2009 4.00 4.00 3.50 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25
2008 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.00
2007 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00
2006 5.25 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.75 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00
2005 4.75 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.25 5.25
2004 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.75
2003 5.50 5.50 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50
2002 6.50 6.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50
Between Oct 2008- July 2009 interest rates on advances has been cut between 125-275 basis points by public sector banks, followed by 100-125 basis points by private banks and 125 basis points by five major foreign banks.
While, the reduction in term deposit rates between October 2008 and July 20, 2009 has been in the range of 125-325 basis points by public sector banks, 100-375 basis points by private sector banks and 125-300 basis points by five major foreign banks.
Now let’s compare the reverse repo rate between Oct 2008-July 2009 period with the 19-month period starting Aug 2003. While, this rate are now at a historical low the same doesn’t hold true for bank interest rates. Consumer loans are now priced upwards of 9 percent (in some cases 8 percent) while the BPLR is between 11.75-12.25 percent. That’s almost 200 basis point upside of 2003-2005 rates when consumer loans were available at 7 percent and BPLR were at 10 percent.
Given these conditions no wonder we have the RBI guv claiming that banks are in a position to cut rates further. While, the banks in a bid to safeguard their Net interest margins doesn’t subscribe to that view. So, is the RBI just a regulatory body who can advise/set-up a roadmap but without any power to enforce??
I guess the devil lies in the government borrowing programs...
To instill life into the dying economy..the government had injected about $5.6 trillion rupees ($115 billion) in the economy. Add to this a 21 percent pay rise for 5 million government employees and a farm loan waiver of $17 billion as part of election bonanza. To fund all these the government plans to raise a record 2.15 trillion rupees -- a hike of 50 percent than initially estimated -- through issue of bonds.
So, the yield on the key 7-year government bond have hardened and are now at a nine-month high of 7.43 percent as against a 4.80 percent rate in 2003/04. And, Investors who subscribe to these government bonds -- primarily scheduled banks, FIs -- are already demanding a premium on the coupon rate to subscribe to the 10-year bonds over one-year notes.
So, with a bond yield of nearly 8 percent on the back of widening fiscal deficit..no wonder the consumer loan rates or lending rates are stuck at 9 percent. And, herein lies the devil!!
With the growth curve moving into the expansion phase...its a matter of time before the excess M3 supply in the system stokes inflation. Which, technically means going forward the RBI/government will be training its guns to tame inflation and hope that growth will ride on its own...or in other words RBI will look upto Bernanke to fuel expansion.
Historically, however, thats been the story...economic growth in India was more a fallout of a global story and been hardly driven or planned by the government/RBI. But, then thats another story for another day.
So, are the days of lower interest rates on consumer loans over? My guess is that we have seen the last of rate cuts, which means interest rates from here on will either be steady or on the upward curve. Interest rates will hold steady for the next six months -- any tinkering in rates might stifle growth -- and then a 50 basis point hike.
Having said that..lets review our interest rate curve over the last seven years (Jan 2002-Sept 2009), which withstood the cycle of boom-to-near-bust.
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2009 4.00 4.00 3.50 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25 3.25
2008 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.00
2007 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00
2006 5.25 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.50 5.75 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00 6.00
2005 4.75 4.75 4.75 4.75 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.25 5.25
2004 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.75 4.75
2003 5.50 5.50 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50
2002 6.50 6.50 6.00 6.00 6.00 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.75 5.50 5.50 5.50
Between Oct 2008- July 2009 interest rates on advances has been cut between 125-275 basis points by public sector banks, followed by 100-125 basis points by private banks and 125 basis points by five major foreign banks.
While, the reduction in term deposit rates between October 2008 and July 20, 2009 has been in the range of 125-325 basis points by public sector banks, 100-375 basis points by private sector banks and 125-300 basis points by five major foreign banks.
Now let’s compare the reverse repo rate between Oct 2008-July 2009 period with the 19-month period starting Aug 2003. While, this rate are now at a historical low the same doesn’t hold true for bank interest rates. Consumer loans are now priced upwards of 9 percent (in some cases 8 percent) while the BPLR is between 11.75-12.25 percent. That’s almost 200 basis point upside of 2003-2005 rates when consumer loans were available at 7 percent and BPLR were at 10 percent.
Given these conditions no wonder we have the RBI guv claiming that banks are in a position to cut rates further. While, the banks in a bid to safeguard their Net interest margins doesn’t subscribe to that view. So, is the RBI just a regulatory body who can advise/set-up a roadmap but without any power to enforce??
I guess the devil lies in the government borrowing programs...
To instill life into the dying economy..the government had injected about $5.6 trillion rupees ($115 billion) in the economy. Add to this a 21 percent pay rise for 5 million government employees and a farm loan waiver of $17 billion as part of election bonanza. To fund all these the government plans to raise a record 2.15 trillion rupees -- a hike of 50 percent than initially estimated -- through issue of bonds.
So, the yield on the key 7-year government bond have hardened and are now at a nine-month high of 7.43 percent as against a 4.80 percent rate in 2003/04. And, Investors who subscribe to these government bonds -- primarily scheduled banks, FIs -- are already demanding a premium on the coupon rate to subscribe to the 10-year bonds over one-year notes.
So, with a bond yield of nearly 8 percent on the back of widening fiscal deficit..no wonder the consumer loan rates or lending rates are stuck at 9 percent. And, herein lies the devil!!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
THE LIKES OF HASMIS
We just celebrated 'HER' 62nd birthday!! And, every time I celebrate her b'day and sing her song…an eerie feeling overcomes me…as the feeling of 'I/ME' gives way to 'WE'...the feeling of patriotism engulfs me...the feeling of pride, love, affection, brotherhood!!!
As a nation we have arrived...Indians as a percentage of being global are higher in the pecking order than they were a decade back...and here am not talking of the PIOs and NRIs who have already conquered various shores in different aspects of life. Am talking of Indians based out of India!!
We have a stronger economy, higher GDP which means more consumption, intellectual powers, advanced scientific innovations and so on and so forth...But, amidst all these conquests we haven't been able to eliminate the very lacunae that had severed us many seasons ago...the lacunae that consummated many lives and left thousands homeless...Worse, i guess, we are breeding that lacunae to serve our purpose as and when we want to!!
Otherwise, how else would one explain the drama of a certain Mr.Hasmi -- a failing movie star -- to hog headlines on prime time national television. Exploit the minority card...whip up communal feelings...and lo and behold suddenly masses starts taking cognizance of a star...more like a certain Miss Shetty resuscitating her sagging career on the back of racial abuse!
But, there’s a difference – while, one rose trying to defend her motherland…the other wants to benefit by dividing her motherland…It’s akin to killing the lady who gave birth to you, brought you up, gave you an identity, respect and the most important of all LOVE.
And, yet!! At the very first opportune moment he does exactly the opposite... stabs HER and his majority brethren…EN TU BRUTUS!!
Has the Hasmis forgotten 1947 when the country was divided along communal lines…a country that was etched out on religion lines…are these Hasmis trying to repeat 1947??...stoke the same feeling, foment trouble to serve their cause?? Otherwise how does one explain his statement that confusion arose out of miscommunication when the world did hear whatever he and his uncle proclaimed only a week back. Trust our ears, Mr.Hashmi!!
I was wondering what to present HER!! I don’t think need to look around any further…the gift of ‘UNITY’…the resolve to join hands and boycott people like HASMIs…people who are selfish, petty and driven by ones motives and destructive desires…people who doesn’t see life beyond themselves.
As a nation we have arrived...Indians as a percentage of being global are higher in the pecking order than they were a decade back...and here am not talking of the PIOs and NRIs who have already conquered various shores in different aspects of life. Am talking of Indians based out of India!!
We have a stronger economy, higher GDP which means more consumption, intellectual powers, advanced scientific innovations and so on and so forth...But, amidst all these conquests we haven't been able to eliminate the very lacunae that had severed us many seasons ago...the lacunae that consummated many lives and left thousands homeless...Worse, i guess, we are breeding that lacunae to serve our purpose as and when we want to!!
Otherwise, how else would one explain the drama of a certain Mr.Hasmi -- a failing movie star -- to hog headlines on prime time national television. Exploit the minority card...whip up communal feelings...and lo and behold suddenly masses starts taking cognizance of a star...more like a certain Miss Shetty resuscitating her sagging career on the back of racial abuse!
But, there’s a difference – while, one rose trying to defend her motherland…the other wants to benefit by dividing her motherland…It’s akin to killing the lady who gave birth to you, brought you up, gave you an identity, respect and the most important of all LOVE.
And, yet!! At the very first opportune moment he does exactly the opposite... stabs HER and his majority brethren…EN TU BRUTUS!!
Has the Hasmis forgotten 1947 when the country was divided along communal lines…a country that was etched out on religion lines…are these Hasmis trying to repeat 1947??...stoke the same feeling, foment trouble to serve their cause?? Otherwise how does one explain his statement that confusion arose out of miscommunication when the world did hear whatever he and his uncle proclaimed only a week back. Trust our ears, Mr.Hashmi!!
I was wondering what to present HER!! I don’t think need to look around any further…the gift of ‘UNITY’…the resolve to join hands and boycott people like HASMIs…people who are selfish, petty and driven by ones motives and destructive desires…people who doesn’t see life beyond themselves.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
IN MEMORY OF 'MJ'...
The LEGEND Lives on...
"There's A Place In Your Heart
And I Know That It Is Love
and this place could Much
Brighter Than Tomorrow
And If You Really Try
You'll Find There's No Need To Cry
In This Place You'll Feel
That There's No Hurt Or Sorrow
There Are Ways To Get There
If You Care Enough
For The Living
Make A Little Space
Make A Better Place...
Heal The World
Make It A Better Place
For You And For Me
And The Entire Human Race."
An extract from MJ's HEAL THE WORLD
"There's A Place In Your Heart
And I Know That It Is Love
and this place could Much
Brighter Than Tomorrow
And If You Really Try
You'll Find There's No Need To Cry
In This Place You'll Feel
That There's No Hurt Or Sorrow
There Are Ways To Get There
If You Care Enough
For The Living
Make A Little Space
Make A Better Place...
Heal The World
Make It A Better Place
For You And For Me
And The Entire Human Race."
An extract from MJ's HEAL THE WORLD
Sunday, June 28, 2009
"KILLING" DELHI
It pains me no end to see my city being killed 'slowly, silently, softly'. And, all in the name of providing better infrastructure for (to) the people, by the people and of the people. And, of course for the "Common Wealth" games.
So, the era of flyover constructions are still on...my god its almost a decade since flyover started mushrooming all over delhi...work of Metro is on full swing...and, to top the latest addition is construction of multi-level car-parking.
South Delhi has taken the mazimum brunt...lavish wide roads cut down to almost single width ones, the tree-lined green covered roads has been uprooted to give it a barren look...pockets of jungles/open spaces have given way to multi-level car parking.
I felt my city being raped...its hot, dusty, serpentine traffic traffic queues moving at a snail pace, power cuts, cranes dotting the skyline...that soothing, plush feel of south delhi is history. And, therein have a point:
South Delhi, developed because of the Asian Games. Why cant the government instill life into Greater Noida when half of the infrastructure is already there. Why not develop Gurgaon?? Or for that matter Faridabad?? Why, cramp south delhi?? True, the government is building a new games village across the yamuna but why not also have new stadiums built there???
Is it due to lack of funds or due to the perennial differences between the Mayawati-ruled UP versus the congress-led Delhi?? Or, that Faridabad & Gurgaon falls in Haryana?? Why, cant two states jointly hosts these meets given that international events are jointly hosted too??
Do i smell the burning smell of politics?? And, this is exactly what pains me...politics of for-the-people is fast turning out to be against-the-people even in Delhi...a place, where politicians of diff shades of grey and black converge... a place, which boasts of being the home to a number of 24-hours television station..a place, which have survived and flourished cutting across ages..be it the atrocious muslim rule or the slavery of British Raj.
My, guess, is we will survive even this period!! But, now we are a matured democratic society...and, we ourselves need to determine our future..whats good for us, whats benefits us and what gives us pride!
Lets raise our voices...lets involve ourselves...lets love our cities!!! Wherever we live..wherever we ARE!!
So, the era of flyover constructions are still on...my god its almost a decade since flyover started mushrooming all over delhi...work of Metro is on full swing...and, to top the latest addition is construction of multi-level car-parking.
South Delhi has taken the mazimum brunt...lavish wide roads cut down to almost single width ones, the tree-lined green covered roads has been uprooted to give it a barren look...pockets of jungles/open spaces have given way to multi-level car parking.
I felt my city being raped...its hot, dusty, serpentine traffic traffic queues moving at a snail pace, power cuts, cranes dotting the skyline...that soothing, plush feel of south delhi is history. And, therein have a point:
South Delhi, developed because of the Asian Games. Why cant the government instill life into Greater Noida when half of the infrastructure is already there. Why not develop Gurgaon?? Or for that matter Faridabad?? Why, cramp south delhi?? True, the government is building a new games village across the yamuna but why not also have new stadiums built there???
Is it due to lack of funds or due to the perennial differences between the Mayawati-ruled UP versus the congress-led Delhi?? Or, that Faridabad & Gurgaon falls in Haryana?? Why, cant two states jointly hosts these meets given that international events are jointly hosted too??
Do i smell the burning smell of politics?? And, this is exactly what pains me...politics of for-the-people is fast turning out to be against-the-people even in Delhi...a place, where politicians of diff shades of grey and black converge... a place, which boasts of being the home to a number of 24-hours television station..a place, which have survived and flourished cutting across ages..be it the atrocious muslim rule or the slavery of British Raj.
My, guess, is we will survive even this period!! But, now we are a matured democratic society...and, we ourselves need to determine our future..whats good for us, whats benefits us and what gives us pride!
Lets raise our voices...lets involve ourselves...lets love our cities!!! Wherever we live..wherever we ARE!!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
RBI Vs FINANCE MINISTRY
An interesting article by Rajeev Malik on why the mandarins of North Block should keep their mouth shut! But, then what happens to the journalists who cover finance ministry?
On a serious note..RBI has always been an offshoot of the finance ministry and not as a stand-alone entity. One, the corner room is a political appointment done by the finance minister in consultation with the powers that-be and two, most of the time RBI takes cue or signals from the finance ministry. Rarely (in the past decade) have i seen that RBI passing on cues to the ministry...be it on advances, interest rates, forex, markets!! FM almost has a say on each and everything.
The other intersting thing which amuses me no end is the appointment of chiefs of state-run banks. While, for almost each and everything the bank looks upto RBI...in the case of appointments of senior level staff including that of the CMD..FM committee takes the final call. No wonder...one always gets to see lot of cmds loitering, lobbying for postings!
Appointments are, however, a different story, which needs several posts with several skeletons waiting to tumble out of the cupboard! Will leave that for someother time...but, meanwhile, enjoy the read:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government is from Mars, RBI from Venus
There is a huge difference between speaking/writing and communicating.
And in the world of financial markets, policymakers should be engaged in constant communication in order to manage expectations. Indeed, the need for more effective communication is even more important in the current messy setting of global finance, where everyone is essentially flying in the dark with few working instruments.
Price discovery has to be left on its own within a framework of a clear policy framework. The underlying need for occasional handholding via communication is mainly to smoothen financial assets' price gyrations, if there is a sense that either the markets are on a wrong track or, if they are broadly on the right track, their expectations are becoming unrealistic.
New relevant information, especially about policy shifts, is precious but is often asymmetrical. It is policymakers' responsibility to nudge market expectations from time to time with formal and informal verbal and/or written comments.
There has been a lot of noise over how much market expectations were off-course over the recent vote of account in which the government preferred to follow convention despite the unprecedented nature of the current economic crisis.
In any case, there was little scope for doing much simply because the government had already announced some meaningful measures earlier, and the anticipated fiscal bleeding did not offer much flexibility.
But there was still some room for additional measures owing to the unprecedented nature of the current crisis. After all, former finance minister Jaswant Singh did not refrain from using the vote of account in 2004 to announce a slew of populist measures.
Clearly, the urgency now is greater than what Singh felt five years ago to deviate from convention.
Why were market expectations so far off-course, and why was nothing done to dampen that enthusiasm? Actually, the fact of the matter is that comments in the print and electronic media from some ministers, some unnamed ministerial officials, and those perceived to be close to policy decision-making apparatus only fuelled such wild expectations.
Indeed, Reuters in a February 10 dispatch quoted the head of the PM's Economic Advisory Council as indicating that the government may cut taxes and unveil further steps to stimulate the economy in its Interim Budget.
Asked if tax cuts could be announced, he reportedly replied: "That is likely". Note the choice of "likely", not "possible" or "probable" or "perhaps", or just "wait and see".
From financial markets' perspective, the ministry of finance and the Reserve Bank of India [Get Quote] are among the two relevant policymakers that frequently communicate with the markets. In recent years, the EAC under its former chairman, C Rangarajan, also emerged as a somewhat independent entity offering advice on some key macro issues that also contained some policy signals.
For example, it was the EAC that correctly brought the focus on and the increased transparency to the government's off-Budget subsidies via special bonds. In the absence of the EAC, perhaps the finance ministry would have been happy to avoid putting any number to these bonds, and the RBI would have been too much of a team player to say anything in public.
There is a lot that ministries in general and finance ministry in particular can learn from the RBI, even though the RBI is not perfect -- few institutions in India are -- it gets the job done despite the constraints it faces.
One, the RBI always offers one considered view, and differences -- and there are bound to be variations in opinion -- are for internal airing only.
In contrast, the finance ministry has often appeared to be engaged in mental gymnastics, relying on thinking-out-aloud in the media.
Two, there are almost no unofficial comments from the RBI, whereas going by the number and frequency of quotes attributed to unidentified officials (sometimes reportedly senior officials), the finance ministry appears to be dripping with unofficial commentary.
Three, the RBI makes sure that complete homework is done when presenting anything to the markets. By contrast, when the vote-on-account was presented, it was initially not clear where the additional borrowing was going to come from. Investors sold off bonds, and seemed placated only when it was hinted that the extra funds would come from the unwinding of Market Stabilisation Scheme bonds.
How do Indian policymakers fare when compared with others in the Asian region? Rather poorly, in my humble opinion.
From personal experience, Indian policymakers (including politicians) tend to over-promise but under-deliver, while in most other Asian countries, actual delivery is better than the targets set, partly owing to conservative targets. One simple conclusion of that difference is that, by over-promising, Indian policymakers suffer from a credibility gap that is of their own making and something only they can fix.
Differences over the economic diagnosis and policy prescriptions are there in every country, but in India the dirty laundry is washed in public (and is still not cleaned!). There are too many "official" people hogging the media limelight, sometimes making comments without appreciating the significance of their implications for market expectations.
Frankly, there is scope for the RBI to improve its communication and signalling even more. RBI governor D Subbarao seems to be building on the improvements put in place by his predecessor, YV Reddy, and has made a small start in the latest quarterly policy statement -- it is significantly shorter than previous ones.
However, it is still one of the longest monetary policy statements in the world, and continues to mistake the number of pages used with policy clarity and guidance. Not to mention that inaction in both October and January policies raises questions over the relevance of quarterly policies.
One of the key difficulties for the RBI in recent years has been an overly and overtly vocal finance ministry that has appeared to publicly interfere with monetary policy signals from the RBI.
This interference has come despite the ministry seemingly unable to do its own job of properly adding up the Budget numbers, and at times appearing unappreciative of the global pressure points for the broader macro-policymaking.
Essentially, the RBI often seems like a vacuum cleaner for the fiscal mess created by the government, even as it perhaps feels more constrained in its policymaking.
The bottom line is that, in contrast to the rest of the region, there are way too many people in the government talking of what the RBI is going to do, as opposed to what it might or could do. To undermine the central bank could also mean hurting investor confidence.
Perhaps, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have a teach-in to check the damage from the ongoing media diarrhoea of some of the stakeholders in the government.
The author is head of India and Asean economics at Macquarie Capital Securities (Singapore). Views expressed are personal
(This article was written before the government decided to cut excise and service tax levies across the board, eight days after it chose not to do anything in the Interim Budget)
On a serious note..RBI has always been an offshoot of the finance ministry and not as a stand-alone entity. One, the corner room is a political appointment done by the finance minister in consultation with the powers that-be and two, most of the time RBI takes cue or signals from the finance ministry. Rarely (in the past decade) have i seen that RBI passing on cues to the ministry...be it on advances, interest rates, forex, markets!! FM almost has a say on each and everything.
The other intersting thing which amuses me no end is the appointment of chiefs of state-run banks. While, for almost each and everything the bank looks upto RBI...in the case of appointments of senior level staff including that of the CMD..FM committee takes the final call. No wonder...one always gets to see lot of cmds loitering, lobbying for postings!
Appointments are, however, a different story, which needs several posts with several skeletons waiting to tumble out of the cupboard! Will leave that for someother time...but, meanwhile, enjoy the read:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government is from Mars, RBI from Venus
There is a huge difference between speaking/writing and communicating.
And in the world of financial markets, policymakers should be engaged in constant communication in order to manage expectations. Indeed, the need for more effective communication is even more important in the current messy setting of global finance, where everyone is essentially flying in the dark with few working instruments.
Price discovery has to be left on its own within a framework of a clear policy framework. The underlying need for occasional handholding via communication is mainly to smoothen financial assets' price gyrations, if there is a sense that either the markets are on a wrong track or, if they are broadly on the right track, their expectations are becoming unrealistic.
New relevant information, especially about policy shifts, is precious but is often asymmetrical. It is policymakers' responsibility to nudge market expectations from time to time with formal and informal verbal and/or written comments.
There has been a lot of noise over how much market expectations were off-course over the recent vote of account in which the government preferred to follow convention despite the unprecedented nature of the current economic crisis.
In any case, there was little scope for doing much simply because the government had already announced some meaningful measures earlier, and the anticipated fiscal bleeding did not offer much flexibility.
But there was still some room for additional measures owing to the unprecedented nature of the current crisis. After all, former finance minister Jaswant Singh did not refrain from using the vote of account in 2004 to announce a slew of populist measures.
Clearly, the urgency now is greater than what Singh felt five years ago to deviate from convention.
Why were market expectations so far off-course, and why was nothing done to dampen that enthusiasm? Actually, the fact of the matter is that comments in the print and electronic media from some ministers, some unnamed ministerial officials, and those perceived to be close to policy decision-making apparatus only fuelled such wild expectations.
Indeed, Reuters in a February 10 dispatch quoted the head of the PM's Economic Advisory Council as indicating that the government may cut taxes and unveil further steps to stimulate the economy in its Interim Budget.
Asked if tax cuts could be announced, he reportedly replied: "That is likely". Note the choice of "likely", not "possible" or "probable" or "perhaps", or just "wait and see".
From financial markets' perspective, the ministry of finance and the Reserve Bank of India [Get Quote] are among the two relevant policymakers that frequently communicate with the markets. In recent years, the EAC under its former chairman, C Rangarajan, also emerged as a somewhat independent entity offering advice on some key macro issues that also contained some policy signals.
For example, it was the EAC that correctly brought the focus on and the increased transparency to the government's off-Budget subsidies via special bonds. In the absence of the EAC, perhaps the finance ministry would have been happy to avoid putting any number to these bonds, and the RBI would have been too much of a team player to say anything in public.
There is a lot that ministries in general and finance ministry in particular can learn from the RBI, even though the RBI is not perfect -- few institutions in India are -- it gets the job done despite the constraints it faces.
One, the RBI always offers one considered view, and differences -- and there are bound to be variations in opinion -- are for internal airing only.
In contrast, the finance ministry has often appeared to be engaged in mental gymnastics, relying on thinking-out-aloud in the media.
Two, there are almost no unofficial comments from the RBI, whereas going by the number and frequency of quotes attributed to unidentified officials (sometimes reportedly senior officials), the finance ministry appears to be dripping with unofficial commentary.
Three, the RBI makes sure that complete homework is done when presenting anything to the markets. By contrast, when the vote-on-account was presented, it was initially not clear where the additional borrowing was going to come from. Investors sold off bonds, and seemed placated only when it was hinted that the extra funds would come from the unwinding of Market Stabilisation Scheme bonds.
How do Indian policymakers fare when compared with others in the Asian region? Rather poorly, in my humble opinion.
From personal experience, Indian policymakers (including politicians) tend to over-promise but under-deliver, while in most other Asian countries, actual delivery is better than the targets set, partly owing to conservative targets. One simple conclusion of that difference is that, by over-promising, Indian policymakers suffer from a credibility gap that is of their own making and something only they can fix.
Differences over the economic diagnosis and policy prescriptions are there in every country, but in India the dirty laundry is washed in public (and is still not cleaned!). There are too many "official" people hogging the media limelight, sometimes making comments without appreciating the significance of their implications for market expectations.
Frankly, there is scope for the RBI to improve its communication and signalling even more. RBI governor D Subbarao seems to be building on the improvements put in place by his predecessor, YV Reddy, and has made a small start in the latest quarterly policy statement -- it is significantly shorter than previous ones.
However, it is still one of the longest monetary policy statements in the world, and continues to mistake the number of pages used with policy clarity and guidance. Not to mention that inaction in both October and January policies raises questions over the relevance of quarterly policies.
One of the key difficulties for the RBI in recent years has been an overly and overtly vocal finance ministry that has appeared to publicly interfere with monetary policy signals from the RBI.
This interference has come despite the ministry seemingly unable to do its own job of properly adding up the Budget numbers, and at times appearing unappreciative of the global pressure points for the broader macro-policymaking.
Essentially, the RBI often seems like a vacuum cleaner for the fiscal mess created by the government, even as it perhaps feels more constrained in its policymaking.
The bottom line is that, in contrast to the rest of the region, there are way too many people in the government talking of what the RBI is going to do, as opposed to what it might or could do. To undermine the central bank could also mean hurting investor confidence.
Perhaps, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should have a teach-in to check the damage from the ongoing media diarrhoea of some of the stakeholders in the government.
The author is head of India and Asean economics at Macquarie Capital Securities (Singapore). Views expressed are personal
(This article was written before the government decided to cut excise and service tax levies across the board, eight days after it chose not to do anything in the Interim Budget)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
FOR A CHANGE...!!!
And, for a change...
Let us soak ourselves into the strains of this wonderful tune...far away from the world of business, politics and war.
An ode to love and friendship... for all the wonderful times spent with such lovely people over the years.
TO all those...who stood by me even when my chips were down and inspired me to excel...to all those with whom i had differences of opinion and went separate ways...and an ode to my college-group, which broke-off for posterity..never to meet again!!!
The tune has been composed by Indian rock band Agnee for one of MTV program..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCNXt00fRJgThursday, June 11, 2009
WHO FUNDS OUR "EYES" AND 'EARS"
WHO FUNDS OUR MEDIA COMPANIES??
Here's a report from one of my sources. Dig deep if you want to!!!
NDTV: Funded by Spain-based Gospels of Charity, which champions the spread of communism across the world.
Reason for funding: Prannoy Roy's wife is Radhika whose sister is Brinda Karat. Brinda's hubby Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the Communist party of India CPI(M).
CNN-IBN: Funded by Southern Baptist Church, a US-based organisation. The Church annually allocates $800 million for promotion of its channel. Run by Rajdeep Sardesai, Raghav Bahl and Sameer Manchanda.
Bennet & Coleman: (which publishes ToI and airs Times Now...on way to launch ET NOW
Funded by World Christian Council and by an Italian Robertio Mindo, who is also a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.
(Btwn, to be fair to B&C..they picked up a stake in our company)
Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle: Is owned by a Saudi Arabian Company with its chief Editor M.J. Akbar.
Gujarat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive,
Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims, which they did very faithfully... Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.
Tarun Tejpal ofTehelka.com regularly gets blank cheques from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only.
Here's a report from one of my sources. Dig deep if you want to!!!
NDTV: Funded by Spain-based Gospels of Charity, which champions the spread of communism across the world.
Reason for funding: Prannoy Roy's wife is Radhika whose sister is Brinda Karat. Brinda's hubby Prakash Karat is the General Secretary of the Communist party of India CPI(M).
CNN-IBN: Funded by Southern Baptist Church, a US-based organisation. The Church annually allocates $800 million for promotion of its channel. Run by Rajdeep Sardesai, Raghav Bahl and Sameer Manchanda.
Bennet & Coleman: (which publishes ToI and airs Times Now...on way to launch ET NOW
Funded by World Christian Council and by an Italian Robertio Mindo, who is also a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.
(Btwn, to be fair to B&C..they picked up a stake in our company)
Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle: Is owned by a Saudi Arabian Company with its chief Editor M.J. Akbar.
Gujarat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive,
Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims, which they did very faithfully... Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.
Tarun Tejpal of
Saturday, June 6, 2009
INFRASTRUCTURE: BACK ON THE SHELVES
Elections are over but it will be still sometime before the long, dry, parched season for our leaders that be will be over!!
With, corporate activities only focussed on consolidation and survival --"expansion" being a taboo word in the world of "recession"-- the bucket to collect the trickle down effect of expansion is lying dry, rusty and neglected in the corridors of power. (am tempted to write an autobiography of the 'bucket')
The going been bad for sometime..no fresh proposals for industrial licences, approvals...no real estate deals..no M&A transaction taking place..no corporate fights..Uffffffff!! whats happening to this world?? Its turning ugly!! and, to top it..the election blew a big hole!!
I have always erudited the virtues of infrastructure projects...It kills two birds with one stone!! The tap is always wet and everybody including the media are satisfied with the development work of a developing nation.
Now that elections are over and time to fill the bucket..infrastructural projects are flying fast and furious from the government shelves...Irrigation projects, housing for weaker section of the society, state roadways, power, layout development..its all up for grabs!!!
Ok!!! here's the key to get some projects:
Irrigation: size of the project: rs 1,500 crores. Kickback: 5 percent. 50% on getting the contract and 50% over running bills.
Housing: Size/rs 1000 crore: Kickback: 15% -- 5% before one gets the contract.5% on getting the contract and 5% over running bills. (Imgaine you have to part with 15% of your profit after all the hard work, sweat you have put in)
The rationality of the paybacks are on these lines: "The government pays a mobilization advance of 15 percent of the project against a BG. Which, means nothing comes from the pocket of the businessman. And, one is still left with abt 5 percent of the contract value to kickstart the project."
Was privy to a meeting where the person that be-in-charge explains: "We have devised it in such a way that you will make profit..whatever excess profit is there..thats for us. Am giving you work...where do you get contract these days. You know the situation in America..very bad!! "If you have done government contracts previously then you will understand and know how to make profits."
We now know why roads crumble just after a monsoon..why, theres a seepage in the monsoon...why driving a nail into the wall is so difficult these days...why drains are clogged!!! Blame it on 'QUALITY'!!!
With, corporate activities only focussed on consolidation and survival --"expansion" being a taboo word in the world of "recession"-- the bucket to collect the trickle down effect of expansion is lying dry, rusty and neglected in the corridors of power. (am tempted to write an autobiography of the 'bucket')
The going been bad for sometime..no fresh proposals for industrial licences, approvals...no real estate deals..no M&A transaction taking place..no corporate fights..Uffffffff!! whats happening to this world?? Its turning ugly!! and, to top it..the election blew a big hole!!
I have always erudited the virtues of infrastructure projects...It kills two birds with one stone!! The tap is always wet and everybody including the media are satisfied with the development work of a developing nation.
Now that elections are over and time to fill the bucket..infrastructural projects are flying fast and furious from the government shelves...Irrigation projects, housing for weaker section of the society, state roadways, power, layout development..its all up for grabs!!!
Ok!!! here's the key to get some projects:
Irrigation: size of the project: rs 1,500 crores. Kickback: 5 percent. 50% on getting the contract and 50% over running bills.
Housing: Size/rs 1000 crore: Kickback: 15% -- 5% before one gets the contract.5% on getting the contract and 5% over running bills. (Imgaine you have to part with 15% of your profit after all the hard work, sweat you have put in)
The rationality of the paybacks are on these lines: "The government pays a mobilization advance of 15 percent of the project against a BG. Which, means nothing comes from the pocket of the businessman. And, one is still left with abt 5 percent of the contract value to kickstart the project."
Was privy to a meeting where the person that be-in-charge explains: "We have devised it in such a way that you will make profit..whatever excess profit is there..thats for us. Am giving you work...where do you get contract these days. You know the situation in America..very bad!! "If you have done government contracts previously then you will understand and know how to make profits."
We now know why roads crumble just after a monsoon..why, theres a seepage in the monsoon...why driving a nail into the wall is so difficult these days...why drains are clogged!!! Blame it on 'QUALITY'!!!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
SIMILARITY BETWEEN UP AND KARNATAKA
Whats the similarity between Taj Corridor, Ganga Expressway and the latest addition the 1,100 crore rupees hydel power project in karnataka??
All of them were initiated without the statutory environmental clearances!!
While, the fate of the first two (read: scam ridden) lies in a state of suspended animation...i mean confided within the four walls of the judiciary..i hope this Karnataka state govt initiative doesn't meet the illustrious fate of Taj and Ganga projects.
State govt officials (read ministers!) are hopeful that the project will soon be cleared by the environment ministry, which means "money" taken neednt be returned while more are on the way.
Infrastructure has and will be the cash cow for most ruling parties. While, i do understand the need of money to run a party...i fail to understand why earn in a dubious or controversial way, which gives the opposition a chance to point fingers or at worst call strikes and bandhs.
Karnataka, a mineral richdeposit state (iron ore, gold..), IT, real estate..am sure there are plenty of opportunities of this BJP-led govt to earn some cash.
Anyway, some key stats on the power project. Hope, the project fructifies to bring some respite during the scorching Feb-April period of namma bengalurus..am i saying that seven-eight hours of power cut during peak hours will be a thing of the past?? Lets see!!
----------------
VITAL STATS
*** The first-phase of the 1,100 crore rupeees hydel power project in Gundia (Karnataka) was kickstarted yesterday (Saturday) by the state's chief minister B S Yeddyurappa.
*** the project is yet to be cleared by the environment ministry as it is still weighing the cons of the environmental impact.
*** The Gundia unit under the ageis of Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL) will produce 613 million units of power yearly and is expected to be commissioned by 2013-14 financial year.
*** environmental ministry losing sleep over the project's impact on the already fragile eco-system of the Western ghats. AS:
**Villages to be affected: 12
**Land losers: 160 families
**Submersion area: 708 hectares
**Land acquired/required: 974 hectares
R K Laxman probably is correct! But, hopefully the project doesnt meet a similar fate.
All of them were initiated without the statutory environmental clearances!!
While, the fate of the first two (read: scam ridden) lies in a state of suspended animation...i mean confided within the four walls of the judiciary..i hope this Karnataka state govt initiative doesn't meet the illustrious fate of Taj and Ganga projects.
State govt officials (read ministers!) are hopeful that the project will soon be cleared by the environment ministry, which means "money" taken neednt be returned while more are on the way.
Infrastructure has and will be the cash cow for most ruling parties. While, i do understand the need of money to run a party...i fail to understand why earn in a dubious or controversial way, which gives the opposition a chance to point fingers or at worst call strikes and bandhs.
Karnataka, a mineral richdeposit state (iron ore, gold..), IT, real estate..am sure there are plenty of opportunities of this BJP-led govt to earn some cash.
Anyway, some key stats on the power project. Hope, the project fructifies to bring some respite during the scorching Feb-April period of namma bengalurus..am i saying that seven-eight hours of power cut during peak hours will be a thing of the past?? Lets see!!
----------------
VITAL STATS
*** The first-phase of the 1,100 crore rupeees hydel power project in Gundia (Karnataka) was kickstarted yesterday (Saturday) by the state's chief minister B S Yeddyurappa.
*** the project is yet to be cleared by the environment ministry as it is still weighing the cons of the environmental impact.
*** The Gundia unit under the ageis of Karnataka Power Corporation Ltd (KPCL) will produce 613 million units of power yearly and is expected to be commissioned by 2013-14 financial year.
*** environmental ministry losing sleep over the project's impact on the already fragile eco-system of the Western ghats. AS:
**Villages to be affected: 12
**Land losers: 160 families
**Submersion area: 708 hectares
**Land acquired/required: 974 hectares
R K Laxman probably is correct! But, hopefully the project doesnt meet a similar fate.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
IDEAS OF ECONOMIC FORECAST
And, this is one of my best read in recent times!!! A manual by an ex-colleague of mine for all budding economists!! Kudos to Goldman Sachs and their likes
Fake experts, Faulty Forecasts
Will leave the comments for your take...ENJOY!!
Fake experts, Faulty Forecasts
Will leave the comments for your take...ENJOY!!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
ALL NOT CRICKET
Mr.FAKE IPL PLAYER has thrown up very interesting revelations...Cricketers of all hue and cry are enjoying the warmthness of South African petites!!! Not that it was a secret but information which was confided within the realms of the cricketing fraternity including the ubiquitous journalists!!
From Little John to Little Monster...from Mangal Pandey to Lordie...Bijlani to Roy...Nagma to Padukone...the list goes on and adds up too!!
What is it that makes this combo so potent...so hot??? Power!!! Or is it success??? Or is it a combo of glamour, power and the "need to arrive" that makes the bees swarm to mate!! What makes Lordie to marry a certain Bollywood star only to negate it...or a former Indian captain to fall in the laps of a certain Khan-ex??
What makes them put their hard-earned careers at stake...a career, which not only boasts of a short-shelf life but where people are waiting to usurp at the slightest possible opportunity!!
What makes a certain Mrs Sen -- and mother of two offspring -- to spend within the confines of Mr. Khan’s room??? Or a soap opera to derive a legacy from Mr. Jamaican calypso??
Is this what astrology defines as the conjunction of VENUS and MARS...Beauty in the realms of power or is it "power & success" hunting for devineness..or it that the "pressures of pull" are from all and sundry???
Can I explain this as a manifestation of success!! Recognition a by-product or rather a knock-on effect of success?? Isn’t Recognition is what drives people to "Citius, Altius, Fortius!!! From Ronaldo to Mr.Clinton to the mundane Auto driver..isn't that what drives people to excel..the need or the urgency to be recognized by the society at large!!!
So, why this indiscretion??? Is it over-confidence or is it arrogance which leads successful men and women to philander?? While, am not the first and surely wont be the last to speculate on the cause and the effect...common sense in me tells that the "Achilles tendon" is the "Methodology of dealing with recognition"...a miss, a slip and you have hit the highway of the Road to Hell!!!
Recognition, a sub-set of success is a functional dynamic process...its fickle and sitting on the edge of a precipie..Be in it's empathy but if are in it's sympathy..there are chances that one might lose its foothold!! Did i hear somebody purring "Monroe"??? Or a-la-desi-Kambli???
From Little John to Little Monster...from Mangal Pandey to Lordie...Bijlani to Roy...Nagma to Padukone...the list goes on and adds up too!!
What is it that makes this combo so potent...so hot??? Power!!! Or is it success??? Or is it a combo of glamour, power and the "need to arrive" that makes the bees swarm to mate!! What makes Lordie to marry a certain Bollywood star only to negate it...or a former Indian captain to fall in the laps of a certain Khan-ex??
What makes them put their hard-earned careers at stake...a career, which not only boasts of a short-shelf life but where people are waiting to usurp at the slightest possible opportunity!!
What makes a certain Mrs Sen -- and mother of two offspring -- to spend within the confines of Mr. Khan’s room??? Or a soap opera to derive a legacy from Mr. Jamaican calypso??
Is this what astrology defines as the conjunction of VENUS and MARS...Beauty in the realms of power or is it "power & success" hunting for devineness..or it that the "pressures of pull" are from all and sundry???
Can I explain this as a manifestation of success!! Recognition a by-product or rather a knock-on effect of success?? Isn’t Recognition is what drives people to "Citius, Altius, Fortius!!! From Ronaldo to Mr.Clinton to the mundane Auto driver..isn't that what drives people to excel..the need or the urgency to be recognized by the society at large!!!
So, why this indiscretion??? Is it over-confidence or is it arrogance which leads successful men and women to philander?? While, am not the first and surely wont be the last to speculate on the cause and the effect...common sense in me tells that the "Achilles tendon" is the "Methodology of dealing with recognition"...a miss, a slip and you have hit the highway of the Road to Hell!!!
Recognition, a sub-set of success is a functional dynamic process...its fickle and sitting on the edge of a precipie..Be in it's empathy but if are in it's sympathy..there are chances that one might lose its foothold!! Did i hear somebody purring "Monroe"??? Or a-la-desi-Kambli???
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
IDEAS OF HYPOCRISY
Strange it is...!!!
How officials (read: management) suddenly develops thick skin!!! I wonder whether its being biologically gifted or a case of psychological abuse over the years that helps this specimen to change colours and skin texture at the slightest whiff !!!
Sample this:
"The coach has tremendous respect..." ...In other words the coach knows that he can twist their dicks as and when he wants to...so be good boys and do what i WANT!
"...to have them hang around if he does not think they will play"...which means why have them waste money when i can accomodate my favourites...at least they will get to tour SA not on my account but on somebody else!!!
Yes guys, am talking of IPL, KKR and its management!!!
It shudders me to think that these guys (read: KKR management and coachie) absolutely doesnt have any respect for the players -- coz they think that they pay and so within ones right to molest their dignity as and when they want. Am sure, such obnoxious behavior is enough to make Abraham Lincoln cring in his grave while that old Mandela must be straining his sinews for another "Charge Of The Light Brigade"
Or else, i guess, its time for another Lenin to rise amongst the cricketers for a call of MAY DAY!!
Moving on...The FAKE IPL PLAYER is attracting enough eyeballs...am sure this will indirectly help Modi to shoot his TRP ratings!!! NO need of sincilating performances and booby shaking PYTs. The FAKIE has done enough to rouse interests of all hue and sundry!!!
And, i must tell you a thing...what he is saying is true!!! If it wasnt there wldnt been such a sharp reaction from the KKR management...imagine SKR and JB running for cover to float their own blogs..HA HA HA!!! Run Lola run!!!
And oh man ..the sensex has again started to chug!!! It might not be at its best but seem to be getting out of its inertia of rest...Warming itself for another shot at the top...who knows whether it turns out to be a damp squib!!! My guess, this is a false start!!!
Q4 results are out!!! Am sure most of the auditors had a hectic and sleepless last quarter in trying to cover-up the fudging!!! I hope they have done and are still doing an excellent job otherwise more Satyams are just waiting round the corner to happen!!!
How officials (read: management) suddenly develops thick skin!!! I wonder whether its being biologically gifted or a case of psychological abuse over the years that helps this specimen to change colours and skin texture at the slightest whiff !!!
Sample this:
"The coach has tremendous respect..." ...In other words the coach knows that he can twist their dicks as and when he wants to...so be good boys and do what i WANT!
"...to have them hang around if he does not think they will play"...which means why have them waste money when i can accomodate my favourites...at least they will get to tour SA not on my account but on somebody else!!!
Yes guys, am talking of IPL, KKR and its management!!!
It shudders me to think that these guys (read: KKR management and coachie) absolutely doesnt have any respect for the players -- coz they think that they pay and so within ones right to molest their dignity as and when they want. Am sure, such obnoxious behavior is enough to make Abraham Lincoln cring in his grave while that old Mandela must be straining his sinews for another "Charge Of The Light Brigade"
Or else, i guess, its time for another Lenin to rise amongst the cricketers for a call of MAY DAY!!
Moving on...The FAKE IPL PLAYER is attracting enough eyeballs...am sure this will indirectly help Modi to shoot his TRP ratings!!! NO need of sincilating performances and booby shaking PYTs. The FAKIE has done enough to rouse interests of all hue and sundry!!!
And, i must tell you a thing...what he is saying is true!!! If it wasnt there wldnt been such a sharp reaction from the KKR management...imagine SKR and JB running for cover to float their own blogs..HA HA HA!!! Run Lola run!!!
And oh man ..the sensex has again started to chug!!! It might not be at its best but seem to be getting out of its inertia of rest...Warming itself for another shot at the top...who knows whether it turns out to be a damp squib!!! My guess, this is a false start!!!
Q4 results are out!!! Am sure most of the auditors had a hectic and sleepless last quarter in trying to cover-up the fudging!!! I hope they have done and are still doing an excellent job otherwise more Satyams are just waiting round the corner to happen!!!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Ideas of MARCH
Its been sometime that have now moved away from journalism. Although, still very much a journalist at heart...the labourer in me has moved away from writing on "business functions" to managing the "functions of business".
The lean fingers have now become more supple...It always happens when you stop exercising you tend to add adipose tissues...the fingers long used to frantic keying -- a more than half-a-decade of daily business reporting -- now finds solace at the mails, which are at best five lines.
Having written about corporates and their way of functioning...whats good for the shareholders (all journos are institution-appointed-business-police) and whats not and why and why not...i realize that putting all those questions and principles of management into practice is intensely difficult. But, what you gain is...you learn the art of setting-up a process, the art of business-discipline....you are nurturing the banyan when its small and spreading its roots...so when tomorrow comes with the cyclical business curve..one will stay ahead of the curve...just like the banyan tree which not only survives the storm and thundershowers but goes on to become bigger and bigger.
We will call this perspective Business@outside.in
The lean fingers have now become more supple...It always happens when you stop exercising you tend to add adipose tissues...the fingers long used to frantic keying -- a more than half-a-decade of daily business reporting -- now finds solace at the mails, which are at best five lines.
Having written about corporates and their way of functioning...whats good for the shareholders (all journos are institution-appointed-business-police) and whats not and why and why not...i realize that putting all those questions and principles of management into practice is intensely difficult. But, what you gain is...you learn the art of setting-up a process, the art of business-discipline....you are nurturing the banyan when its small and spreading its roots...so when tomorrow comes with the cyclical business curve..one will stay ahead of the curve...just like the banyan tree which not only survives the storm and thundershowers but goes on to become bigger and bigger.
We will call this perspective Business@outside.in
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