The Small Voice

It takes no genius to see that US is in very bad shape and it has been brought on by BAD policies and BAD economics. A corrective phase should see a voluntary slowdown and cleansing of the system of the toxic assets. Unless the Congress DECIDES that they are better off with a year of slower or negative growth and refuses to fall into the Paulson trap which in effect will only bail out the fat cats with Tax payers money, they will be digging a hole so deep that it will take a couple of generations of Americans to get out of. However, if the Paulson ploy succeeds and the congress agrees to the idea, US is in a bigger stink hole than it is in now. Crude will start its up journey and God knows what limits it will touch this time hurting both the American and the global economy. Only bright spot, buy Gold. I believe, come what may, investment in Gold is going to give u returns safer and better that any other asset class as of this point of time. Let the fools get themselves stu...

The following is an excerpt. The ensuing speech is the most wonderful piece of analysis i have read in recent times. Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing 17th Annual Graham & Dodd Breakfast David Einhorn’s Prepared Remarks October 19, 2007 What strikes me the most about the recent credit market crisis is how fast the world is trying to go hack to business as usual. In my view, the crisis wasn’t an accident. We didn’t get unlucky. The crisis came because there have been a lot of bad practices and a lot of bad ideas. Securitization is a mediocre idea. Re-securitization of already securitized assets into a CDO is a bad idea. Re-securitization of CDOs into CDO-squared is a really bad idea. So is funding a pool of long-term illiquid assets with very short-term funding in the so called asset backed commercial paper market. And as I will get to in a moment, it is a horrendous idea to delegate most of the responsibility for assessing credit risk to a group of cred...

The corporate investor will punish Tata Motors shares after the Singur debacle. They should, I guess. Its their job to reward profits and punish losses. It is after all their money and they are in the market to make sure they earn optimum returns. But I cringe when the same wise guys denounce the Singur decision as a biased one and one which was based to take undue advantage of “poor farmers of West Bengal”. In my opinion, Tata’s decision to go to the back of beyond village of Singur was too idealistic for the cynical world of RoI and profits to understand and appreciate. The group was taking a bold decision to do their bit in igniting industrialization in a primarily agriculture dominated village. In return, the villagers would have had more employment opportunity, access to roads, healthcare, schools, power and most importantly, Education. Sadly, some vested interests are going to put paid to all those benefits that could have happened to the area by ensuring that the plant nev...

Boy when you see Arjun Rampal towering over the audience with loooong hair flowing wildly and wielding his guitar like a toy you know you are in the right concert. India’s answer to Clint Eastwood is finally in a movie role you can watch and enjoy. His other movie capers are, well the less said of the better. Rock on may be clichéd or predictable at times. But heck, for about a mere 150 bucks you are getting the best seats in one of the most memorable rock concerts you will ever attend. Total paisa vasool! What rocks…. Like I said, BEST Rock concert you will attend in the cool confines of an AC (provided your multiplex has one and it works. Ours, for some reason kept going off and on). The story and the treatment though does remind of the “Dil Chahta hai” but the element of Arjun Rampal’s character adds a dash of reality that really adds to the magik of the movie. I liked the idea that though for all the band members, music was very important; they were so...