The Small Voice

Scenes like these were common in Mumbai today. People turned out in large nos. not only at Colaba parade but were organizing such Nukkad (a street corner) memorials across the city. Meanwhile ONE WEEK AFTER the attack, around 8 kg explosives was recovered from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminus (CST) in Mumbai today. Millions of commuters like me had a lucky escape. I travel to CST 6 days a week, twice daily, and I am one of the angry common man of India, demanding my right to life. Media has played its role well The common man like me is just plain ANGRY today at all and everything. Meanwhile uncaring of the pain of the common man the politicians were busy trying to see who can gain maximum mileage of this tragedy. I appreciate the media for taking the callous / cynical politicians to task. They (Zee News, NDTV, Aaj Tak etc.) were the only voice of reason (somewhat) in the whole mayhem. “We the people of India…” CAN bring change I believe that if we want to make a...

The world is in a BIG mess right now. Terrorists are striking innocents with impunity Political representatives are so drunk with power,stupidity,arrogance that they no longer are representatives of the common man and women Job losses, Salary cuts, irresponsible policies of the central banks are adding to the misery. In short, Anger, Fear and Frustration is all around. All this makes me remember a beautiful poem of Kipling i read in school. I am sure it will be a source of inspiration for my friends. [IF] If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with T...

Came across an old 2003 interview of Jim Rogers, the author of book Hot Commodities and Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip. In between his predictions for a secular commodities bull run, ticking gender disequilibria in Asia etc. he made an ominous prediction for India in particular that the country was only waiting to be engulfed in the fires of regional / religion / caste divide and break up into several smaller countries based on the wide diversity that exists in this country. Jim speaks, and I quote: “And the country, of course, is going to split up. It is not a real country. The English mushed it together in 1947 in a panic and the borders of India as we know it will not survive.” “…There are different religions, different languages, different everything. I mean, it is not a country.” Any enlightened patriotic Indian knows how qualities like tolerance, compassion, empathy and sacrifice are ingrained in all Indian cultures. So much so, that the founding father of o...

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...