Friday, January 11, 2013

Back to the days of brain dead Gold control?

If you are a self employed person, no bank will give you any loan without a collateral. They will force the self employed to seek loans where one has to pledge a physical collateral rather than a future earning (something that any bank will do for a person who is "employed" i.e. by way of a personal loan).

No bank is of use for self employed people who actually run this country, create opportunities of employment, create real wealth etc.

To add insult to injury, the most malicious finance minister in Indian history, Mr. Chidambaram wants to take away one of the most used forms of collateral, gold. This will create unnecessary hiccups in the economy and lead to its further downfall. Let us not forget that one of the first steps of economic reforms initiated in 1991 was to free gold from government control. Gold has to be treated as a store of value, a savings investment of people, especially women, rather than a consumable as the government wants us to believe.

Monday, December 29, 2008

As Oil Price Falls, Cash Strapped Russia's President Arrives in India

The Russians are big players in oil/gas exports. Oil prices have fallen from $146 a barrel in July to about $34 today. No wonder the Russians' backsides are burning. What will the President of Russia get as a gift from the Indian government?
  • Probably the Admiral Gorshkov ship deal - which was held up because of Russians demanding a preposterous price - will now be passed by the spineless Congress(I) Government.
  • Probably a deal for some more fighter planes and tanks?
But then, the Congress(I). has to play fair, it gave such a superb deal to the Americans on the nuclear deal didn't it? How about a confidence vote to get the Gorshkov deal signed Mr. Manmohan Singh?

A naive, self doubting, recognition-mongering Indian is better off giving a wide berth to people who mouth platitudes like "Natural ally", "Relations ascending to new heights", "Strategic partnership" etc. They are what they are, empty words! What speaks louder than words is plain money. In this moment of world economic crisis, the Indian household has been able to save enough to bail it's government and banks out! This is a moment of our strength, we Indians should talk to the world demanding the respect we deserve. But you can bet that the inept and malicious Congress(I) government will give the greedy and cunning Russians a superb deal on a platinum platter sacrificing our respect.

The media is again at it's spineless best mouthing platitudes fed to them by the Russian spin-doctors and their collaborators/agents in India. This report from Indian Express (published on yahoo) is a case in point.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

US Inflation Pandemic (Effects of a ballooning dollar supply and connivance of central banks in propping up the US dollar) - II

Yahoo finance reports here that US inflation rose the fastest in 27 years. If it were not for the connivance of the central banks of the world, there wouldn't have been anything to protect the dollar from its inevitable downfall. If one were to make a simple assessment, currencies should have risen against the dollar, and indeed the Euro has. Now, a Euro costs $1.60 as reported here. Whereas other currencies like the Indian Rupee and the Chinese Yuan and some other currencies haven't, because of the malicious intervention of the central banks of the respective countries. For a related article on the inevitable collapse of the dollar, you can read M. R. Venkatesh on rediff here.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

US Inflation Pandemic (Effects of a ballooning dollar supply and connivance of central banks in propping up the US dollar)

Yahoo reports that Japanese inflation has risen the quickest in a decade here. Chuck butler from dailyreckoning says that although the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) CRR tightening up is a good move, it has come quite late in the day.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised interest rates 50 BPS last night, and the RBI Governor issued a statement that said he believed capital inflow into India had remained strong. The Big Brokers, Goldman and JP Morgan don't believe this rate hike will help a sliding rupee (INR)… I tend to disagree (you knew I would!) with them. Yes, India's current account deficit is higher than I would like to see a country's deficit, but, if traders swept New Zealand's huge deficit under a rug because of their huge rate differential, then they could also do it for India.

I guess we'll have to wait-n-see… But, kudos to the RBI for raising rates aggressively. Unfortunately… I'm still mad as hell and won't take it anymore about the RBI's intervention months ago to stem the rise in the rupee. Goofballs! If they had allowed the rupee to continue to gain, it would have done some of the inflation fighting for them! But, as usual, central bankers just can't leave a good thing alone!

Read his full article here. He also says that if the RBI hadn't intervened in the money market to prop up the dollar whenever it fell, it should have done the job of fighting inflation for India. But then how would we have impressed our US masters? How would we have impressed our exporter lobby and our software "industries"? For an analysis by Mike Moffatt on how we import inflation by keeping exchange rate controlled (say, by propping up the dollar against the rupee), read this article (actually the article is an reverse analysis, he goes from inflation to exchange rate, we will have to go reverse). The monetary and fiscal policies of the Indian governemnt has been ruinous and will take a heavy toll on the common man in the coming days. It is also expected that the oil prices aren't going to ease any sooner (for the reasons, see Jim Cramer talk on this video). Are we on the brink of an economic disaster?

Monday, April 7, 2008

The Pay Commission Recommendations

bandho, hari OM,

I am writing this post with the recent Pay Commission recommendations as the background. Please read the article of M. R. Venkatesh on the Pay panel recommendations:
M. R. Venkatesh on rediff

I just wanted to add to the above by adding the following:

Who foots the bill?
Ans: 1.
Me and you, who pay income tax at 1000 different slabs, and out of the taxed income, we pay service tax at 12.36 %, VAT at 4%, Excise, Customs, and God knows how many flavours of taxes. By the way we (men) also subsidize the lower tax slab that exist for women! [women!, all offence intended! :-)]. In the money that we save out of the multiple taxed income, if we save in banks, we accrue tax on interest, if we invest in stock market, we pay securities transaction tax and capital gains tax with its 100 cesses and surcharges.
2. The private sector which has to shell out income tax, service tax, excise, customs, and a thousand other surcharges.

All for what? to feed the humongous white elephant called the "Government". Why does the Government need to be so ubiquitous (more about it later) is one of the questions of M. R. Venkatesh's article.

The pay panel recommendations are a big burden on the exchequer. This, especially considering the pressure it will bring to bear upon the private companies to raise their salaries. The government can any day print money, the miserable private companies can't. Nor can they give bonds to reserve bank to print notes on their behalf. It is a ploy by the communist tainted UPA
government to break the back of private entrepreneurship and break the back of the Indian economy. The government has always failed to meet its fiscal deficit targets in the previous years. With the fiscal deficit hovering at a staggering percentage of the GDP, we are indeed sitting on a powder keg which will lead to hyper inflation and loss of purchasing power to the hungry millions.
You can read an article on Government of India's (mis) management of fiscal deficit here:
Ajay Shah on rediff
and here:
Mythili Bhusnurmath on Economic times
From the second article, it is clear that government actually got out of the jaws of debt last year owing to "bouyant" tax earnings, although it transfered the debt into another form, i.e. Government Bonds (these are non budgetary instruments!!!). Friends, it is we, who are fuelling the populist policies of the government. All for what? To invite more taxes and surcharges on we ourselves! So that Madam Sonia and her cohorts can come back to power with ease.
Does the government's fiscal management sound like a doomsday scenario? It indeed is. Anyone who has followed Indian economic policies will agree that the Indian economic planning is like the proverbial emperor with no clothes.

Argument: The pay hike isn't that big anyway, it will cost the government only 12000 odd crores.
Response: A simple question that one could ask is... is there a company on earth which gives its employees a raise with retrospective effect? The pay panel recommendation does exactly this. The government babus will laugh their way to the banks, while the poor farmer kills himself in mahArAShTra. But then there is where the fun actually starts, who will miss an opportunity to save someone dying? The congressis can laugh their way to the polling booth and back from it,
probably with another loan waiver. All live happily ever after, i.e. until another bout of hyper inflation. Do you think that the inflation we have today, officially 7% (unofficially i think 3 times the number) is any less? (a glass of milk in a darshini hotel used to cost me Rs 4 last year, today it costs Rs. 6, that gives you an inflation of 50%)

Argument for pay hike:
We (Government) need to retain talent in Government Labs and government departments like DRDO, CSIR, etc.
Response: Raise salaries of these white elephants? DRDO??? which has been cheating the public of India
1. on its "achievement" of producing a jet engine after copying GE 404 dimension to dimension, this too with huge time and cost over runs???
2. which decides that it will manufacture every single part that goes into a jet engine
3. which gives the Army a prithvi missile which is liquid propelled. ( i met a soldier on a travel by train, he told me that accidents involving the filling of fuel into prithvi are prone to accidents and the process is extremely slow).
4. Which gives the Army the "Arjun" after 30 years of "development". The same fails field tests and now is not a battle tank but a training tank.
5. Which blatantly lies to the army that it can produce an artillery detection radars and doesn't deliver and kills innocent jawans in kargil.

CSIR is among the better names that have been quoted above. How better would it have been to let a company/consortium of companies to bid for the LCA development. It would reduce the time and cost overruns, and not only that, you will have a flying plane in time. I am sure that by the time there is mass production of LCA, it would have become obsolete.

I have dealt with DRDO first hand (they were the clients of the company where i previously worked). For a very well written article on DRDO and its "achievements", I refer you to:
George Iype on Rediff

The above isn't a malaise that is of a single organization run by the government, it is of all the government departments because there is simply no accountability. Anyone who has dealt with government babus will agree with the above.

The argument about retaining talent is facile, because talent flees the country not only because of lack of money, it flees because of flawed policies in these organizations when it comes to promotions, recognition, etc.. remember that there is reservation in promotions in these organizations.

Argument: Inflation has affected the Government servants also, hence they deserve a pay hike.
Response: Yes, indeed. The government's hyper inflationary policies have affected even the government servants themselves. But the government can afford to give the government servants a pay rise by way of the pay commission, because they are the ones printing the notes. Whereas the private companies will have to pinch paises here and there, the next 2-3 years will be extremely trying times owing to recessionary pressures on the world economy. They might not even be able to pinch paises, and their backs will be broken. This is what the communists want. Isn't the ploy clear? A less malicious finance minister would have dealt with things differently and put his fiscal policies and monetary policies on the path to sanity.

I refer you to an article written by me about the inflationary monetary policy of the indian government, you can read it at:
Shrivathsa on Sulekha