Capitalist World teaching lessons in Communism..

The last few weeks have been really disastrous for the financial markets world over. The dust has still not cleared and the primary reason is that when everybody thinks that the worst is over suddenly the worse happens. Every other week a new institution is adding to the stockpile of the debris. Much like the bomb blasts in India these days. When you think that this was the last as police has solved the case, it shocks you again. In Delhi even the debris of the last blast was not cleared properly when terror struck the city again.

Well, coming back to the financial markets, first Bear Sterns failed. Everybody knew that something is seriously wrong with the system but companies were employing good methods to hide the storm inside their account books. The stock market world over reacted to the news driving the wealth of the equity holders down by many percentage points. Very people were able to understand that why when Bear Sterns fails in US, the stock of Reliance Enery goes down in India? Anyways, I can't understand that even now but one thing that I can see is the capitalist world is perhaps teaching some lessons in communism to the world. The supporters of free market are trying to find excuses to cover their theory and the governments who funded fight against communism for more than 4 decades are wisening up to the thought that somewhere something went wrong.  

Bear Sterns was bailed out and has to go for a fire sale price of around 10% of its original value. Lehman Brothers, Fannie and Freddy, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, Northern Rock etc etc. They all fell prey to one single crisis and except Lehman all others have to enter into an agreement with the government. Just today the news came about Bradford and Wingley and of Wachovia bank. Bradford will most probably be resuced while Wachovia for the time being is on its own to find a buyer who could assume its debt. These were some of the institutions which have spearheaded the financial sector reforms and their failure actually casts a spell of doubt on the efficiency of those reforms. 

Well, the unified message coming out of this crisis is that one country single handedly brought the world's economy on its knees. Some of the American financial institutions are breathing their last and news have started coming from British institution. Bradford and Wengley is the current victim and hopefully within a couple of week many more companies are going to announce the quantum of losses. Over reliance on USA have pulled many economies into this crisis and it's just a matter of time when the government across the world have to go shopping for companies. 

Someone must be smiling even during this bloodbath. I wonder if it's Karl Marx up there. 

5 Cities in 5 Months - Is it so easy to bomb a city in India?

Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and now Delhi, five months and five different cities. One thing which is common in all the blasts is the ease of execution. People just come on bicycle, scooter, bikes, cars, etc. They park it somewhere and it simply explodes. After months and years of beating around the bush our intelligence machinery and police department comes with interesting inputs about how the scooter/car was stolen from ABC place, how the cycle was bought from ABC shop and what was the explosive used (which is predominantly RDX). I remember that the investigation report of Mumbai serial blast contained a detailed report on the pressure cookers as the bombs were sealed in the pressure cookers and were kept in the train compartments. Police traced the make of the pressure cooker, the distributor and then they were wondering that out of the 8 pressure cooker purchased, only 7 exploded and they have no details about the eighth one. (May be the guy who was given the responsibility to plant the last one might have threw the bomb in the sewer and decided to run away with the pressure cooker. What a steal. On being quizzed about the suspects, the police was double sure that they have crossed the border. In Ahmedabad police was actually looking for the old cycle sellers because the bombs were left on the carriers of the bicycles.

Well, nothing much happened in Jaipur blast case, Bangalore blasts didn’t hurt many people so no body took it seriously and then Ahmedabad happened. There is something special about Gujrat these days. Camera and press follows Narendra Modi like they are waiting for him to err so that they can simply pounce on him but somehow this leader never fails to inspire. Suddenly bombs starting popping out of every gutter and sewerage of Surat. They were found hanging like guavas on trees and a possible disaster was averted due to the alertness of police. As usual they traced the stolen car, the various number plates and even made some arrests. And when everybody thought that “okay bad times are over and let’s start enjoying the shopping malls again” suddenly the terrorists decided to jolt the capital.

Great feeling it gives. Our honourable Prime minister tabled his statement against Mr Advani in lok sabha during the recent debate and was seen flashing the sign of victory in front of camera (so uncommon of him but anyways). One of the sentence was “How can a country forgive a home minister who was sleeping when terrorist was knocking at the doors of Lok Sabha?” I guess he should do some introspection now. I don’t know another era in Indian history when so many bombs exploded in so little time. How come he or his home minister will be forgiven by the people of the country? 

It seems that terrorists are striking at their will. I sometime wonder that how easy it has become to terrify people and how easy it has become to pacify them by making a statement like “We all need to stay united at this hour of need”. People forget easily and this Delhi blast will also be forgotten. Not much water has gone under the bridge since Ahmedabad blast but then it seems that terrorist are not afraid of the law and order, they aren’t even afraid of the police machinery and well why not? Government is afraid of taking a decision on Afzal’s hanging because of some political reasons, they are against POTA or any law parallel to that and some of the stake holders in the government even support organizations like SIMI.

It seems that there are people who think they are capable of doing anything, anywhere and anytime. They don't even spare a holy month of Ramadan. The failure of our machinery and lack of commitment to fight terrorism is acting as a booster to that will. Well, as the bomb blasts are slowly becoming a part of our subconscious (aaj yanha fata kal wanha fatega) I guess soon the security people stationed in front of important buildings will get back to their regular routing of chatting with each other while the metal detector keeps beeping. Nobody cares if somebody comes with a bag full of explosives and decides to explode some place in any city. If the big cities are not safe then imagine about the small towns. Perhaps terrorist are not targetting small towns because it looks less glamorous.

Image is copied from the http://www.bbc.co.uk .

I am Back.. Finally..

Before leaving for Hyderabad (for my job) I speculated "if I would be allowed to blog @ my new job?" Well, I am not. So that's one reason for the delay. Another reason being the new schedule. In a way I am allowed to blog but only on the company's own website (moderation issues and all that) so I choose to rather wait and wait and wait.

So I am finally in Hyderabad, settled in my new house (a rented one) and am happy that now I can blog courtesy my Reliance Broadnet conncetion (however slow it is, it is still good enough to post blogs). I was promised an unlimited 300 Kbps however it comes out that it's not Kilo Byte Per Second but rather Kilo Bits Per Second and the difference is it's 8 times slower than the promised connection. Reliance is good at making money and see they even fooled a guy having computer engineering background. Well, initially the sales person promised full download speed but the maximum I got was around 30 Kbps so finally I asked about my plan. He simply told me to divide the maximum speed by 8. On futher enquiry he told me that "Sir, this is the way, you always divide the maximum speed by 8". His emphasis was on the number 8 and then finally it clicked that okay so it' s the difference between bits and bytes.

Anyways, I am not in mood to change connection because first, it's really difficult to get one and secondly Airtel and Sify are equally non-reliable so it's fine. I'll stick to it for some more time. It seems that lots of things demands my attention and I am failing miserably in time management. Will be back soon this time.