Man Made Black hole worth $400b+

US subprime market is a big big man made black hole that was built at a cost of $400b+...a marvelous structure indeed. I dont know why professional people got sucked into that or is it that they are sucking the govt out by showing losses on balance sheet and trying to get tax rebates and restructuring loans? or is it that its THE ONLY WAY to hike up the rates and bring in stricter control needed to get the credit line in. My take on this well laid out plot is that banks and financial instt were tracking down on how many defaults happens and how much they would lose. As of now the rise in defaulting has hit 300% which is a sort of bad news to the rich banks, so only way to turn around is orchestrate a plot so as to deny credits to many, take rebates by showing losses and finally doing this thing "Baking the cake and eating it too at other's cost"....meaning they have locked up the lands, they show the losses and they can go for the kill later by up-ing the supply when the demands are the same.

The fact that it may have happened genuine stands at the probability of 0.1. Let me explain what could happen when you view this way....

Fig 1 shows Demand D1 and Supply S1 and its operating at the equilibrium point, now some rogue entities try to offer incentives or throw away money so that some people may suck that up, so what happens now is people have money so they push the demand up. Now new demand is D2. Now the equilibrium point adjusts itself at a higher position where real estate guys are calling the shots, the suckers are taking the bait and increasing demand. The freebie wont go on for ever, so what happens now is that gasoline prices shoots, food prices shoot, the people get pink slips. This translates to defaults to mortage companies, these companies raise a red flag and seize the property and try to make a kill by asking for selling price or current market price. As many suckers get sucked up, many houses are up for stakes, so in reality the supply still is the same but the demands have dipped in. This situation is called flooding and no one wants to buy at the current market price, so as a bait these financial instt do a marginal discounts and still there are hardly any buyers and technically they must move to lower equilibrium point, but the thing is...it may be lower than the cost price+interests and they are smart enough not to give out at dirt cheap and go into red. Take-2 .... they create the notion of too many houses, too few buyers and they are losing money, lost money and will write off losses. Even if they write off losses, they wont gift this house to original buyer...on the contrary they will sell it to rich dudes who will hoard it and go for a kill once the news goes stale and the demand increases again. The point here is that demand curve wont hit rock bottom on one day when you wake up. It may be going down and if the smart bankers dont see that then they have gone pretty lazy and must be replaced....so that leaves with the possibility that it may be orcestrated pretty well !!!
Now its for you to decide on this one!!!!!!!

If chinese can why not indians?

Come 2009 and chinese car maker Chamco Auto is waiting to storm the market and grab market share as they may have their production at mexico and rolls cars into US with price tag of $12k+. If chinese can position themselves to work on strict US auto standards whats keeping the indians away? Tata can go in for the kill with a pricing of $5k+ with production at mexico, research in India and sales in the US. Advantage of Tata Nano is that it will give you value for mileage and can keep the speeds low in the cities which will translate to huge savings and lesser accidents. Somehow Tata is more interested in buying out rover than pushing in its Nano. If chinese can work out the design to clear US standards then they can storm anywhere, but i dont think that they can bring the value down to $5k or so. Only Ratan Tata can answer my question of "If chinese can, why cant indians?"

New Definitions?

Its pretty amusing to have different meanings to the same word..especially in india and people blindly take it and move on. The first of the crap is meaning of minority, everywhere in the world its a fact that 10<90 but in india you move the minorities up to a point where you show them to be the main and only existing people. Minority rules in india while majority rules around the world. Everything thrown around is For The Minority or For The Appeasement of the Minority. Second most misused word is "Secular".... the actual meaning of this word is " Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body", but all those morons in there say and do the opposite. Secular and still have all those populist scheme for a particular religious block? Who are people trying to fool? May be thats why u must call for a resolution to keep all these old insane people out of policy making decisions. The other thing misused/abused is Subsidy!!! I dont understand the concept of free lunch or pay for someone to have fun? Now look at the budget allocations by an harvard educated Chidambaram.

*waived off loans worth Rs 60,000 crore to small farmers, hoped for an 8.8 percent growth.
How can you expect growth by just throwing money around? One one hand you open up SEZ and gobble up lands and other hand talk of poor growth in agriculture. You must invest in infrastructure betterment in this sector, not throw out money and waive off loans. You must understand the logic behind why farmers commit suicide, why things seem to be failing, why storages arent helping? why transportation costs are more.

*Whopping Rs 34,400 crore for education.
See no reason why someone would go for sub-standard cheap teachers while pouring in money for resources. They better hike the basic salary for teachers which would in turn attract quality people taking up this profession. I can only see those mis-fits who cant find anoy other job get into this sector.

* Rs 1,05,600 crore to defence?
Cant they just say x amounts of money for arms dealers and commission agents? I dont see any major wars happening for another 1000 years and there is no need to purchase sophisticated gadgets, all those money will go for counter-insurgency activites and weeding out terrorists. The govt can do one simple thing to provide more jobs and put a tab on "local help". Without any inside hand or local help, carrying out any major attacks is ruled out. You just cannot move materials or purchase explosives locally, as any such thing will attract law enforcement agencies.

* allocation for Minority Affairs Ministry will be doubled from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,000 crore.
Ah the headache..heartache :( I fail to understand about this minority crap. Someone needs to boot out the harvard educated guy out or the harvard guy must be the PM to see if he will act sane

Most of them cant stand someone growing

Its a natural human tendency, esp in indians, that they cannot see someone else get lucky or someone getting their worth. I looked up a writeup about Cleartrip getting 3rd round funding. In Rajiv Dingra's own words......

Talk about the roof giving way and a windfall of money falling from it and it just doesn’t stop raining money! Im sure if one were to visit the cleartrip office in mumbai a similar scene atleast in context of the news just in can be visualized. So more funding has come into the travel space and this time the beneficiary is cleartrip which has raised a whopping 18.5 Million $. Just convert that into rupees and you get an astronomical 75 crores approx. The people backing cleartrip with this whopping amount are DFJ (Draper Fisher Juvertson) who have pumped in 10 Million which there are a group of other investors who have contributed the rest of the millions which also includes Mahindra Ventures. I guess Mahindra’s interest in cleartrip can be attributed to its own mahindra holidays venture as well.

I dont know about his viewpoint, but according to me ... cleartrip is clean, simple with right combination of people and resources. First thing is, they keep the pages clean, no popups, no banners, no distractions. Second thing is its backed by investors who have good gut feeling and who are right in picking up portfolios. Third thing is Travel space has a lot of space and market share up for grabs. Fourth thing is If something isnt successful then someone wont put their money in. Fifth point is that they are in the business for 2 yrs with impressive revenue and market share.

Online Vs Brick Mortar

Netflix the online video rental seems to be attracting investors as evident from its recent performance at the stock exchange. It seems to be playing the right game to beat its online & brick mortar competitor Blockbuster. Blockbuster on one hand is sure to lose as its revenue will be eaten away by erosion due to costs renting the shops and paying its employees who man these shops. the indirect cause may be due to soaring gas prices as no one wants to drive around to pick it up and drop it down. Netflix has this advantage of running an online business with a storage where fewer employees can read inputs and fill up the post covers.

If i had a portfolio in this sector, i would have done this....
* Hire small storage spaces in each of the cities who have potential customers..like say near universities, metros or where there are these upward mobile people.
* Each of these storage spaces will have their copy of the movies, use the same way as netflix but a slight variation in the distribution.
* I would go the community way where in if i rent a movie to a person, i would say the faster you send it back or send it to other user in same community, the more points you score.
* More points here translates to your priority for booking some movie in advance or may be getting elongated rental allowance where in you pay for a month and get 15 days free etc.
* Idea is simple, just let the users mail it to other guy in community who has requested this movie. So mailing in the same city takes lesser time and you can double up the postman as a gate keeper who will have the hold on when a particular movie was sent and when it was received. This way you have a better logistics and distribution service available. The customers would just love the way things are passed around.
* Thing is simple, you go online select the movie. The database will know where the movie is and it will send a message across to the rented guy either via texting message or email. if that person responds with "yes, i can send it within this date", then see to it that he send it and reward him aptly. The postman will do the rest. This will be a revenue generator for the postman as he will just put his hand into mail box and see if its returned, if he finds a package...just scan it and the wireless gadget will take care of the data that would be sent to the servers. the servers will store the data and the automated agent will run it smoothly..

Any Takers? :D

Airline crap

US Airways Group said Tuesday it will start charging fliers $25 to check a second bag, the company's latest effort to raise revenue and deal with rising costs. The announcement follows a similar policy change by United Airlines. US Airways spokesman Morgan Durant said the charge is expected to generate $75 million in revenue and cost savings each year.

These people need to take a leaf off Sir Branson's move by going in for bio fuels if they really want to keep the costs low. First they started with no free food on air, they offer a can of coke and some pretzels..now this one. if they really want to cut the cost down, they must either have guts to upppp that price or go for alternatives, not to put travelers in pain. No one likes to carry n-bags around as they travel, they usually take what is needed and essential, now if some moron thinks that by putting a price on that extra baggage...they can make a few bucks. It sounds just like stealing a lolly from a kiddo.

if i were the CEO, i would have got down to issuing mobile tickets for those who wont use the counter tickets, i would charge those people who use counter to buy tickets. Reason is that employees at the counter need to be hired for these tasks. i would put one employee there to man the gates, when people come down and scan their mobile phones with m-ticket barcodes , the auto gates will issue them boarding strips. Now there wont be a need hiring more than one person. So if someone really needs to buy tickets at the counter then they better pay that extra amount...or one more way would be to dispense boarding cards when travelers swipe their credit cards at these joints.

Then if the travelers are staying at their affiliates motel or hotel, let them pay that extra amount to get their baggage check in at that place, so they get value added service and need not wait for their baggage to be scanned and sent to cargo bay.

Starbucks out to keep its buck?

Starbucks scared of its competitors who are jumping into its space and eating its market share? Everywhere this news is pasted

"Starbucks Corp. retaught baristas how to make espresso shots, steam milk and hand drinks to customers while it shut down nearly 7,100 stores in the U.S. on Tuesday evening.

The Seattle coffee giant said that, starting Wednesday morning, it is promising customers that their drink should be made perfect every time. If not, the company is urging customers to let the barista know and they will remake it correctly."

It also goes on to say that its competitors are throwing up their coffee for either free or for 99 cents for small latte. I dont know but i may be wrong here, thing is I see this as a publicity stunt by getting the news across on all papers and get those customers back on wed morning. These customers may be curious to see whether starbucks is into what it really said. Now think of it in another way, if i were its CEO then i would have taken on 99 cents coffee providers in this way..... The game plan is very very simple. Starbucks can still offer their coffee for same price if customers spend their day at their place by sitting down and enjoying their coffee, if they want low priced coffee then install a coffee machine with right ingredients and let the customers vend it for themselves for 99 cents. So by their unique coffee taste, they can stand out of all those other coffee providers......Do i make sense?

The bold step by The Eccentric Guy

Sir Richard Branson is the most eccentric guy who is always in the news for his unconventional ways. I give 5 stars to this guy, our own vijay mallya is more or less like this guy, but mallya is better known for his lavish lifestyle and always looking for king size in everything he does. Ok getting back to Sir Richard...he has his first brush with business when he was 15, after that there was no stopping him. He started Virgin Atlantic Airways and the Virgin Records music label somewhere in the 80's, virgin mobile which captured the teen and college go-ers market. He has shown special interest in space tourism and i bet he will better that art of space travel by pumping in money for a galactic space flight ferrying space enthusiasts into space. But the latest is to do with toying the idea of bio fuels on virgin aircrafts. Three cheers to him for making this bold step....his company's boeing flight 747-400 flew from London to Amsterdam on Sunday, carrying in one of its four fuel tanks a 20-percent mix of biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. He may have played an interesting game with this new mix, as it may be the only way for airlines to keep the prices and yet operate their flights inspite of soaring gasoline prices. But as usual the critics are calling this another publicity stunt, their only argument is that sacrificing food crops for fuel will make the food supply scarce. Are there people sane? I dont get this logic at all, Sir Richard isnt cooking rice in his kitchen and pouring rice and sambar gravy into the fuel tank. If he isnt putting in rice or wheat or corn into the tank, how come there will be food shortage? Why are these morons putting a spanner in the wheel of R & D? Anyone around explain this to me?

Superbbbb

Japanese rock in whatever they do, they are in an advanced world. India will have to do a lot of work to catch up to that world, we are wasting time on stupid things like "north indians out of mumbai", "reservations for SC/ST", "appease the minority". I dont know if it is to do with a lot of jobless people who have no work and resort to these things. Anyways who cares!!! coming back to the actual issue....there has been two great things that happened this week. One was the US showing its technological advances by shooting down a satellite and second one is about the new super speed internet satellite launched by japan.

The satellite carries a new tech payload which if proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will be able to connect to the Internet at speeds (1.2 GB per second) many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services.

"Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances,"

I hope this technology wont be "mis-used" to get on facebook to post messages or used to download illegal movies :D

Great Stuff

The first challenge was how to pin point a particular place on the earth and target that place with laser guided precise missile. This was evident from gulf war where the tech was used to target places as well as the interceptor missiles which was developed to stop incoming iraqi scud missiles. Precise cruise missiles were used to target osama some time back, then was drones developed to hit moving targets by triggering a small weapon sitting miles away. But the current one of hitting something coming down to earth or rotating in space, this is more difficult as you dont have a fixed co-ordinate value and the missile need to adjust the path and since that in space is colder, its harder to use heat seeking missile as sometimes it may go after some meteor and hit it rather than the intended target. China started this act with precise destroying of old satellite but it has its own cons when the missile hits target, it destroys the target into debris which may pose problems as you are creating more randomness in space. What US showed is a different kind capability, pick up a rogue satellite which is heading down with rapid velocity often at faster speeds. So one has to adjust the path as well as to hit the target when velocity isnt under the effect of gravitational force. China had a more easier task of dislodging a satellite which may be used to destroy satellites .... more to do with spy ones of hostile countries. It can also use its missile to seek out ransoms in future. US on other hand can hit any satellite which may be launched or which may be pushed out from space. Think it as this way, usually countries keep launching satellites and may have hidden payloads which can be later propelled towards countries if something happens. So US technology can be used to develop missile shields to protect allies. Now i can predict technologies sooner which can vary speed and change directions at will which may be hard to target.

Idea Corner

I usually go to enjoy the buffet on weekends, but the problem is you need to wait a longer time and sometimes some of the delicious dishes are gone, some eat more and some eat less.....but still everyone is charged close to $10+8%tax. Now if i had a restaurant business, then i would do this.... when a person enters the place and is showed his table, he will be handed over a time stamped card which says the probable time he/she may start at. Each of these cards are then used to put on variable charges. Most of the time, if someone sits at the table and eats food rather slowly then the owner is likely to lose out when no tables are empty and there are a lot of customers waiting to have their turn, people tend to chat with their pals and take in food, this will mean more eating by them. With this card system, a typical person may take 1 hr to eat his/her stomach full, so a time stamp is enabled which means if the person comes to the cash counter to pay his bill, his time stamp will be scanned and anything above an hour will be charged accordingly as this is a payoff for his taking a longer time and blocking the table. A leeway of plus-minus 10min can be allowed as a tolerance. This will deter many from staying and eating more. So as a concession, reducing the buffet price to $8 for an hour stay is a good deal. If the menu is great and you follow this system, i would bet it will work wonders :P

Profile Page

Lookup at who all kissed you

Click on the image to view demo

Can WTO help here?

Globalization has enabled economically weak economies get into better shape. So can some countries agree the same to be followed in this case too? The issue to be considered is this....just like IT professionals are pushed to the US and other countries, will or should india work for an advantage to import old retired folks from US and Europe to take advantage of its lower medical costs? People in the US spends a lot on medicare and it makes sense if they go on to settle down in india and other countries and spend less than they could spend in their country to get better medicare facilities? Will it work as an advantage for both the countries? India gets some foreign exchange and can kick in some employment in nursing and health care? US on the other hand need to consider lesser investment on medicare headache and insurance.

India on the other hand can use its medical professionals and junior doctors to take advantage of this situation by providing quality healthcare at a premium....in short what costs Rs 1 lakh for locals can be Rs 2.5 lakhs for outsiders thus taking extra money and using that to cut down subsidy costs for local people. It makes more sense to me though except if you dont consider the same comfort levels, pollution etc. But atleast these old folks may have constant company than stay isolated in their country. Most of the old folks either stay in old age home with their kids visiting them every weekend or ever month or forgotten for good. Atleast here for the lure of a dollar, some people may genuinely keep these folks in good spirits and could give them a second lease of life before their death finally arrive. Too bad to see how old people are treated like old stuff/clothes and discarded for new ones. Or someone can start a 5-star old age homes in india in some nature resort where they provide everything from life saving medical care to providing them nutritious meals and entertainment.

A Solution to public transport system

I have been seeing right from my primary school days that the biggest problem is public transport system(city buses) in india. Even though it runs on govt subsidy and is cheaper to travel in that than traveling in your own vehicle. Problem with public transport within cities is that the infrastructure isnt suitable to handle so much traffic, second problem is that there are few buses running around on those routes, this triggers mad rush and overcrowded buses. These buses are bulky and hence block most of the 4 wheeler traffic, too many traffic stops mean more pollution at these stops as drivers rarely switch off their engines. Then i have noticed that the max crowd is at working hours..around this time slot ----> 8:30-9:30 am and 5:00-7:00pm.

So my solution to this is simple, usually those buses have around 50 seating capacity, now at office hours it makes sense to put those transport buses which have 0 seats, in short fill up those people who want to reach their work place. so when u pull out those seats from these buses, u double or triple the capacity to carry. Now most of the people who travel dont care about sitting in those seats and all they are concerned is reaching the workplace, school etc on time. So i am not saying that they eliminate all those seats in buses, what i am pointing at is run fewer buses with seats so that the sick, old and physically challenged people can travel in those buses and all others who care about reaching place on time...travel in seatless buses. Then put on luxury buses which charge a premium to occupy those seats which are non-stop and not point to point. This is one such solution to cut down on over crowded roads and carry crowd from one place to another. I hope some sensible guy reads this and forces the government to implement this :D

Marketing Genius

There are some who learn marketing by enrolling into some programs at the universities but there are some who are born marketers. One such case is Baba Ramdev, i have been closely following his marketing blitzkrieg and he is a genius. Until 2006, I had no idea who ramdev was and what he was upto. Then there appeared in 2006, a news article.....

In January 2006, the Brinda Karat accused the Divya Yog Mandir Trust Pharmacy, owned by Ramdev, of using human and animal bones in their medicines. She based her accusations on a report produced an Indian health ministry laboratory. She also claimed that a sample of the medicine (Kuliya Bhasm and Yauvanamrit Bati, purchased from Brahmakalp Chikitsalay, which is the Trust's hospital at Haridwar was tested at government labs which later confirmed the presence of animal materials in the sample. She exhibited the prescription and cash receipt obtained from the medicine counter in support of her claim.

Four samples sent to the government-recognized research center (Shriram Institute of Industrial Research, Delhi) were reported as indicating that the medicines contained no objectionable ingredients and were purely herbal. Swami Ramdev was subsequently cleared of these charges. Interestingly, subsequent to these allegations - sales of the Trust's ayurvedic medicines have soared.

This was enough to get him popular on newspapers and became a popular figure on Television news channels. Then he visited US and got into yogas and was trying to get the market for his ayurvedic products. Now after he got what he wanted, he is now wooing celebrities like shipa shetty, nisha kotari and others to be the face for pushing forth his yoga programs. Yoga is a great market to be in and a good source to milk money from neo rich. Some use yoga as a new status symbol and is good enough to make few rich friends. So I proclaim Baba ramdev as a marketing genius :D