Julia Roberts' response in Pretty Woman to Richard Gere's offer to put her up in an apartment in Beverly Hills and she would never have to hit the streets again. Many would agree that it's a pretty good offer for one who is initially elated to enter a contract to spend a week as an escort for 3000 dollars. However that's the contract that converts one from a tramp to a sophisticated lady; thus a person with higher emotional needs. Maslow's theory being portrayed on screen yet again. And obviously being a feel good movie she does get more and it made me happy too. :)
However without digressing from my current train of thoughts; is wanting "more" greed in reality? All my moral science teachers from IIIrd to Xth standard have taught me greed is bad. But! How does one know wanting more is greed though? Tough task, huh? Atleast I find that difficult to make out. Where are those blinking neon lights that shouts in your face - 'Off limits your wanting more has crossed the greed limit'.
However there is a different school of thought that says ""Greed is good". Michael Douglas in Wall Street convinces the shareholders that greed is what will allow a bankrupt airline company to create value when broken down and sold off in parts and greed allows you to generate profit. The movie portrays Douglas as a greedy investor who does not know when to stop being greedy.
Though I have seen these movies before, I just happened to watch movies again in the space of a few days. It made me think. Is it bad to want more? Is being greedy ok if the greed is emotional and bad if it is materialistic? More importantly who decides that? Crazy thoughts, right? I agree ;)
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Common Man's Wings Clipped - Part I
Another one bites the dust.
Yesterday the merger of Deccan into Kingfisher was formalized. The new entity would be known as Kingfisher Airlines with Vijay Mallya as the Chairman and Captain Gopinath as the Vice- Chairman. This is despite the fact that Captain kept consoling the Common Men that their favourite airlines would still remain thrifty, frugal and approachable after Kingfisher had bought a majority stake in Air Deccan around a few months back.
Business Logic says synergies and tax savings through a shrewd structuring of the new corporate entity will trickle down to the end consumer in the long run. Emotional Quotient says another one of those "Do No Evil" kind of David bites the dust.
Yesterday the merger of Deccan into Kingfisher was formalized. The new entity would be known as Kingfisher Airlines with Vijay Mallya as the Chairman and Captain Gopinath as the Vice- Chairman. This is despite the fact that Captain kept consoling the Common Men that their favourite airlines would still remain thrifty, frugal and approachable after Kingfisher had bought a majority stake in Air Deccan around a few months back.
Business Logic says synergies and tax savings through a shrewd structuring of the new corporate entity will trickle down to the end consumer in the long run. Emotional Quotient says another one of those "Do No Evil" kind of David bites the dust.
Will supplement this with a better analysis in my next post.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Always Somewhere
Always Somewhere
Scorpions - Humanity World Tour
Date: 16th December, Sunday
Place: Bangalore
Still loving you, Scorpions
Scorpions - Humanity World Tour
Date: 16th December, Sunday
Place: Bangalore
Scorpions keeps the best for the last. India being the last leg of the tour and Bangalore is where the tour ends.
Date: 16th December, Sunday
Place: Bangalore
Scorpions keeps the best for the last. India being the last leg of the tour and Bangalore is where the tour ends.
Jamming for Big City Night 
Kottak drives the crowd crazy with his solo on the drums
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A scintiallating performance! Nothing else. Scorpions totally lived up to all my expectations.
Scorpions took to the stage with Hour I from their new album and that was just the beginning of the hurricane that was set to follow. Then Klaus Meine greeted the crowd with a big Indian "Namaste Bangalore" and promised a lot of classics alongwith the numbers from Humanity. And that disappointed nobody. :) Not least those gray haired enthusiasts I spotted in the crowd, some still clinging on to their blackberrys and others with their kids in tow. Nor the younger fans. I am convinced today that Ballad Rock still cuts across all age groups in Bangalore.
The classic ballads were played to the acoustic guitars. What a performance it was? What followed was the best display of a drummer at his elements. What an entertainer? Kottak was too good. He played the drums as he took off his Tees and gulped down a Kingfisher. 'India India.... Bangalore Bangalore' was his chant. The crowd simply adored him. Then started the hard rock with 321, Blackout, Tease me Please me, Big City Night .... They finally closed the show with Rock you like a hurricane.
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Had an amazing time tonite. I fulfilled one of my dreams of seeing Scorpions live in concert and also took a couple of their pics and video clips. Last time they were around in 2001 I was not there. This time I was there and sang along to almost 80-90% of all the numbers they belted out tonite. Not bad, huh! Now I can go to bed happy and satisfied.
One of the Video Clips:
Sunday, December 16, 2007
'I almost forgot. We are profitable'
Finally finished reading this book on Steve Jobs, with all the usual distractions of work and my crazy habit of reading 2-3 books at the same time. And now for my take on this book -
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Quite a gripping account of the phoenix who rose from the ashes to lead the convergence of 3 mighty industries of Computers, Music and Animation. The book takes you on a journey of triumphs and turbulences of this brash young man who is totally intolerant to conventional thinking and at times intolerable to his teammates. On the way he changed the rules of every game he has ever played and most of them on hostile grounds. The best part of the book is that it has not just eulogised Jobs, it gives the reader a view of his life with all his perfections and flaws.
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Cynics might discount Job's contributions by saying that he was lucky to have been at the right place at the right time and amongst the right people. Like he had Steve Wozniak during his initial days at Apple, John Lasseter and Ed Catmull & Alvy Ray Smith at Pixar and finally the MusicPortal team for the iPOD and iTunes. But there is no denying the fact that he is a visonary and has the knack of picking the right cards more often then not. Fortune does favors the brave.
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Brave indeed he has been and ruthless too. How else do you explain the fact that today Jobs is the largest shareholder of Disney with a 7% stake and a seat in its board. Isn't it amazing! It was Disney that had given Pixar the opportunity to make films with the finances for their production and the marketing engine for their publicity. Of course his knack of right timing is unquestionable, he re-negotiated this contract with Disney everytime after the success of each one of his blockbuster movies - Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. It didn't help Eisner either that Roy Disney was breathing down his neck with each passing moment and had to finally make way for the more amiable Bob Iger.
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The best anecdote from the book that gives the reader a feel of Jobs the person is the one at the MacWorld conference. This was just after he took over as CEO of Apple, Jobs gave a talk on the future plans of Apple for a couple hours to a crowd, which though captivated by his charisma was more interested in the financial numbers. Apple was in losses for past couple of quarters under Gil Amelio and the stakeholders were bullish with Jobs at its helm. This dude pretends to finish his speech and walks off to their utter disappointment and surprise. Then a moment later he comes back to the microphone and says - 'I almost forgot. We are profitable' and the crowd simply went into a frenzy at his panache, showmanship and attitude. Now thats what I call an example of a maverick at work.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Baby 321! Are you ready to rock?
24, 23 ............ 3,2,1.. Are You Ready to Rock!
Yes I am am!
And simply can't wait - another pain-staking 24 hrs to go before I actually see the Scorpions live in concert. In the meanwhile, I am straining my vocal chords to the limits and my roomies are trying as hard to ignore my idiosyncrasies. Alas! Little do they know that I plan to practice through the night.
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane. :P
Infact I even manged to talk Vara, Long LImb Sr., out of his EPL frenzy that too on a mega weekend with ManU vs Liverpool and Arsenal vs Chelsea matches tomorrow and Vats, Long Limbs Jr, too out of his slumber to join me tomorrow. And trust me this is no mean achievement when dealing with the slowest and laziest people I have ever know. :)
Yes I am am!
And simply can't wait - another pain-staking 24 hrs to go before I actually see the Scorpions live in concert. In the meanwhile, I am straining my vocal chords to the limits and my roomies are trying as hard to ignore my idiosyncrasies. Alas! Little do they know that I plan to practice through the night.
Here I am, rock you like a hurricane. :P
Infact I even manged to talk Vara, Long LImb Sr., out of his EPL frenzy that too on a mega weekend with ManU vs Liverpool and Arsenal vs Chelsea matches tomorrow and Vats, Long Limbs Jr, too out of his slumber to join me tomorrow. And trust me this is no mean achievement when dealing with the slowest and laziest people I have ever know. :)
Friday, December 14, 2007
Love will keep us alive
"Love will keep us alive
Let's make the moment right
It's now or never
Love will keep us alive
Even the darkest night"
A fantastic comeback to the 70's ballads by the band that baptised me into the world of rock music. Its of the same class as 'Wind of Change' and 'Send me an Angel'. One of the songs that will enter my list of classics.
Being the youngest of the four siblings keeps you on an auto-pilot on lot of tastes and choices in life. Music was one of them. Probably thats the reason I got stuck with the 70s rock, my elder bro's fav and thus mine too automatically. In retrospect, I must have been the really pestering kind. :) Always trying to find out why the loud music made so much sense and fun to him.
And now when these dudes are in town I simply can't wait to hear them live in concert. Its almost like my moment of truth. I have been listening to all the Scorpions numbers once again to brush up on the lyrics. Just like the one night stand type of preparations for all the engineering papers. I have to sing along all the numbers that they belt out on Sunday! Thats the least I owe them.
Send me an angel ! ;)
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Toyota swims in its Blue Ocean,
While competitors drown in their red oceans. VI to save 2.7 Bn USD for Toyota!
Wow! Probably the most interesting article in ET today.
Already the most efficient car manufacturer in the world and soon to be the largest (unofficially, till the final 2007 numbers are taken into account) Toyota is projecting 2.7 Bn USD of annual savings for the next year. Toyota attributes this fabulous success to something called VI - Value Innovation.
Quoting the article in ET - ' VI seeks to lump some of tens of thousands of components in a car into modules and systems'. The sedan, Crown will be the first car to incorporate this. Toyota President, Katsuaki Watanabe, led this initiative called CCC21 ( construction of cost competitiveness in the 21st century) to save 9 Bn USD in the last 5 years. Toyota is planning to roll it out to its American and European suppliers.
Value Innovation is a method of strategic thinking that looks for Blue Oceans thereby making competition irrelevant. The Blue Ocean Strategy proposed by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne focuses on Business Innovation rather than looking at the old school of thought of fighting competition in Red Oceans. Toyota is talking of annual cost reductions with sustained revenue, while competition is still suffering from increasing cost pressures and labour union issues.
Toyota came out with this plan to keep a 10% OPM so as to keep up with the increasing commodity prices and consumers veering towards smaller and compact cars for mileage which have low margins. If this was not enough, Toyota chief is planning to scrap this current VI by 2010 and replacing it with a even more efficient scheme.
Bravo Toyota!
Saturday, December 8, 2007
China Overheating! Who can afford that?
A few stats to get a feel of China's contribution to the world economy -
An excerpt from the report
" Variables included in the COI
The COI tries to capture demand-push factors that could eventually lead to a rise in inflation. This must be distinguished from exogenous cost-push factors, such as higher oil prices or higher food prices due to adverse weather or other external shocks.
We include six variables available in monthly series at least since January 1993 (the year of the latest overheating episode). The variables are:
- China's contribution to the world economic growth was around 25 percent. Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/31/content_6976134.htm
- China's foreign reserves is $1.2 trillion - an Everest of money that towers over reserves held by any other nation. Source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100024842/index.htm
- China saw an increase in its total energy consumption in 2006. The consumption included 2.37 billion tons of coal, up 9.6 percent year on year; 320 million tons of crude oil, up 7.1 percent; 55.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas, up 19.9 percent; 416.7 billion kilowatt-hours of hydropower, up 5 percent; and 54.3 billion kilowatt-hours of nuclear power, up 2.4 percent. In 2006 China's consumption of steel products rose 17.2 percent to 450 million tons. Its consumption of other materials included aluminium, up 32.1 percent to 8.65 million tons; ethylene, up 23.9 percent to 9.39 million tons; and cement, up 14.5 percent to 1.2 billion tons. Source: http://www.chinamining.org/News/2007-02-28/1172643366d3784.html
- In 2006, China's overall FDI inflows totaled $69.5 billion. Source: http://www.uschina.org/info/forecast/2007/foreign-investment.html
An excerpt from the report" Variables included in the COI
The COI tries to capture demand-push factors that could eventually lead to a rise in inflation. This must be distinguished from exogenous cost-push factors, such as higher oil prices or higher food prices due to adverse weather or other external shocks.
We include six variables available in monthly series at least since January 1993 (the year of the latest overheating episode). The variables are:
- — Merchandise imports as a gauge of overall domestic investment and consumption demand;
- — Retail sales as a gauge for private consumption;
- — Industrial sales, a proxy for industrial production, as a gauge for investment activity;
- — Money supply as a gauge for inflationary pressures arising from monetary policy;
- — Domestic credit, to gauge the risk of a boom-bust credit cycle;
- — Income per capita, as a proxy for wages, to gauge the tightness of the labour market.
The danger signs of oveheating in China are glaring;
- Excessive Loan Growth
- A surge in money supply
- Runaway Investment
The reasons for the same have been evident for quite sometime too:
- A fixed Yuan to the USD promoting excessive imports to the US.
- However US consumption of the Chinese imports had not been fueled by the higher wages and employment but rather on low interest rate policy has led to an upsurge in housing prices and financed an increase in consumer debt.
The US real estate bubble has already burst, is the China inflation going to hit the world econony too. Today China more integrated to the global ecoonmy than it ever was.
Another synopsis of an article on the same topic that appeared in ET yesterday -
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) latest Economic Outlook raised its forecast for China's economic growth this year to 11.4% from the earlier estimate from 10.4%. An inflation of 6.5% is an all time high in a decade though much lower than the 22% in 1994. However back then China was never as closely integrated with the world economy. Thus the greater fear this time round. Critics claim that the Yuan is undervalued by as much as 40%.
The Chinese leaders aware of the imminent cris in their annual economic planning for 2008 has planned the following measures to curb this growth:
- Tight Monetary policy
- Control Bank loans- raise interest rates, boost bank reserve and other measures to discourage investments in property projects and factories out of the fear that a glut of unneeded projects could spur defaults on bank loans that would trigger a financial crisis.
Appreciating Rupee -Subprime Crisis Co-relation for Dummies
Being in an export oriented sector, with revenues from US of most IT services companies touching 30-5o%, Sub Prime Loan Crisis has entered the popular pshcye of everyone and anyone involved. Nowadays almost every cost cutting measure is blamed on it - starting from the smaller sugar packs in the pantry to the employee travel freeze to the top honchos talking of de-risking the existing business models. ET yesterday carried an article of Satyam looking at Malaysia as an alternate location for offshoring services because the Malay Ringgit does not appreciate as much as the Indian Rupee (INR) in relation to the US Dollar (USD)
So what is the mystery of the INR appreciating compared to the USD? We would probably need to go back 7 years to unfold the entire story.
2001-2005 -> Real Estate Boom in the US results in the loan interest rates going down, because the risk of repayment reduces as a direct co-relation. So the average American finds it that much easier to take loans from financial institutions. Thus higher value-loans were given out to subprime borrowers; people whose credit-worthiness in low to catch on to the wave. The lenders' confidence in the real estate boom made them convert these subprime loans into bonds - this is what is know as securitization. These bonds were sold to banks, insurance companies etc. These bonds were also sold to hedge funds which invest in global markets.
2006-2007-> The real-estate scenario takes a complete U-turn and the risk in returning or rather in the repayment the loan increases significantly. Interest rate triples in the United States and it becomes difficult for the subprime borrowers to return their loans forming a vicious cycle of cause and effect. Borrowers prefer defaulting on their repayments and cuases the real estate prices to nose dive. In the meantime the Bonds turn into bad debt and the real estate prices fall further. The hedge funds to recover their money reduce their holding in other fast developing and rising global markets, namely the Indian Stock Market .
Result -> The market for Rupee increases – this reduces the value of dollar in comparison.
Summary -> Interest Rate Parity and Exchange Rate parity is relative in comparison with two countries.
Friday, December 7, 2007
From Social Networking to Economic Value in India - It’s complicated!
Social Networking and Social Shopping on the Internet hit the US atleast a couple of years ago. The free market economics was famously able to take every technology/trend from the haloed Ivy League campuses to becoming full fledged self sustaining social and economic communities; surviving those tough initial years with the gritty startups.
Social Communities: An article in ToI yesterday captures the current trend on the US campuses. The "Out of sight out of mind" phrase has been replaced by "Out of Facebook out of mind". No one probably cares or thinks about you unless you update your status on Facebook, be it your relationship status – “It's complicated” or the more mundane location status. MySpace creates cults on niche themes and YouTube clogs the Internet bandwidth in many a network. Bands are using MySpace to share their new music with the fans for free to conduct a free market research of the vaiabilities of their up-coming albums. And the owners of MySpace earning their dues from advertising. The golden rule of 'give and take' being applied for any community to survive. Driving the economic cycle to be more appropriate.
Economic Communities: iTunes – which one Universal executive with a foot in the mouth disease, had described as equivalent to stealing, is rivaling the Music Industry today. Amazon acts as the facilitator for shopping. And mighty Google besides making everyone's life a wee bit easier, also enabled millions of SMBs to reach targeted consumers through personalized advertising.
And I am very sure I have not even touched the tip of The Long Tail facilitated by the Internet. After reading Chris Anderson’s book I was wondering if his new age economics of the Internet is applicable in India too. I looked around and ended up saying saying “Its complicated’. It comes back to the much-talked-about digital divide in India. The elite Indians having access to Internet have been able to take advantage of the Flat World enabled by the Internet. For the times are changing and there might be these visionaries already tapping into this market. Even at BarCamp5-Bangalore, held a couple of weeks back, the thing that really caught my fancy was the start-up on social shopping customized or rather localized for the Bangalore market.
India has taken to Social Networking like fish to water. Atleast in my generation if you do not Orkut, if not social, you are definitely not accessible. Then there was this article in ET a couple of days back that talks of Social Networking used by companies for reference checks on blogs & Facebook, hiring on Second Life and referrals through LinkedIn. India has caught on in a big way, with Orkut being the alter ego of any 12-45 years old Indian. However I think hiring through Internet and job communities is just very small part of the huge market potential of these online communities.
The basis of Economics is on scarity of resources. Information asymmetry is one of them. It would not be an overkill to say trading happens on the basis of information asymmetry, more so in India. Steven Levitt in Freaknomics even gives the example of real estate agents doing their business of information asymmetry by playing the middle man between the buyers and sellers. If it were not for the property websites like 99acres.com, magicbricks.com, most buyers and sellers would still have been left high and dry. However the challenge in India is its still suffers from the ails of infrastructure woes and the digital divide. "Its complcated" because it is still not able to include the long tail of all buyers and sellers.
Social Communities: An article in ToI yesterday captures the current trend on the US campuses. The "Out of sight out of mind" phrase has been replaced by "Out of Facebook out of mind". No one probably cares or thinks about you unless you update your status on Facebook, be it your relationship status – “It's complicated” or the more mundane location status. MySpace creates cults on niche themes and YouTube clogs the Internet bandwidth in many a network. Bands are using MySpace to share their new music with the fans for free to conduct a free market research of the vaiabilities of their up-coming albums. And the owners of MySpace earning their dues from advertising. The golden rule of 'give and take' being applied for any community to survive. Driving the economic cycle to be more appropriate.
Economic Communities: iTunes – which one Universal executive with a foot in the mouth disease, had described as equivalent to stealing, is rivaling the Music Industry today. Amazon acts as the facilitator for shopping. And mighty Google besides making everyone's life a wee bit easier, also enabled millions of SMBs to reach targeted consumers through personalized advertising.
And I am very sure I have not even touched the tip of The Long Tail facilitated by the Internet. After reading Chris Anderson’s book I was wondering if his new age economics of the Internet is applicable in India too. I looked around and ended up saying saying “Its complicated’. It comes back to the much-talked-about digital divide in India. The elite Indians having access to Internet have been able to take advantage of the Flat World enabled by the Internet. For the times are changing and there might be these visionaries already tapping into this market. Even at BarCamp5-Bangalore, held a couple of weeks back, the thing that really caught my fancy was the start-up on social shopping customized or rather localized for the Bangalore market.
India has taken to Social Networking like fish to water. Atleast in my generation if you do not Orkut, if not social, you are definitely not accessible. Then there was this article in ET a couple of days back that talks of Social Networking used by companies for reference checks on blogs & Facebook, hiring on Second Life and referrals through LinkedIn. India has caught on in a big way, with Orkut being the alter ego of any 12-45 years old Indian. However I think hiring through Internet and job communities is just very small part of the huge market potential of these online communities.
The basis of Economics is on scarity of resources. Information asymmetry is one of them. It would not be an overkill to say trading happens on the basis of information asymmetry, more so in India. Steven Levitt in Freaknomics even gives the example of real estate agents doing their business of information asymmetry by playing the middle man between the buyers and sellers. If it were not for the property websites like 99acres.com, magicbricks.com, most buyers and sellers would still have been left high and dry. However the challenge in India is its still suffers from the ails of infrastructure woes and the digital divide. "Its complcated" because it is still not able to include the long tail of all buyers and sellers.
Google Trends 2007
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pranks/google-maps-catches-sophisticated-high-school-football-field-prank-330550.phThe final Google trends for 2007 were officially announced yesterday, with the iPhone and the late plastic buxom wonderkid Anna Nicole Smith bracketing the Top 10 fastest-rising search terms. If you compare this to the first Google ranking ever, you will either conclude that the world is a better, calmer place now or that the human race is getting dumber by the year:
Good bye Nostradamus, harbinger of doom and gloom! Hello iPhone, prophet of the second coming of the Digital Age in My Pocket.™ And oh yes, I'm happy to see you too. So long CNN, harbinger of news tickers and dumbified news! Welcome Webkinz, you stuffed rascal that connects to a social networking site you! World Trade Center? Unless it appears in TMZ next to Nicholas Cage and his wig, I say no! And screw that flying broomstick and get me drag queen transforming truckers on YouTube.
I mean, is this really what tickles the human race? Who can possibly remember stupid TV reality shows like Loft Story, Osama and the Talibans when we can entertain ourselves with MySpace, Facebook and Club Penguin? For shame! I would rather play topless Wii. [Reuters and Google]
8:30 AM ON WED DEC 5 2007BY
JESUS DIAZ34,563 views
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