iCharts Discussions

[ajayhkaul]

[ajayhkaul]

[vinay28]

here's the fact about the farce in ongc stake auction. LIC bid for more than 90% of auction volume (40 cr shares). Was it an investment decision or a bail out? If former, is it a game by govt. in which they will announce a number measures that will benefit ongc in future?

And if so, will shares change hands thru bulk deals to Mukesh before these measures are announced? Mukesh couldn't have quoted for more than 25% of volume or 1.25% stake in ongc. This way he will get much more.

[ajayhkaul]

Collapse story follow up :

".......Another U.S. city on the brink of bankruptcy…

Stockton, California, a farming town near San Francisco with a population of 292,000, is meeting with creditors and labor unions this week to discuss how it can avert filing for bankruptcy due to its massive budget deficit.

In an attempt to avert bankruptcy, the city laid off almost 200 city employees, including a quarter of its police force. With the numbers not adding up, and facing a budget deficit of $2.00 million in 2012, the city was forced to ask creditors and the labor unions to sit down and discuss budget cuts in order to reduce the budget deficit for this year.

Before the recession—during the good times—the city took on a large amount of debt, expecting that continued growth going forward would pay for it; no budget deficits in sight. Well, now that revenues are down drastically, this debt has the city in a stranglehold.

Stockton’s city council is aiming to reduce the current budget deficit by $15.0 million, which would include defaulting on debt payments on the municipality’s bonds along with other budget cuts. That is just scratching the surface on the city’s terrible financial situation.

Stockton has unfunded liabilities—mostly made up of pensions and health insurance—of $450 million. Although high, it was more manageable when the city took in revenues of over $203 million. For 2012, the city is hoping that revenues will exceed $160 million! That is quite the budget deficit!

During the good times, the average home price in Stockton was $431,000, which helped increase city revenues and keep the crime rate relatively low (no budget deficit). In 2011, the average home price fell to $142,000 and unemployment is the eighth highest, when compared to all cities in the U.S., at 15.9%. The crime rate—when compared to other U.S. cities—now falls in the highest group; among the top 10 across the nation!

In response to the bankruptcy of Vallejo, California, in 2008, the State of California passed a law that forced cities to work with an evaluator for at least 60 days to discuss budget cuts, before being able to file for bankruptcy with the courts. Stockton has now initiated this process. If no agreement is reached on its budget deficit, then this will be the next city to fall.

As we move deeper into 2012, Stockton will unfortunately not be the only city we will hear about, as budget deficits grow throughout the U.S.
It is important to note however that the cities across the U.S. have been instituting budget cuts in an attempt to balance their budget deficits.
In 2010, $433 billion in long-term municipal bonds was issued. In 2011, this number was down almost 32% to $295 billion. This is evidence that the cities are cutting back and not issuing as much debt; necessary, and a good sign.

the unemployment numbers will include the layoffs coming from budget cuts instituted by cities across the U.S., as they attempt to cut budget deficits in the face of drastically reduced tax revenues.

The stock market is assuming that 2012 will be a year where the U.S. economy rebounds. Tell that to the citizens of Stockton......." and to Ben Bernanke

[ajayhkaul]

[psalm]

[phoneix]

[vinay28]

phoneix, you seem to be a foul mood today!

Bring out more scoops! Good for munching over weekend. Let's see tmrw's game in market first, if any.

[vinay28]

ajay, I asked an american friend of mine about your "collapse story" today. This is what he replied

"Yes this is true. See
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/stockton-bankruptcy-biggest-in-american-history_n_1298055.html and http://news.yahoo.com/stockton-could-become-biggest-city-bankrupt-024108696.html

and
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-29/stockton-california-moves-closer-to-bankruptcy-on-council-vote.html

Pension plans are a real disaster in this state. Many workers in state government actually are paid as much money upon retiring at age 55, than if they kept on working until 65, as would be normal."

[ajayhkaul]

So how are the americans, like your friend, taking this , Vinay ?

Meanwhile : a follow up of the 'rise of morons'

MORONS :

If you keep doing it , Even giving away money begins to seem normal.

The feds didn't invent their EZ money theories. John Maynard Keynes came up with the goofy program many years ago. He met with Franklin Roosevelt and explained the idea. Roosevelt later confessed that he had no idea what Keynes was talking about. But he liked Keynes' palaver. Because it gave him a theoretical justification for taking control of the economy.
Keynes' basic idea was stolen from the Old Testament. Pharaoh stored up grain during the years when harvests were good. Then, he gave out the grain when they were bad. He looked like a genius. FDR probably wanted to look like a genius, too.

But governments found it a lot easier to spend during the lean years than to save during the fat ones. In practice, they didn't save at all. And then, when trouble came, they had no real resources with which to do any good.
Instead, they could only borrow money...or print it.

The real problem now is that the private sector has debt to settle. But you can't settle debt with more debt.

No, you can't borrow your way out of debt. But you can sure in-debt your way out of borrowing. That is, you can run up so much debt that no one wants to lend you any more money. And when that happens...you're like Greece.

Friday April 13, 2012 ,HEADLINES : 'no one wants to buy US debt '


How;s that for breaking tomorrows news today!

[phoneix]

[ajayhkaul]

Finally an Indian speaks ....


Noted Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva shares an interesting perspective on this.

According to her, most Western economists have a false view of the history of wealth and poverty. The countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America that are poor today are not so because of the lack of industrial progress. They are poor because they were robbed of their resources by Europe and North America. It was this forceful exploitation of the Third World resources and markets that created enormous wealth in the North and poverty in the South.

So it was the industrial economy that actually elevated the problem of poverty instead of solving it. And yet today, the world continues to look for solutions in mechanisms which very much resemble the economic colonists.

Our obsession with GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth figures has grown even more. But there is a serious problem with such indicators. For instance, if you consume what you produce, it does not contribute to GDP growth. For Westerners, such sustenance living means poverty. Economists and policymakers have misguided the world away from self-reliance. And into a system that more often than not leads to monopolisation of resources and power, concentration of wealth, unproductive debt burdens and environmental destruction.

The colonists of yesteryears are very much present even today in the garb of transnational corporations. As long as the disease is offered as the cure, poverty will continue to live on.

[rk_a2003]

"The colonists of yesteryears are very much present even today in the garb of transnational corporations. As long as the disease is offered as the cure, poverty will continue to live on."

Well said Ajay!

This is the crux of the problem that the world is facing today. They are sucking out human resources natural resources and even emotional resources.

What for all these things are allowed? Just for profit. What for this profit? when you are destroying your own planet, own people.

Insanity thy name is modern economics.

[vinay28]

they did not create wealth ajay by merely exploiting and plundering resources of developing nations. As far India is concerned, the situation is far more worse. They STOLE our knowledge and THAT made them rich over centuries through scientific "discoveries". Knowledge alone creates wealth.

Let me give just two examples.

The greatest mathematician in the world ever, Bhaskaracharya, wrote four volumes on mathematics, apart from many on varied subjects such as astronomy, astrology, etc. One of them called "beejaganita" or algebra also dealt with differential calculus. That was around 1150 AD. Five hundred years later Newton "invented" it and today it is attributed to newton.

AND this continued even after independence. Take the case of R D Kaprekar, a school teacher from Nasik and Deolali and who died in 1981. He discovered the properties of number 6174, now called Kaprekar constant. Apart from this he also discovered four other numbers e.g. Kaprekar numbers (also used by some in equity markets), Self or Deolali numbers, Harshad numbers, and Demlo number. Since he was just a BSc. and not a post graduate, he could only publish them in some local journals. This was in 1930s and 40s. He got world recognition only when Martin Gardner wrote about him in Scientific American in 1975. But some of the numbers are described in papers published by foreigners. What's worse, since he never studied advanced mathematics and could only "play" with numbers, he is today famous only in a field called "Recreational Mathematics".

So much knowledge has been stolen from us (including on medicine) that sometimes I believe all nobel award winning inventions upto early 20th century must have some, if not all, inputs from Indian knowledge.

[ajayhkaul]

I think Indians should multiply even faster and infiltrate all the countries to reverse the looting !

Indian demography is anyway good for the spending cycle etc , so more Indians , the merrier.