Obama and Global Economy

All set for election and Obama leading in all the opinion polls. His last night solo presentation on major TV prime time slot was great. His vision and articulative views are great, he is a clear next generation leader. But one thing he is failing on is Global Economy, he has shown protectionism from the start of this presidential campaign. I thought may be, i’m monomaniac with “One Human One World(OHOW)” concept, that’s why i disappointed with his protectionism and all others are agreed with his views. So i have decided to check with other’s pulse for this matter. As usual, i started my research with real person opinions, first target was my wife, as soon as i asked the question, she refuted immediately “what’s wrong with that, first their own country people and then others”.

There is one more OHOW monomaniac like me across the country (California), we used to talk this kind of prescient matters a lot, i decided to call him, he also sounded like my wife, i felt like a thunder struck on my head. [Of course pun intended]. So the point is, everybody overwhelmingly supporting Obama without knowing his global economy policy. He used all the following rhetoric “outsourcing”, “foreign cars”, “protect our workers”, during his speech all the time, it is funny that he wants to talk with Iran leaders face to face but not liking imported fuel efficient cars from Japan and South Korea. I’m thinking that we are all shortsighted with current economy crisis, hence we want a change, our brain taken over by heart and forgetting logic here.

Since all are unable to fathom the issue, i decided to go with Google, just typed “Obama and Global Economy”, i was astonished with results. There are some results but none of them from trusted sources. 

Global economy (free trade) serves a better tool to trickle down wealth from top to bottom in other words rich countries to poor countries, and rich is already rich, they don't need any support but poor countries need rich countries support other wise they can't survive. Any ways, we have to wait and see who is going to win. 

Unbeatable Titans

8 weeks completed since this football season started, as usual lot of interesting games and surprises. Titans came out as unbeatable team 7-0 so far, yesterday they beat Colts.  This team has all chances to win super bowl, they are fundamentally strong. It was great rejoinder to last 5 years continues domination of Colts.  Way to go Titans. But my favorite team for this season so far is Texans, what an offensive play by them. But they lost so many matches early, but last 3 games they are really good.

Bears came back really good after the lost against Falcons.  Lions, Raiders, 49ers, and Rams are really wasting their fan’s money and time. Lions are playing like cats nowadays, may be bad economy really hurting them very bad. For a change, Dolphins started winning some games. 49ers fired their coach and again they promised to build a good team, the same they announced when they hired Nolan 4 years ago.

Again NFL players started using steroid like substance, this time it was some weight loss pills to mask steroids. Saints players 2 of them are tested positive and 10-15 more players from other teams also tested positive. This is really bad for NFL and fans.  

Source:

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/afcsouth/0-5-176/New-Titans-winning-with-a-cushion.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3654528

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8705732/Report:-NFL-hit-by-'rash-of-positive'-drug-tests

 

TGIF-No-SGIF

“Thank god it’s Friday” is famous and happy phrase but not now, for bull investor it is “Save god it’s Friday” from bears.  All bear investors hibernating in first 4 days of week and collecting all information (I don’t know where are they storing information, but bull know source and why) and dumping stock like right, center and left on Friday. This Friday’s sell offs are very well coordinated, bears coordinated from all over world, it was happening very early in the morning. Most of the sell off are out of panic and with panic these bears loosing logic and thinking power, just take all news as literals and getting more panic.

So for a smart bull it is good time to jump on, I don’t think so, this is tempting to jump in. Very low P/E ratio, major indexes lost almost 20% on average this month alone, all panic sellers are done with their selling (still they are out??), in other words bears are gone for permanent hibernating. All reliable technical indicators, fundamentals and theory, are showing to return to the market. For example, Google is selling at 21 P/E which is unbelievable and highly attractive now.  

We are having following positive factors.

• positive GDP growth so far (which is why we are not officially recession yet),
• very low oil price (comparison wise now oil $2.78 per gallon is almost free),
• second stimulus package (hopefully)
• narrow timeline to election (find some concrete answer about who will be next president)
• positive existing home sales(just starting to turn as green)
• ASEN influx of $80 Billion into market
• Dollar value increasing against all other currencies. (Especially Indian rupees now Rs 50 per dollar first time in history, hence most of my Indian friends tempted to go back India, but Indian government don’t want to us to come because they can’t handle more population…just kidding).

The sole issue now is, some banks are run out of money to lend again to consumers. The money rotation stagnates and people unable to borrow money.  But I think it will time to reenergize credit market again, the $700 Billion bail out package would take some time to come into main stage. But real remedy should be government buying unsold house from buyers and hold it for sometime or help them to refinance toxic mortgages.  

But here I want to follow blatantly the 2000-2002 market pattern, which is S & P index fell to 700-750 points with economy was deep recession. We are not there yet at the current situation. Now S & P holding at 870 points, still 170 points to go, which is right time to jump in with aggressively towards stocks not mutual funds or ETFs?

THE ADVENTURES OF LITERAL MAN!

Excellent Story from http://www.storiesville.com/content/view/1557/65/

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At one point in his life, Literal Man owned and ran a small 'fruit and veg' shop in a shopping mall. Like many other of his endeavours, this one was doomed to fail. One day a lady came into his shop. She was an older lady, about forty or fifty, who had a pleasant smile and seemed to be in the mood for conversation. Attempting to engage in small talk was one of Literal Man's weaknesses, for reasons that he never quite understood, yet nevertheless he tried his best to make the lady feel welcome in his shop.

"I hope that you are having a good morning" he said as she walked towards him. She briefly looked confused at the unusual greeting. Not 'good morning'? Despite this she smiled and said;

"The morning will be good once it's over, just kidding! I'm fine, How are you?"

Literal Man was confused; by kidding, did she mean that it would be bad when it was over? Or that it was bad and she would appreciate it more once it as over? He decided to ignore it and answer the last part of the sentence.

"I am also "fine". Can I help you with something?"

"Oh I don't know..." she said as she casually strolled past the register where he stood, "...what do you think, should I buy a half a cauliflower or a whole? I'm not sure if it'll be enough"

"I am sorry I am unable to answer that question properly. I do not know you or your situation. I cannot advise you to purchase either option when I do not know what you are planning to do with the cauliflower, or even how many people you are feeding."

The lady again looked confused, but seeing Literal Man standing there with an apologetic look on his face she decided that he must have been joking around with her.

"Ha! You're funny. Do they all come as funny as you?"

"Who?"

"Shop owners you silly chicken!" she was smiling as she walked around the shop picking up items to buy.

"I assure you I have no idea. I have not attempted to be funny since you walked in here, yet even so I doubt that "all" the shopkeepers would be equally as funny as I am, as every person has a unique and inividual sense of humor. And where is it that you are implying that shopkeepers come from?" He decided to ignore the blatantly impossible supposition that he was a 'silly chicken'.

"Um... ok" she said, now looking at him with less of a smile on her face. "Wow, you really take everything literally don't you?'

"Taking "everything" literally is impossible. I would be unable to even so much as watch a television show, without thinking that the events in the fictional shows were "literally" happening or had actually happened. So no, I do not."

The lady was no longer smiling. She had encountered a man who had difficulty differentiating between literal meaning and implied meaning; Literal Man!  She stopped looking around the shop and turned to face him. To her, Literal Man had crossed the border from joking to being flat out rude

"Um... yeah I was just joking." she said.

"When? "Just" meaning the last thing that you said? Or "Just" meaning that joking is all that you were doing?"

"What? what are you talking about? You're really strange"

"I am talking about what the intention of your usage of the word "Just" was when asking me your previous question. And why do you call me strange? I am previously unknown to you, unfamiliar as well, but that is to be expected. We have never met before"

"Uh... what? You're being a jerk aren't you? I have to tell you I'm not appreciating this at all. Who wants to come into a store and be asked a whole pile of stupid questions every time I say something?"

Literal Man stood there for a moment, trying to make sense of her latest confusing statement. He could feel that somehow he had once again failed in his attempt to have a conversation with someone, and once again he would never quite understand why. He could sense her getting angrier.Every where he went, whatever job or business he tried to run, the same type of person had to be dealt with. He always encountered people who said illogical, even ludicrous statements.

"Madam I apologise, I am not attempting to be a jerk at all. I am sorry if you believe that, and I wouldn't appreciate it myself either. And, well I am unable to say who would want to come into a store to be asked a "pile" of stupid questions every time you say something. Frankly, I find that whole scenario quite bizarre. What shop? Why would you be there? Who would ask the questions? I would almost suggest to you that it was a "stupid" question to ask me"

"Oh!" said the lady, who did not like hearing that she had asked a stupid question, her eyes now flaring outrage and anger. "You're unbelieveable if you think I'm going to stand here and take **** from you. You should learn to keep that horses arse you call a mouth closed, you piece of ****!" She said this with a raised voice as she threw the items she was carrying on the ground and started walking out of the shop.

Literal Man was now offended himself. This was not someone he wanted shopping in his place of business, as she was clearly insane! he followed her out of the shop, now raising his own voice in frustration

"Well, I honestly hope that I would not be believed if I suggested that you recieve faeces from me, which I did not suggest, because I would never do that! And I do not own a horse Madam! I do not see any reason why I should keep its "arse" closed even if I did own one, that would be pointless and bizarre. Even more bizarre if I called that horses "arse" a mouth. I would have to be quite stupid to make such a mistake.You Madam, are not welcome in my shop! I believe you are insulting me when you call me a piece of... ****" Literal Man said the last word with disdain, for even though he had a habit of offending people, without understanding why or how he did it, he still believed in using good manners.

"Fine!" yelled the lady from outside the shop as she turned to face him hands on her hips. A few people in the mall stopped to look their way. "See how I care! Shove all your fruit up your arse! Jump off a cliff you evil freak! There is no way that I would ever want to come back into your shop, ever! Not in a million years!" The lady strolled off at a fast pace. The many confusing elements of her last statement simply floored Literal Man... all his fruit up his arse?

"You would be dead long before a million years had passed, lady!" he yelled after her.

"AAARRRRRGH" she screamed down the mall past startled onlookers.

Literal Man sighed. This was all too familiar to him. He may as well close down the shop and find something else for to do for a living. Like everything else that he ever tried, this was not going to work for him, he could tell.Maybe it was something he was doing wrong, he thought. How well could this business go, if that lady was anything to go by? After all, she was his first customer...

Chandrayaan-I Mission

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientific community going to achieve a remarkable event on this Wednesday. India going to send an unmanned spacecraft (lunar exploration) Chandrayaan-I mission to moon. Indian flag will be placed in Moon, only US, Russia, and Japan flags were placed so far in moon. This spacecraft going to carry six Indian instruments and 6 other countries (including 2 NASA's) instruments.

We know that it is very hard to achieve something in state owned organization like ISRO. It is time to venerate our ISRO engineers.

2008 Blog Action Day – Poverty

Poverty is a machination, man made and we are the only one can make it history. Most of the poverty because of prolong social suppression, civil wars and unstable dictatorship rules. There are many people wants to abolish poverty from world, there are lot of talks and thoughts. But I personally think that we don’t know how to resolve this issue, but we have the heart to do so. We think that there are many rich/celebrity people out there and government will do something to abolish poverty. But the rich/celebrity people and government can’t make the difference unless we act together to abolish poverty. 

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.  ~Charles Darwin  

What about us?

As usual today morning wake up, had a wonderful breakfast and browsed emails, news sites and started watching Longhorn Vs Sooners football game. Just after noon i asked my wife and kids about plans for lunch, she fired back, “what the hell you are thinking?” “Do you know what is going on outside? It seems that great depression is back, next 10 years it will be recession?”…”But you seems like nothing happened and enjoying and watching football, I don’t know how people are going to survive”….As a gourmand, i was really shocked because my lunch is getting delayed. She started worrying about overall market condition and i noticed since last week she was little upset and i tested with her peers also, everybody seems to me upset because of too much reading about market meltdown and Opera Winfrey talk shows. For me everything going as predicted and i am always following http://ibloggergeek.blogspot.com/2006/11/dont-enjoy-at-success-time.html

Market was already dead and we are waiting for its new avatar. It is not in our control and it is not great depression as per record we are not yet recession stage. After i experienced first recession in U.S (2000 – 2001) at Silicon Valley, here are the things are always I followed.

1. At least 6 months worth of expense money at bank saving/money market account.

2. This is the time all media outlets goes negative, don’t watch too many news channels and talk shows.

3. Regular exercise and drink less coffee keeps our mood very stable.

4. Go outside and talk with friends and relatives, but strictly no economy.

5. Watch football, baseball, college football etc and etc.

For more tips please visit http://ibloggergeek.blogspot.com/2008/04/2008-not-good-so-far-but-how-to-beat-it.html

As per my predication, this issue may not resolve within next 1 week, there is no juju also to resolve this issue. It may go up to first half of next year. We are going to witness an ugly holiday season and plummeting stock market, but stock market wise all are done, everybody sold and there is no stock left for selling unless more of average Joes pulling 401K out. But things will turn around slowly after election. I think the big psychology boost come from next administration’s stance on Iraq war. Based on current projections, Obama leading over McCain with considerable points. So now election is key to boost the investor’s confidence and moreover by the time the bail out package $700 Billion started working in favor of us.

But my wife is 100% right, if we are happy and positive without knowing what is going on outside is deleterious. Even though we are not associated with stock markets also very risky. Because money is the key and it’s reside place should be solid, if the place is shaky then everybody is shaky. The student loan, car loan are really important, we don't want to see drop out college kid and ghost motor city. All over the world investors, who are always positive like ready to sell sky if it falls down, are tremulous. then what about us?

Spring AOP Concepts

As a natural lover, i was not very enthusiast about spring framework, for me i think spring framework is a make-up or add-on JVM for natural Java language. As spring authors mentioned, spring is following Hollywood concept, where a small swimming pool can show like big ocean. But Spring is really good for ‘all in one’ style. Spring is becoming fastest growing framework than EJB, or .Net. The same is now start worrying Java community that SpringSource now mobilizing something towards pay per use model, here is latest spring dm server licensing terms, http://www.springsource.com/products/suite/dmserver/licensingfaq and top executive profile looks little chary that other than Rod (CEO) and Adrian (CTO) are not techies but extensive business experiences and venture capitalists. Any way it is worth to pay some share for this excellent framework if that happens.

But any way more configurations and less coding is always good. I was ebullient with spring’s Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) features. It was really great and helped me to become Spring enthusiast. Imagine we are in the mission of repairing an electrical wire system in a 100 years old skyscraper. The issue is (for sake of understanding), 100th floor is not getting enough voltage due to damaged wiring in lower floors. What we do? We have to use some modularity(cut across from floor 1 to 10 first and then 10-20 so on) to find out where is the more damage which causes power lose and then start repairing it or we want to go floor by floor to find out the issue. AOP is the great for modularity, cut across multiple objects to find out issues or retrieve some debugging message.

AOP is the main feature for spring framework to perform some basic stuff. When a singleton bean depends on a session bean, we have to aop scoped proxy to fetch real object at runtime, because singleton created only one time at container and session object changes per session. It is great example of Hollywood concept. A singleton bean thinks that it holds a real object but it doesn’t know that it is just calling a proxy method and in background it is fetching a real object each time. What a trick- shot?

Spring AOP working with interceptor and AspectJ concepts. Let me jump on to Spring AOP concepts (with simple real time analogy because AOP terminology not very intuitive).

Join points: How we want to join a one modular, our aim here to join 1 to 99 floors, are we want to join 1-10 first then 10-20 or 1-25 and then 25-50 etc. In Spring AOP context a joint point is method execution.
Advice: This is very simple, how we want wire on each floor, we need some advice from building blue print. To be clear on advice here for spring is only interceptor.
Pointcuts: This is nothing but cutting across 1-10 floors thru an execution (outlet) points. Each floor has several outlets, our interest here is electric outlet not phone outlet. So we need to touch across electric outlets.

In spring context a method with particular names, spring provides several “pointcutadvisors” to simplify defining multiple method names and to integrate with advice. (this is little confusing but think like “pointcutadvisor” is some one who paints all electrical outlet with blue color(pointcut), so for us it is simple to wire only blue outlet without each time looking into blue print(advice)).

Once we understand our building wire repair model and AOP terminology, coding is just 3 lines configuration (assumption is we are going to use existing Spring AOP interceptors and point cuts).

Spring has following main AOP interceptors to ready to use. Please check out at http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/1.2.x/api/org/springframework/aop/interceptor/package-summary.html

PerformanceMonitorInterceptor
JamonPerformanceMonitorInterceptor
SimpleTraceInterceptor
ExposeInvocationInterceptor
ConcurrencyThrottleInterceptor
ClassLoaderAnalyzerInterceptor

If we want to use ClassLoaderAnalyzerInterceptor for your application to analyze how class loader impacting some method executions

//define a bean id. This is advisor( a blue print for building )
<bean id="ClassLoaderAnalyzer"
class="org.springframework.aop.interceptor.ClassLoaderAnalyzerInterceptor"/>

//main pointcut definitions. Spring has rich set of pointout
//definions support classes. RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor will
//help us to define out point cuts. (someone we asked to paint
//blue color for all electrical outlet)

<bean id=" ClassLoaderAnalyzerPointcut"
class="org.springframework.aop.support.RegexpMethodPointcutAdvisor">

<property name="advice" ref=" ClassLoaderAnalyzer ">

<property name="patterns">

<list>

<value>com.foo.complexClasses.class1.loadMethod

<value>com.foo.complexClasses.class2.loadMethod2

</list>

</property>

</bean>

Source:
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=50873#270405 (for spring dm server pricing model)
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/aop.html#aop-using-aspectj
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/1.2.x/api/org/springframework/aop/interceptor/package-summary.html
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.0.x/api/org/springframework/aop/support/package-summary.html

Harmony and Peace

On the occasion of the Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, Abdul Fakhri wrote a wonderful blog in Sastwingees about peace and harmony. As usual lot of discussion around the subject, here I’m trying to continue some, how Hindu ideology(RSS and it’s child organizations Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal etc)try to corrupt people’s mind by creating negative perceptions about minorities.

1. Christians and Muslims are organized religions, they have very strict rules about attending Sunday mass and Friday Jum’ah. But Hindu religion is not organized, so we are here to support you as an organized group, we are saviors.

Reality: All religions are some how organized and Hindus are more organized than others, because Hindus do lot of rituals/puja at home, not at temple, due to timings and changing lifestyle. Hindu religion more towards to home and family based, so we don’t need a dedicated time at temple and organized. We have police force and human rights group to protect us. Our Police, Army and Para military force are the saviors for us.

2. Christians and Muslims have more foreign connections and they are not patriots like Hindus.

Reality: Truth is Hindus have more connection with foreign countries than any other religion in India. Even though there is no concrete evidence to prove that, but based on current situation and people’s eagerness to immigrate other countries, it is clear that foreign connection is balanced with all religion. So all Non Resident Indians are unpatriotic but we only need foreign exchange money from them, India can not buy oil unless our Muslims, Christians, and Hindus brothers working hard at desert Gulf countries. What a flummery?

3. Christian’s likes heavy metal rock songs NOT Indian music, and Muslims loves Pakistan Cricketers NOT Indian Cricketers.

Reality: Nowadays Tamil, Hindi songs are more than equal to heavy metal rock songs. If Hindu ideology is real concern with this, they have to first clear their own backyard first. Moreover music is common to all, one can love any song as they like. There are great Christian carnatic singers are there, they are really awesome.

Cricketers, some of Hindus love Adam Gilchrist or Malcolm Marshal so as per Hindu ideology they are unpatriotic? It is skewed logic that all Indians should love Indian cricketers. So whoever not interested in cricket are unpatriotic??

4. Muslims hosting Pakistan flag.

Reality: this was a serious allegation from Hindu ideology, and someone got nervous after seeing some green flag in Muslim neighborhood, if they see carefully it was a green flag but not Pakistan’s. It was some Muslim religion flag. Actually it is illegal to host other nation’s flag in India at common places, without proper paper works. Some hardcore Muslim radical always try to host Pakistan flag at Kashmir and else where, that doesn’t mean that all Muslims are radical and try to host Pakistan’s flag in India. Hindu ideology also not obeying law, they sing ‘Vande Matharam’ instead of lawful national anthem ‘Jana gana mana’.

Some years ago, one of South Tamil Nadu town on verge of communal violence, because Hindu ideology accused Muslim neighborhood celebrating Pakistan’s cricket victory against India by cracking firecrackers. But the truth was they were celebrating some housewarming or some other function, but the timing was wrong. This is what exactly happening in India, because of rumors and ideology’s extreme neurotic disorder created many communal clashes.

5. A Christian favors other Christian and so do Muslims but a Hindu don’t favors other Hindus.

Reality: This is somehow true, but it was all because of Hindu’s religion set up, a Hindu may not favor other Hindu but within same caste they do favors each other. But any way, why we need favoritism from others. A low confidence and low esteem people only need favoritism, a high confidence and high esteem people doesn’t need any favoritism. If someone required favoritism then something wrong with them.

6. Conversion – A hot topic now

Reality: Historically Indian people are not Hindus, Hinduism was monopoly for long time, and hence all Indians become Hindus. Indian people not aware of other religions before Megals and British came into country. As a human and freedom of choice, everybody should know about all religion and we have to select one, which is, better for us, moreover in early olden days for poor Indians, religion is for food and protection. There is nothing wrong to follow other religion which is not by our birth. Temple, Church, Mosque all are same, all has same purpose that to preach harmony and peace.

7. If Christian suffers, powerful west countries are there to support, if Muslim suffers, rich Gulf countries are there to support, for Hindus we are the only one.

Reality: From 1992 Mumbai communal violence to still now Orissa, Karnataka violence there was no war plane/or force came from west or gulf to support Indian minorities. There were some voice from here and there, none of the countries has right to intervene Indian internal matters, as long as Indian government controls violence within threshold time and there is no major human right violations.

8. In India, all bomb blasts are happening because of Muslims.

Reality: Terrorism is the main reason for bomb blast. Most of the bomb blasts happened in India was because of Muslim radical group Indian Mujahedeen, which has ties with al-Qaeda. This is not isolated to India, now it is global issue, and we are fighting against terrorism and hopefully we can eliminate terrorism from this world.

There are many more perceptions, disconcert are the reason for unnecessary clashes between religions in India, overall India and Indians are very peaceful in nature. Most of violence’s are out of panic and there was no real threat to any body. Our law well protected every Indian citizen and treated everybody equally. It is okay to disagree with each other but it is not okay to kill each other, in the name of religion. All we need now is ideology exorcism from some of quixotic Indians. It is time to ban Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Christian Maoists and Indian Mujahedeen etc.

Bail out Cubs and Sox, time is running out

Bail out bill was successful at this time, 57 lawmakers changed their position within 3 days. It was great example of democracy where majority always win, if not first time, second time it will. Another miracle happened with in 3 days is, Wachovia is now hot bank, 2 of them fighting for it, just 3 days ago it was other sinking bank. Just 3 days, Wachovia value increased as much as 750%, and expansion minded Wells Fargo successfully crossed Mississippi river to conquer east coast(other than some small acquisitions). Actually Wells Fargo has 25% spring effect (infrastructure, technology) to absorb any sudden growth. So they made a bold acquisition bid to Wachovia, and they refused to take bail out money also. This is real Wild Wild West. Citi just started discussing about how to integrate Wachovia with them and confused with back and forth bail out bill, in mean time Wellsfargo announced it's actions to integrate with Wachovia and debt reduction plans. So the market is still alive and we(investors) are just overreacting.

I didn’t know that stock market also blow hot and cold for some time consistently. One day it was down 700 points very next day it was up 400 points. Everything was out of sync and not fit in normal pattern. All the events makes me think that both Main and Wall Street was full of overreaction and hysteria break down. It was sad to say that, this all are indicating that USA’s dominance of world finance market also moribund. Because so far USA market was soo resilient and self-adjusting to lead all other markets, now it also lost its cool with emotions, panic and spontaneous reactions. Something got to be done to bring back it’s glory. And American people also lost their confidence with Wall Street.

Cubs and Sox are really playing bad at play offs. Someone have to bail out them, please.

Source :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122303190029501925.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122304922742602533.html

NFL 4th Week Surprises and Unexpected market crash

Week 4 was interesting and Bears won at close contest against Eagles. Orton was good at first half and argus-eyed Bear’s defense played extremely good to stop Eagles for touchdown at 4^th quarter. I really liked McNabb’s throw to Jackson for first Eagles touch down, it was classic throw from McNabb. It was the ball descended smoothly towards Jackson’s hand, in between two Bears, very good to watch. It would have been a different outcome if Westbrook played. But anyways it was a great come back for Bears after a heartbroken lost against Bucs.

Favre thrown 6 touch down passes and it was his career high, hard to believe that this dude didn’t thrown 6 touch down passed still yesterday, having said that he played for 17 years. But that makes sense also, because Packers always loves running game. This is what Jerricho Cotchery told to reporters after the game.

“I asked him if he had tied a career high and he said, ‘I’ve never thrown six,’ said Jerricho Cotchery, who had two TD catches. That was like the end of the conversation because I’m scratching my head, like, ‘Really? He’s never thrown six touchdown passes before?’ He played great today.”

Jets scored 56 against Cardinals, and Cardinals also scored 35, the game was full of touch downs and passing games. Total touchdowns 13 and I had both Coles and Fitzgerald in my starting fantasy football lineup, score was really a firecracker.

Bills started this season with 4-0 for first time in 16 years. Same with Cardinals, but they are now 2-2. 49ers also started very good at this time. Raider’s coach’s fate is changing day by day, as per latest news Al Davis started discussing about replacement. Rams fired their head coach because of bad season start. Packers QB Rodgers was injured but okay for next week. New England Patriots now opens to accept defeats, so this is the chance to beat Patriots badly like Dolphins did it 2 weeks ago.

As usual Cowboy’s T.O breaks after first loss, and become crazy like he did it with McNabb and Garcia. He started complaining about his QB Tony Romo. He badly needs the ball all the time, but Romo throwing balls to others, in his words competitors. Cowboys were obsessed with last year Patriot’s 16-0 record so they lost their cool after yesterday’s losing against Redskins.

Market crashed very badly, after unexpected failure of bail out plan at US Congress. Now it is really a big challenge for US economy to rebound which it would obviously but timing is really question mark. My opinion is this would be prolong, painful recession. This is good time for investment also, but it is equal to catching a falling knife, be careful and catch it correctly or it will hurt your fingers badly (Thanks to my friend in California who quoted me this pearl of wisdom when we experienced 2000-2001 recession). Lawmakers afraid that this unpopular bail out plan might hurt their re-election, thats why they voted against it.

Source:

http://sports.yahoo.com

http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/nfl/index

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/news/economy/bailout/index.htm?cnn=yes

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95180529

Confession from Stutter

Yes, I want to write about it a long time ago. I’m a light stutter (in British English, Stammer), lot of times I think it is good to be a stutter, because we don’t speak a lot and we do lot of thinking and work. Each stutter is different and unique. For me, I had great days, most of the times I’m able to talk without any interruption or block. But sometimes I would totally black-out or small blocks, mainly under stress. Based on my decade long research, here are the events or situation that makes my stutter worse, this might be helpful for those who stutter like me.

1.     Change in routine: If something got changed, that triggers some stress. For example, today I went to one place, normally in lobby they take my id and let me in, but today the front desk lady called the place where I want to go and asked about me, yes bingo!, that created some stress and made my stutter worse.With that delay, my stutter came rushing and it solid one minute for me tell for what reason i came. Tip: Forget unwanted things from memory, the issue here is still i remembered how they allowed me in last time, which is almost 4 months ago.

2.     Outright lie: If someone talking with me and making constant eye contact but tells a lie. For example, I met one of my ex-colleague in street, I asked him “how you are?” and I asked about some others and he replied back “are you not with us?” without a smile, as if he doesn't know that i left the company about 4 months ago.For me it is an outright lie, yes again that made stutter worse, the questions he asked after that I couldn’t talk. This is really a troublesome part because I feel that we have to face this issue all the time. Because people want to tell some lies because they want to avoid something or they forgot or they are under stress or we read them wrong. I think we are too much into reading them, that is, creating some issues. If we know how to cope with this? We can avoid 90% stuttering. Tip: Don’t read others and socialize more is remedy for this.

3.     Long distance calls: If some one speaks faster than us, normally this happens only with international calls. Especially India calls if other side person doesn’t know how to handle the delay and speaks faster than us, some little stuttering comes up. Tip: if someone speaks faster than you in phone, just wait for them to finish and politely tell them about delay for them to adjust. Still they are not adjusting, who cares just speak with stutter.

4.     Alcohol: For me this is worse and unbearable, but a common stereotype is most of light to medium stutter can overcome stuttering if they use a single shot but for me if I drink alcohol, my stutter would be worse for almost 24 hours, even a single 8 oz beer. Tip: Avoid too much boozing, avoid alcohol if we have next day meeting or important conference etc.

5.     Smoking: Smoking cigarettes is very good for stuttering, that is because we try to be relaxed at the time of smoking and nicotine really helps. Tip: This is like artificially looking good, don’t smoke and don’t hurt health. Communicating with stutter is not bad as smoking and then getting lung cancer.

6.     Group Discussion: For me, talking with strangers in meeting or group not at all an issue, stand up meetings not at all an issue. If we are group situation with known person is an issue with out multi media support, or until I’m clear with agenda of meeting and a favorable body languages. I’m still working on it, it may take long of time to give a tip.

7.     Bullying: In School it was an issue, adulthood we have so many option to avoid bullying. So this is not an issue.

But there are several ways to overcome stuttering including exercise, low caffeine and it is not that bad. But inferiority complex because of this issue is worst, be confident and be candid.   

Are you ready to share?

This is what president Bush asked people today at his prime time speech. I read some where,  that capitalist don’t want to share anything with others but they want to share evenly their debt and stress with others. That’s exactly happening now in this nation. 2 top administration executives were grilled by lawmakers. Paulson and Bernanke are pressing important bail out plan to pass in Congress. Actually I think lawmakers using this time to impose more strict laws. Paulson keep on sending message to lawmakers about economy imbroglio now. But lawmakers keep on adding supererogatory regulations.

CEO pay is point of discussion now. I think CEO pay is internal to a company. Government’s intervention of top executive’s pay is not good for business, which is not even done in communist China or other socialist countries. But this time the CEO salary cap applied to bail out companies, not all.

Source:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/24/news/economy/paulson_frank/index.htm?cnn=yes

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/treasurys-rise-rescue-package-faces/story.aspx?guid={98FA256F-4B8D-4130-AB7C-A8429459CDE9}

Zig Zag Pattern

Last 5-6 days stock market pattern is zig zag, extreme roller coaster ride. This is good for day traders and retail traders. Security exchange commission banned short sell on finance stocks, which should be done soon after Lehman's constructive destruction as TSC's John Berlau put it. But this action from SEC was too late, and that itself pushing stock price down further. Today oil price spiked $25, and it was a record for oil trade. It clearly indicates that all investors are nervous and don't know how to react with this uncertainty time. Who ever sold stock on last Monday because of short seller's induce, realized about their stupidity on last Friday because market leveled on Friday. The same would repeat now this week.

Today's reaction because of Congress leader's 44 page response to Paulson's 3 page $700 Billion bail out plan. Nobody knows it is just a politics or congress want to protect tax payers. Any way congress has this week end to pass some bail out plan. For investors, 2-3 day think time is not acceptable, they want to always react negatively now, or they want to pass a bail out plan within 2 hours.

So many predictions are out there about A) when can market turn green, B) when can we see end of tunnel C) will this mild recession so far turn into great depression etc. But this point of time it is anybody's guess. I think rather than predicting something unproductive like what government does with toxic mortgage after 3 years or 1930 great depression coming etc, just allow some time to congress and senate pass bail out plan, and lets see how economy is self adjusting. I believe all hands on the deck, around the world some positive activities going on to clear this mess sooner than later.

What to do when a wild crazy living next....

I attended one home buying workshop and one thing they mentioned is, buy a house at good neighborhood. Location, Location, Location is main. Especially next door neighbor, I have no clue how to find it and what if a good neighbor moves and wild crazy comes. I think the next door neighbor can be easily ignored and that is not at all an issue.

I had lot of bad experiences with crazy next doors. One time, I bought a lightened entrance tree to place in front of my rented town home, my next door who is irascible, knock our door and asked why did you buy this, because of us they have to buy the same. Oops…what can I do? Is it my mistake to decorate my own home? Or they don’t have money to buy it or too much envious. I don’t give damn about it, what can we do if they are impecunious.

Same happened 3 months ago, one of my friend’s friend’s friend (yea, that’s very funny to find how he got my phone number), called me and asked me that he want to rent an apartment in my apartment complex, he want to know how it was and asked millions of questions, I can sense apprehension from his sound. Ohh...gosh to rent a simple apartment why this guy was so tense? May be he is new to this area, no experience. I don’t know... but I helped him a lot and guess what, now he is living in the same apartment. Now he is very angry with me because I’m buying house as my current lease expiring with apartment.

But we can manage any neighbor but not multi marketing affiliate neighbors. I had that experience also, it was horrible. He would listen only their songs, speech, movies and day in day out, he was on the phone. Fully addicted and he won’t even speak with his wife and kids. He wants to talk with me only about money.... I want to avoid this at all cost. One day I was very close to dial 911 because of his torture.

My point is we no need to spend much time on finding who is our neighbor and how is the location and how is market and what is what what what etc….Just go and feel the place and find the school district and then go, don’t cruise too much about neighbors, you can always sell our current property and buy a new one at any time. It is not a fixed as we are not buying it for full down payment.

2 chewing gum, 2 happy

(I should post this yesterday but due to NFL game i was not able to finish it, because my voice has been heard and now people stop selling stocks at low price)

Last 2-3 days people were extremely trepidation. Like any other average joe, I’m also loosing money from my 401K, ETF portfolio and Unit linked insurance etc. Oops…that really hurts. Guys and Gals it is not end of world, don’t press the panic button. Just have 2 chewing gum, I highly recommend Trident and chew until get tired. Just kidding…trying to be sang-froid.

I agree that bankruptcy by any company is very bad but that’s not end of everything. I think short sellers utilizing this situation to make more profit. One analyst said that this is not a usual bankruptcy like airlines, this is end of capitalist. I believe he just tries to cover up his short sell.

What happens to this market is an open secret. As usual, Fed Reserve started this mess, they started tighten interest rate to cool off inflation after 4 years. Due to series of interest rate hikes, home mortgage rate went up that obviously soften housing market and things start negatively impacted to housing market. Early days only government based banks, after strict review of loan requirements, was able to provide mortgage. So low income and bad credit history people can not get any loan but now due to market reform, any bank can give mortgage, which fuels heavy competition and various loan schemes such as adjustable rate, interest only, are created.

This high risk loans were bundled up to create mortgage based bonds and sold thru market which usually gives high yield than traditional bonds. After 5 years, this subprime and ARM interest rates went up that obviously the reason for defaults and foreclosures.

Now government’s backed off from Lehman’s bail out is showed that there are several more mess out there. Until Friday evening, nobody knows that Merrill also in trouble and AIG. There is some more negative news we have to deal with, I guess.

Even though we are very negative side of this mess, here are some positive points

1. There are millions of millions of people around the world able to find their sweet home because of this sub prime. Even though some of them filling foreclose, most of them able to keep their home, and working hard to keep up the interest rate.

2. This was the real test of market, banks and brokerage firms withstand this fall are great place to invest and get prosperous.

3. This is really a chance for us to revisit our beliefs that too much competition is good for consumers. But here both consumers and company affected a lot.

4. Inflation now becomes history and oil price coming down very faster than expected.

5. People like McCain will not buy more than 1 or 2 house, which would save some trees, it make some green concerned people happy.

As a note, it is very emotional that a company’s headquarters destroyed in Sep 11, 2001 attack but survived but not able to make it till the end.

Source :
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1812
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/15/business/NA-US-Lehman-Brothers-Profile.php
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/16/news/companies/barclays_lehman.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008091617

Taking off again

Freddie and Fannie rescued action by government was considered as end of “tenebrous” period. The final lingering issue of Lehman also will be resolve and then we are fine. So are we learned any lesson from this episode? Are we ready for next boom cycle? This time it won’t be technology, real estate, banking, energy and transportation. What else we have now to boom? We tried all and there is nothing left for us to try and boom. But don’t be pessimist; there are still lots to do in this mysteries world.

Next big thing could be from agriculture to health care revolution. We have to feed our growing number of population and to invent more life saving medicines. Next growth, (i believe) will be for a good cause like all others, such as end poverty, reduce killer diseases etc. There are many drugs patent expire on 2010 onwards that helps other countries to produce and use the medicine, fuels some growth.

Technology side there won’t be any uplift, because technology revolution is now subsiding and what we have now is superfluous. Apple did a good thing on last event ("lets rock") that they didn’t introduce any new products, rather focused on new features and stable updates for iPod, iPhone etc. SaaS and cloud computing, Web 2.0 will continue to flourish in coming years.

From 2001 episode we learned how to not greedy about stocks, buy and sell more regularly, and 2006-2008 episode we learned how to not greedy about real estate. In future, if there is a burst that is all because of our greediness, just an admonition.

09-11-2001

An unforgettable date. 2,974 innocent souls died on this date at New York City. It is not an attack against U.S.A but against whole humanity, civilians more than 90 countries died on this attack by bunch of coward guys. I bought God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything book 5 days ago, but have not read it yet since I’m still reading on My father’s dream by Obama.

Is it all because of religion and god? Is that fundamentally wrong here? I don’t think so. The issue we are facing now is power struggle, human want to control other human to show off his/her strength or fame. Even though we are saying that we are human with sixth sense, some of them are still at Stone Age, in other words animals.

We will never forget this date and event.

Republican National Convention and NFL Season

Republican national convention had soggy start because of Hurricane Gustav. I felt until Sarah Palin’s electrify speech, this convention was soporific. Sarah Palin made an excellent speech and she is definitely a great leader. Her speech was packed with mordant, and yesterday McCain’s speech was comprehensive. But I don’t agree with Sarah Palin’s pitch as community organizer. She was selected for mayor post so community service is a job for her, where Obama choose to volunteer community organizer at Chicago South side. But experience wise both are count. I think now experience is out of scope.

Here best speaker award goes to Sarah Palin’s speech. It was great. The speech was specifically written to Sarah Palin, who is natural deipnosophist. But I think McCain campaign just experiment with this whole new pattern. Instead of centralizing theme, they changed the theme 180 degree within a day. McCain was talking like an independent and Sarah was talking like a pure Republican, in the middle we got confused. I don’t know whether the experiment failed or succeed. Any way, we had good conventions and this whole president selecting process was getting more interesting.

Based on my observation, Democratic party projecting themselves as representative of liberal, middle and poor people. Republican projecting as conservative, business and rich people. It is always good to have less government, less tax and more global economy. Democratic wants to provide more support to bottom level people, government sponsored health care, more tax, protective and less global economy. At same time, Republicans are against to gun control, pollution control and immigration reforms. Those are also really important to tackle now. But personally McCain did good things for immigration and pollution control. So it is really tough for American voters to select their next president at this election.

Yesterday was kick-off night for NFL season. The game was okay but not that exciting. Looking forward to watch weekend games. Have a great weekend.

Google Chrome - First Impression

Excellent as usual a great product from Google. The most appealing features are

1. Home page dashboard.  The most visited sites and bookmarks are placed on home page as portlet. Good idea and very intuitive.

2. Each tab is a new process. As a software engineer, we need to look into details of this feature, how we are going to maintain state between different windows. Now it is something not well defined in document.

3. Speed, because of each tab is a process, different memory space, the speed is amazing. An unscientific test result, IE 7 took 22 Sec to load Cnn.com and Chrome took 14 sec to load. 

4. Security, as per documentation Chrome is very secured and automatically find phishing, key monitoring etc. 

5. Simple, clean and easy to use. It took me 30 secs to download installation file, 20 secs to install, 20 sec to import already existing bookmarks from IE, 2 mins to see new feature, thats it.

6. Chrome specific task manager is something everybody going to talk about it.