Technical never wrong but not always…

DOW surprised most of technical indicators, because of double dipping within 3 months span. The last November’s low (~7500 and S & P ~750) was considered as low of this bear market but now again DOW down for second time. Historical perspective now this recession/depression is compared with 1873 great-great depression. But history for just reference point we can’t take it as is. As everybody knows we are going through an unprecedented tough time of our life time.

Investor’s usually ignore main street’s money spending, stimulus plans, mortgage relief’s, they are very curious about how this government going to fix credit market. So far no body from new Mr. Obama’s administration detailed out some robust plan to fix credit markets other than some stress test.  May be they are still brainstorming how to’s and other matters. But investor’s point of view they want to hear a solid plan from new administration. One message from lawmakers is, if stress test failed on a bank, then the bank would be a candidate of nationalization, which creates panic among major bank’s stock holders.

DOW’s 7300-7500 is the low for this bear market. Why we are very confident about it? Still investors has money and money waiting in sidelines to come into wall street, the high run of Gold price is great example of investor’s confidence about investing. But obviously they are looking for a super duper safe investing. The saving rate increase, gold price increase are the signs of early recovery period as per top economists. But now DOW index is down further to 7365 and may go down up to 7200. But the point to remember is Bank of America, Citibank and JPMC are the component of DOW and they are now new eye of this hurricane. So we don’t need to look into DOW index for time being.

So this is good time to investing into stocks. The answer is yes, if we are looking for a long term investment option then it is a golden time but for short term it is not a good market, still there are lot of “grey area” especially credit market. The initial indications from new administration is not so encouraging because they are also still don’t know how to fix it, until everybody clear with how to fix the credit market, we can see unstable market here in U.S and all over world, hence investors keep on invest in gold, bonds and some safe havens.

Source:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agapqPsrRIEY&refer=home

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/20/economy.history/index.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123487180665799141.html

Recession: Why this severe?

As per basic of investments, if person A lost x amount of money, person B gained the same x amount. The money stays in economy, and person B might reinvest the money for some other purpose, this is called money rotation (my own lay-man term). What happened now is, people lost money on real estate and no body else gained it, the money just evaporated. Lending institute is the one dodging the bullet by writing down bad loans. One question may arise why lending institute is selling at low price now, and can they wait some more time to sell it higher price? But holding a foreclosed asset is high expense than selling it 20-25% price down.

A rough estimation is, an average lending institute holds 90% of home loan value on foreclosed houses. 1 million houses were already foreclosed and almost 6 million will be foreclose with in next year. On each house for sake of argument say lending institute losing $100k, so that equal to 7,000,000 X 100,000 = 700,000,000,000/-, which itself is $700 Billion. So far government gave about $165 Billion as bail out money, which may not enough to cover even legal fees which lending institute accrued over foreclosed houses. So we can’t expect them to loan more to public right now.

The so called money rotation is just frozen to small industries, car loans, student loans and all kinds of loan, so now we are going through a non money flow time as a result catastrophically job loss and severe recession. This is exactly happen in Japan from 1990 to 1999, they had unrecoverable prolong recession for almost a decade and economy again rebounded after digital, plasma TV inventions. But U.S.A is not a Japan, they are the largest consumers and producers in world, U.S.A’s GDP is 13 Trillion and world can’t afford to prolong recession in U.S.A. 

We have to make smart decisions now, yesterday’s Microsoft’s decision to open a retail shops across America is smart one like wise we need to some top tier companies have to spend some money for wise investments. McDonald already planned to open more stores are the best examples of smart decisions at this recession time. This is good time of making long term investments, many millionaires came out of this kind of market. This with government tax cut, spending make economy flourishes again by this year end.

I end my recession series here…

Happy Valentine’s Day…

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreclosure

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/13/microsoft-retail-stores-t_n_166651.html

What went wrong?

There are so many blame game swirls around here about who is responsible for this recession? Each recession is unique and we can’t blame some particular industry or group of people or a single entity for failure. This recession is really a combination of many things, it is very hard to pin point why and what went wrong? But we can concentrate on who lost most from this recession.

• Developed nation’s unemployment rate should not go above 5%, but now U.S.A unemployment rate is 7.6% and some places unemployment rate is above 10%, which is unacceptable.
• As usual, undocumented workers and some legal immigrates are more affected in terms of jobs and they were returned or forced to return to their home country, which is unrecoverable. As per Chicago Tribune report, there are some 367K undocumented workers forced to return and volunteer return may be close to 1 million.
• As of legal immigrates, most of them are degree holders returned to their home country and joined various local companies. For example, IBM laid off some 4,000 people and offered them a job in Argentina, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Turkey, and United Arab Emirates. Good for those emerging markets, they need more talent people, and recession is good time for them to get good resource. It is same as last recession.

Most of media blaming people’s greedy for this mess. But I don’t agree with them because we are at capitalist era and making more and more money without breaking any law and buying more stuffs are basic for capitalist. There is no limit for the money and commericalism, all of us at least want to buy or explore the following

• Decent home at prime location.
• Send kids to good school and any Ivy League college.
• Benz/BMW cars.
• Hawaii trip .
• High end 150 inch plasma TV.
• Home theater.
• $5000 super bowl game.
• Gold and diamond watch, jewelry.
• Fun trip to Las Vegas/Disney world.
• Europe/Asia/world tour.
• Cruise from Florida to Norway.
• Last but not the least donation to charity.

We are progressively developing and there is no end of is, again this is fundamental of capitalism. The whole economy is moving because of this spending and our eagerness/greediness to explore, experience new technology and world.

But how soon we want to do all is matters. For example, if we want to buy a 150 inch plasma TV for $10,000, A) spend 5-6 months to save at least $5,000 and get credit for remaining $5,000 B) buy it as soon as possible get all by credit. The first (A) way is wise one, we are utilizing our future money at same time spending some from our own saving. We have to decide when we want to go world tour, at the age of 25 or 45. If we go at 45 we can spend some money from our saving and get some credit if necessary.

It is all depends on our decision making. I think lack of clear decision making is the main reason for this recession, starting from individuals to financial industry to Wall Street to Main Street.

Source:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-deportees-09-feb09,0,5333975.story

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/05/news/companies/ibm_jobs/

U.S Stimulus Package

Finally a balanced version of stimulus package going to approved by lawmakers from both the houses. The final version is very balance, 35% in forms of tax cut and remaining 65% towards spending, mainly construction. My first wish list, redo all Chicago area roads, too many pot holes, too large also. The hope is as soon as this Stimulus becomes law, Caterpillar Inc would rescind most of 22,000 layoff which announced recently. This will be applying to all over country, some companies want to rehire some layoff people as soon as this becomes law, most of the spending towards rebuilding and most of 3.6 Million layoffs were from construction, manufacturing industry. They can easily find a job from this spending. First time home buyers are getting almost 15% tax credit, definitely it is going to help real estate also. Here is a chart of job losses from this recession, just compare with previous one, it is mother of all recession so far, and 3-4 months ago it looked like another 2001 recession, but still they are close. This is why we need a stimulus as soon as possible.

 Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/06/job-loss-chart-what-36-mi_n_164828.html

One of my personal wish list also included in this stimulus, that is, digitalize all medical records to reduce paper work. When i started my career in U.S at Silicon Valley the start up Neoforma had an ambitious goal to support healthcare industry to reduce paperwork. So we know how much paper work involved in health care industry. We successfully helped healthcare industry from fax based ordering system to online that was a revolution at that time. I’m glad that i found an excellent article from 2001 archive CNN Money regarding this matter.

The stimulus package is huge and massive in size, i wonder how come Mr. Obama’s team gets assembled this much detailed package very soon and introduced in both the chambers. The green initiatives are great and it increases awareness of saving energy all over country and even world. But we need an innovation based projects also, which are lacking here, anyway innovation always come from private sector not necessary from government.

Here are highlights of this massive Stimulus package, please note it is not from final version.

• $32 billion Funding for "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste
  
• $20 billion  Renewable energy tax cuts and a tax credit for research and development on energy-related work, and a multiyear extension of renewable energy production tax credit

Smart electricity grid is much needed infrastructure change now. Energy related work is definitely helps to lower oil consumptions. 

• $6 billion High-speed Internet access for rural and underserved areas.
  

Good for Web 2.0 startups.

• $32 billion Transportation projects
  
• $31 billion  Construction and repair of federal buildings and other public infrastructure
  
• $19 billion Water projects
  
• $10 billion Rail and mass transit projects
  

 I think we need more rail and mass transit projects. 

Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_go_co/congress_stimulus

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2001/11/19/316359/index.htm

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123202946622485595.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/06/job-loss-chart-what-36-mi_n_164828.html

Recession/0.5 Depression 2008-09: Explained in my words

In software engineering, we have “trail and error” to fix an issue, we don’t know the solution for a problem but merely provide a code change and hoping that would fix the issue. If not, then try again. We are in same mode for current recession also. Mr. Obama’s stimulus package definitely going to help economy to flourish but how long. It was very unfortunate that world leaders not coming together to fix the fundamental financial architecture break down.

We have to first understand what caused this issue.

1. Joe planning to buy a house in San Jose, CA.
2. He walks into a bank for a loan at value of $800,000/.
3. Bank determines that Joe has some issue with credit history hence he will not eligible for prime rate.
4. Even though Bank gives mortgage loan to Joe at sub prime rate @ 3.5 Adjustable Rate Mortgage.
5. Bank then sells this mortgage to big investment firms like Lehman Bros, Bear Sterns etc.
6. This investment firms bundle up all this loans and sells all over world. This is called Mortgage backed securities (MBS). 
7. Among investors, MBS are safe heaven bet, since it backed by a real asset and historically house price never went down other than great depression period.
8. So technically Joe bought his home with John’s investment from Russia, and Gupta bought a home at Delhi with George’s investment from Chicago.
9. When one buy a MBS he/she thinks that he is investing to a real estate, low risk, high return on investment etc. No body never ever thought that we are moving towards 1930 great depression days.
10. At same time investment firms bought insurance for this high risk mortgages.

Now who is accountable for mortgage that Joe got it from Bank, the mortgage was sold and it is not under Bank’s radar and investment firm’s radar, some one across the border holding it. The actors are loosely coupled here and Joe is single point of failure. The well proven business flow was just reused for sub prime market without any research and analysis.

These MBS was backed by credit default swaps (CDS) which is insurance like contracts to cover bonds in case of defaults. Usually CDS covers only very low risk bonds such as municipal bonds, government bonds etc, but again due to the confidence about real estate, CDS started covering MBS also. Unfortunately CDS is not regulated, hence it can be traded in secondary market, it is like today XYZ hedge fund holding contract and tomorrow it can be ABC hedge fund. The price for CDS determine based on investor’s confidence about outcomes. 

So now the stage set for Banks and investment firms, what all bank need to do is give mortgage loan to Joes, Johns and sell it to investment firms and investment firms buy a insurance from AIG and convert mortgage into MBS and sell it to open world market. MBS was now held by some one in earth, AIG now convert these insurance into CDS and was held by some hedge fund, nothing was regulated because CDS mainly traded at various places like London, Berlin and New York, we don’t have a global policy to control it.

This is how we do real estate business for 15-20 years it was greatly worked and smoothly integrated. What went wrong now is mainly, easy money flow and uncontrollable global economy. What we need is greater global co-ordination and greater technology to forecast risk and mitigate it.

Source:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186801/

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/09/17/aigs-failure-is-so-much-bigger-than-enron.aspx

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1723152,00.html

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lcdx.asp

http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/SP_CreditDefaultSwap_FAQ.pdf

Social Web 2.0 and privacy, data issues

Whether we like it or not, next big wave of technology space is Web 2.0 (for 2.0 addicts, it is time to explore Web 3.0) and cloud computing. For small start up firms cloud computing is huge cost saving and more importantly time saving. There are two level of security issue arise from Web 2.0 A) Privacy Issue : Use of web 2.0 social sites like blogging, micro blogging, Face Books etc B) Data issue : Data transfer between this sites and cloud providers. First we will look into details of use of social media and its privacy issues.                  

First time when e-Commerence becomes reality, the same security/privacy become an issue, but now it is a non issue, in fact buying from Amazon is very safe than giving a credit card to a real person for check out. Now social media, we are facing a new level privacy issue, which is not necessary an identity theft, but our own footprint may be revealing us.  Our life should be an open book, before some one wants to make connect or hire us they have all rights to know about our interests, dislikes, strength, and weakness. Now this point of time, no one willing to hire any body if she/he doesn’t has a decent online history, at-least a Linkedin profile. Social Medias are saving a huge money and time for employers, potential business partners and even life partners.

Social Medias are great to demonstrate our own strengths, at same time we expose our weakness also, which is balanced, nobody has time now to listen or read our 1 hour lecture or 10 pages resume, more over those can not be validated. The point is rather than fearing or the name of protecting our privacy, not utilizing Social Medias is a big time mistake. What to write, what to avoid is each one’s self judgment, definitely we are not going to write our social security number, mother’s maiden name, home address, salary etc.  But it is true that what ever we write may be taken as in wrong context but it is unavoidable because most of the times what ever we say also misunderstood, it is all depends on who is reading/listening and their IQ level.

For example, if i write “my wife is lazy when i ask something in favor when i watch football” The context is funny, passive-aggressive, the core is most of the wives doesn’t like husband watching all the time some sports, what if some one interrupt that wife = woman so women are lazy, my writing is against women and i’m male chauvinist. We can ignore those claims, we didn’t violate any law or morale here.

The real danger is kids and teen’s exposure to online but believe me we can’t stop these net generations from touching computer, all we have to do is provide some mechanism to prevent our kid’s information ends with wrong persons. My advice is we have to constantly watch our kids Face book, My Space profiles and how they are interacting with others, may be we can be in their friend list so that we can see all updates and their friend list. Now Social Media has matured, they constantly removing some convict and offenders profiles and more scrutiny towards each profile.

Super Bowl XLIII

A depressed country and state of economy is in deep recession, what we need now to a cheer-up, a gathering, a party, possibly a common event, the answer is tomorrow’s Super bowl XLIII (43) at Tampa. One team (Arizona Cardinals) playing for super bowl never won a super bowl and other one (Pittsburg Steelers) has rich super bowl history, they won 6 super bowls already. I personally want Cardinals to win the super bowl, which may bring some positive feeling, uplift to much needed country. But technically i think Steelers has edge over Cardinals, because of too much pressure of Cards to win this game and Steelers physical game,running game and defense are much better than Cards. The Cards defense has to find some ways to stop Big Ben and Steeler’s running game. Some good news for Cards is Big Ben and Ward both are suffering from minor injuries but don’t know how much that going to affect their games.

Cards has legendary Kurt Warner as QB and dynamic wide receivers Boldin and Fitzgerald but Boldin also got injury and he has some contract issue going on with Cards management. But this Card’s season was always filled with the 3 starts Kurt-Boldin-Flitz’s magic and Kurt Warner is at the top of his career. Definitely this 3 stars game going to be a talk for next week’s analysis within sports fans and gurus. With some help from Cards defense and some sloppiness from Steeler’s defense would make Cards Super Bowl champion.

This year’s super bowl preparation is full swing as usual, as i said this is what we need now to cheer up.  My predication is Cards winning at 21-17. I reject EA’s John Madden’s stimulation results completely. Enjoy the game!!!

Sources:

http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/simulation/nfl?id=3861669

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XLIII

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Steelers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cardinals

 

2009 – Another sour year?

So many predictions and so many negative out there, I recommend everybody should buy and read “Though time never last but tough people do” book by Robert H. Schuller.  What will happen during this 2009 year is unknown to all, but the prediction from top economists and business people are not good so far. Even Microsoft started lay off means a lot to our current state of economy.  A simple metaphor is Warren Buffet lost some money on bad investment, in order to make up, usually he would be asking some loan money from Bill Gates at some simple interest to reinvest, but now situation is Gates also run out of cash. The current situation is all the money vanished from every where, global investors, where it went is still a mystery?  

During the housing boom, investors were very positive about mortgage backed securities and they “recklessly” bought it and now all went underwater. The realism is we are heading to thoughtful investment cycle, in other words reckless, vacuous investors are out of scope now. They may not come to market for next 3-5 years. This is good for other investors, if we buy a house/stocks now, it reflects a real time price, and companies would extra careful to invest with projects. What ever we do now is very carefully planned and did some research. 

Most of us start worried/feared about job market, we should be because if one is not feared at this situation means they are dumb ("dumb enough to fearless" thanks to Outliers by Gladwell). But a job there for us, which perhaps not in our desire locations, may be we have to briefly separate from our family. Nowadays a temporary separation is not painful as before, thanks to Web 2.0 and video chat technology, 3G networks, frequent flyer program helps us to stay in touch with family regularly. I think 2009 is a year of recovery because of government’s intervention, but government process is a painful and slow, democratic process, but we will be up again as long as Mother Nature not turns us down. 

Slumdog Millionaire

Again and again India is not a poor country, a country which is home of millions of poor people, slowly and steadily they are becoming middle class status as we are giving free basic education and uplift their social status by providing mammoth affirmation actions. Whenever west media come to India first they want to take a photograph of cow in the middle of road, snake charmers, an elephant and slums in Mumbai or Calcutta. Now Danny Boyle joined in parade to make fame and money by glamorizing Indian slums. Why can not he take a movie about British homeless people or drug issue or about terrorism or corruption?

Almost all states in India have similar rule, that is, slum abolishment law, they built huge apartment complex for slum dwellers, some of them went to those new places and some choose to live in slum for various reasons. India is a democratic country and we can’t force them out also. Here I want to quote our former finance minister P.Chidambaram “A project as big as China’s Three Gorges Dam (which will displace millions) would take me the rest of my life in India”.

For example, Asia’s largest slum “Dharavi” in Mumbai, there slum dwellers are rich guys, their business turn over per year is $650 million, almost all own an apartment at suburban of Mumbai, and they choose to live here at slums because of proximity to main city places and joy to be in city’s center place and extra income from rented apartment. Keep in mind, each slum dwellers has tremendous support from government, local organizations, massive affirmation actions but they want to live in slums.

India is a vast and majestic country, one should be very carful about showing India’s image to outside world. We are spending money, resource and time to abolish poverty from India, by even providing controversial affirmation actions. If these movie makers exaggerate Indian poverty, people start questioning about those and create chaos within community, even it may derail our progressive development to abolish poverty. Movie maker’s can help us by providing some suggestions to eliminate poverty, not to make money out of poverty. IT IS NOT FUN. We are 1 billion in population and slowly, steadily will win the race. Can anyone point any country in this world 100% rich and no homeless and no below poverty people?

Reference :

http://www.sra.gov.in/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000965/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/06/dharavi_slum/html/dharavi_slum_intro.stm

A country of 1 Billion Doctors

Everyone has one or more native knowledge, this native knowledge is formed based on place/country we live. For example, Americans has native knowledge about cars. Canadians has native knowledge about ice hockey and so on. Like wise we Indians has native knowledge of medicines, this could be because before Brits came to our country, we were mostly self medicated or mom & pop traditional medicines.  Any ways in the field of medicine, we all have suggestions/advice to everybody for anything, anytime. For example, if some one says “i’m having headache” to 10 people, he/she will get 10 different opinions with 10 different solutions. Better not to talk about one’s own issues publically in India. Since we are all have some native knowledge about medicine with combination of emotional and sentimental, we all want to go see a patient who is either ICU or recovery room to express our opinions. This has to be stopped and crowed ICU and rooms are not good for patients and their loved ones. Here are the stories about my observation at Indian hospitals. 

Terror in ICU: A relative or friend in ICU means they are half dead in India. Most of the ICU cases are two wheeler’s (motor cycle, scooter etc) accidents, young guys, who are not wearing helmet hence heavy skull injury. It was sad to be in ICU at this young age and most of them make it and our doctors are really great on that. But the tension outside ICU is unimaginable and has to be stopped. When i start take mental notes, it was early morning 5.00AM, a family of mother, dad and sister waiting outside for their beloved son/brother who met an accident, they were crying all the time, as brother’s health start stabilizing dad started console them and sister’s husband also joined and they were under control. After some time, say 9.00AM people started coming. The dad was almost invisible with in the crowd, doctors also frustrated, it was almost 100+ people came for this single case. Some of them start asking question to dad, why you took him here? Here they are not good for skull injury? He got more panic, on other side ladies started circled to start cry. The sister and mother also vanished in crowd.  One question pop-up my mind, why this people came at 9.00AM, why they didn’t come as soon as accident happened? They took their own time to visit hospital, so they are not really coming for good purpose. I went to have a coffee and one of the guys who was with the crowd also at same coffee shop and he start speaking at mobile phone that “they still keeping oxygen mask so the case won’t survive”, like he is a doctor and knows all the internal medicines/procedures.  

Hats off to Doctors: It was great experience to me with our doctors at India, they are really great. What they have is 1947 outdated instruments but still they are managed to give world class treatment to their patients. I can see most of the doctors in India have dedication, hardworking and multi taskers. The whole medical industry revolving because of quality of our doctors. I think curriculum is the main one to produce this much quality doctors. 

Fees:  We have quality doctors and everything but medical affordability in India is really tough. I think more than 95% of Indian people can’t get quality treatment like their rich counterpart. The medical fees are very expensive in terms of average Indian’s earning power. I think most of the time there was no standard fees determination also. A blood test costs Rs 360.00 one day, very next day it can be Rs 460.00. I have no idea why this double standard. Most of the cases i met there were poor people, they want to some how afford this quality so that their beloved one once again talk and walk but the price they are paying for this is really sad, they almost sold all of their land, all gold, life saving and everything they own under sun. After treatment they have to start their life from scratch. A decease in India changed one’s life completely.  

Indian government should close all government aided hospitals and give subside to this private well managed hospitals or increase the government aided hospital’s quality. The politicians and educated people in India just forgetting their roots and becoming more selfish, they have to carry this baggage sooner rather than later. 

Happy Holidays

We have had an exceptional 2008, so many changes, both positives and negatives including Obama’s successful campaign to White house, Capitalism’s usual constructive destruction (Lehman’s brother and other banks’s collapse), painful job losses, melting housing market, government’s bail outs, Mumbai’s terror attack and finally Madoff’s fraud. Good news is none of the above was caused by natural force, all are by human. Our greediness caused all this, and some extra-ordinary human required to clean up this mess.

For me, personally 2008 was great year learned some new things and found some new friends. As an acme of 2008, my dad’s kidney transplantation is scheduled on Dec 28^th 2008. Looking forward, 2009 will be another ebullient year as usual for all of us. Normally the year after recession will be excellent for growth, with the combination of new administration and rock bottom oil price, i’m imagining a paroxysm growth.

Again Happy Holidays and Happy New Year 2009, after a long time i’m going to celebrate new year with my parents in India. My musings will resume after Jan 10^th 2009. Have fun friends…

New Year Resolutions

Again it is the time of year, we are thinking about our usual New Year resolutions. For me, last 15 years my favorite resolution was to quit smoking but this year there is no need for that because i already quit. But i was addicted to web 2.0 world so my next year resolutions are 

1. 200 hits per day for my blog http://ibloggergeek.blogspot.com and 200 more posts.
2. 20 subscribers to my YouTube not yet created music channel.
3. 50 followers for my twitters and to follow 50 people.
4. Create 2 best tools for social networking sites. One was already work in progress (http://www.tamilscrap.com).
5. Loose weight by at least 1%, that is, from 210 lbs to 208 lbs
6. Buy a home in Naperville as soon as possible, after the real estate mess subside.
7. Spend more time with family at least productive 30 hours per week.
8. Visit yellow stone with family (this was my trickle down one from 2008)
9. Teach Ram how to play baseball or football in summer.
10. Teach Meha how to ride bike and how to beat her brother.

Blagojevich – A Case Study

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is facing an uphill task to clear his name from FBI charges. He is booked under almost all possible corruption charges. He is classic example of "Power Corrupts" and transforming "superior from inferior". He was from a working class neighborhood from Chicago north side. His father and mother both worked very hard to raise him and his elder brother. Based on his childhood history, he was a straight A student. He worked hard himself to stay in college, he even worked as dishwasher.

After he was arrested by Feds, rumors twirl around Chicagoland and local media that he is a gambling addict, or drugs or some high level illegal activities, that’s why he needed more and more money. But the truth is he has enormous debt to pay back for his houses, campaign legal debts etc. As per one report his debt is almost $1.5 Million.

Surprisingly, here Illinois is most tolerate state of corruption, because 6 of the ex governors from Illinois are in jail or faced some kind of corruption charges. What one will do? If he/she is in a seat which is already corrupted, he/she had inferior childhood and bloated ego because of unbelievable growth. Any one would decide, let’s play the same game rather than play by book, which is, cut short budget to pay debt or declare bankruptcy etc. Everybody do mistakes, bad judgment and wrong decision, if we try to cover up those by doing more wrong doing is bad. Here Blagojevich also simply fell into the same trap.

Did i sound like supporting Blagojevich? A big NO, he was just betrayed millions of people in Illinois and U.S. But my focus is, what we learnt from here. I believe corruption is because of social and peer pressure. A man or woman not born with corrupted mind but society and peer group, history is responsible for corrupting one’s mind.

Here are some points to how to live with dignity.

1. Friend’s selection: Selecting friends is really important. We don’t need 100 friends but some real good friends are more than enough. But when you are growing faster, we can not control whom should we friendship with. That’s why grow as per age and maturity.

2. Addiction to money: Addicted to money is worse than heroin addict, it was well analyzed and documented. This is i think because of fear, fear of rejection from society and lack of individuality, most of the people addicted to money. Money is a tool created by human to exchange goods, it was not meant to increase one’s dignity or save for future use. If we ignore fear and society then addiction to money would gone forever.

3. Inferior/Superior: This is really important and sole responsible for many crimes and violent behavior. As i said in previous point, if one take an account of overwhelmingly society point of view then they are prone to inferior/superior complex. Society is made with group of people and their judgment is not 100% right and we should not give more important to negative aspect of society view. At same time one should not treat themselves as superior also, being in middle is really tough and required numerous self-realization, meditation and yoga are the best to over come inferior and stay at middle. I think i need to write a post about it
   

I think Blagojevich case is best example of Narcissistic Personality disorder(NPD), his attorney going to use this as an escape point. Even after he knows that Fed was taping his phone, he couldn’t stop what he was doing is the great point of NPD. I’m not very sure about this but i believe sudden growth and eager to make quick money might contribute this disorder. i have to do more research about this.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122904253463000251.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferiority_complex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_complex

http://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Addiction-Philip-Slater/dp/0525477047

JavaFX

Many technology pundits predicated that Rich Internet Application (RIA) is the product of this year 2008, but it was not taking off this year as expected. I think this is because of tough economic conditions and most of traditional companies were delayed to start new projects. But there are several web 2.0, mainly content based sites are using RIA. The results are awesome and definitely RIA going to rule internet in coming years. Just see a full expressive, rich content site http://www.scrapblog.com/, this site was developed by using Adobe Flex RIA technology. Excellent don’t they? Another one is http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/discovery-earth-live/discovery-earth-live.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-1051, just roll over mouse to GM ad on right side of the screen and see what happens? This all can be done only in RIA.

EBay’s desktop application was a huge success and it was downloaded more than 1 million times just after 5 months of initial release. http://ebayinkblog.com/2008/07/17/ebay-desktop-turns-1-million-steve-jobs-likes-meat-and-potatoes-ebay-iphone-app/

I think struts2.0, JavaFX or Flex, Ruby on Rails or Groovy and iBaits or Hibernate are the great combination of technologies to build or enhance

E-Commerce, content based, web 2.0 and transactional based web sites. This all improve development time as well as quality and rich user experience.

Last week, December 4^th 2008 Sun released the first version of JavaFX, here is the press release.

“December 4, 2008 -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today unveiled one of the most significant advancements to the Java(TM) platform with the release of JavaFX(TM) 1.0, a new platform that merges form and functionality for building rich internet applications (RIA) with immersive media and content for Web browsers and desktops. The announcement signals a broad expansion of Java software's ubiquitous reach to a wide range of Web developers, content authors and visual designers, and marks the next big innovation for the Java platform, extending its capabilities to include rich applications for all the screens of life, from desktops and browsers to mobile devices and TVs. Developers can download JavaFX 1.0 at: http://www.javafx.com.”

Please note that this release of JavaFX 1.0 only supports browsers and desktops. The mobile and TV support will be release on spring 2009. Now JavaFX is tightly integrated with NetBeans IDE, since I haven’t found any good plug-in for IntelliJ for now, I think Net Beans option is monopoly now.

JavaFX download page: http://javafx.com/downloads/windows.jsp

JavaFX step by step guide: http://javafx.com/docs/gettingstarted/javafx/create-first-javafx-app.jsp

Happy digging…

Ouch!!! Headline Hurts

Again today morning flashing headline was 533,000 jobs vanished in November month alone. And the revised job report for September, October also very deep. As soon as flash news showed in CNBC, as usual some of us pressed panic button and affected with negative emotions. This event is not new to us, we are experiencing this since 2007 summer. As I said before, don’t jump into conclusions by reading headlines. Yes, we are in trouble right now, and all government’s engine started fire to resolve it. Patience will prevail.  

Even though employers cut job for last one year, unemployment rate was holding up between 5% - 7%, I agree that anything above 5% is not good for developed nation like U.S, but because most of the people left job market to find an alternatives, some left for long vacation to explore the world. A piece of advise is this is good time to go back to school and enhance our skills. 

Here are the points I have here to justify that we are not in deep recession as media hyping. 

1. Last month job report suggests that we had job cuts ranging from mining industry to jet engine manufacturing. It is the clear indication that we are having a domino effect, that is, employers fear that credit market is frozen so they have to cut some expense to preserve cash. If that is the only reason, what will happen if government unfreeze credit market, will they hire all back? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/business/economy/06jobs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

2. I was under impression that this job report only includes adults, but after reading detailed report i found out that this includes teenagers also. Obviously they all went back to school, and the unemployment rate for teenagers is 20.4%, most of the cut come from temporary jobs. So before getting jump into conclusions, have this in mind and read detailed report. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

3. “Statisticalphobia”, I don’t know how to coin this but we are now affected by this new kind of phobia, all the numbered were compared with 30 years ago, 35 years ago and so on. 2-3 weeks ago, Steelers game ends with the score 11-10 and headline was, this is first time a football game ends with 11-10. why bragging about it? Steelers won and game ended, that’s all. The same happened now also, some one in press ran a query to found out when employer shed 533,000 jobs last time to hype about it. I like comparing situations but not this far apart. 35 years ago, German was not a single country, there was no European Union, USSR and U.S had cold wars, Larry didn’t invent Oracle database, Gates was at school and most of the web 2.0 CEOs and I was not even born ;-).http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081205/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown 

4.CNN.com, I believe they are most negative hype news organization, they just appended all negative things (as a year, as a month) into one and reported in there front page. See the headline…

“Lost: 1.9 million jobs

The 2008 tally soars after payrolls shrink by 533,000 in November, the biggest one-month decline in nearly 34 years. Unemployment soars to 6.7%.” 

 See the choice of words double “soars”, and just took all 2008 job lost in to account, we have one more report pending for 2008 as whole year. Why can’t they account for since 2000 or 1990, this is called manipulation of data to substantiate some specific objective.

I’m happy that most of the investors agree with me, they didn’t take media’s hype seriously, because market was not crashed today,matter of fact all indexs went up. As always market was already predicated this and now calm bull investors are busy with bargain shopping for both stocks and Christmas gifts for their dear ones.

Recession: Really??

It looks like people are really spending money freely, and malls are again packed with foot traffic. Are we hyping about this recession? I think say last 6-8 years we have a tendency to hype negative news, especially after Sep 11, 2001, I think now also we are hyping about this recession. As per comscore, this year cyber Monday was second heaviest sales on record. May be NBER come back probably on December 2009 to declare that we are not in recession since December 2008, because it took one year to find out that we are at recession since December 2007.  

As of Stock market, it is going up and down like bi-polar disorder, with in minute’s changes from south to north. But clearly unemployment rate is soaring(mainly construction, manufacturing, finance) and house price is keep on plummeting, since both of these affecting people directly plus usual media’s negative hype, we are feeling more recession pain than reality. Sometimes I feel that this is the way it should be, we have to have some discipline with spending habit and reality check. In other words, people flying high 30000 feet above earth and thinking that is normal. But after coming down to earth (reality), feeling depressed and recession and all pain.  

Greatest example is Google,where free 3 times food, free dental, free medical,free massage, free car wash, 20% free time for thinking, free laundry, free movie tickets, free weekend games ticket, free yoga, free meditation, free internet, free phone connection and free gas. Now the name of recession Google going to cut all and people is going to scream and complain about recession. I don’t know for how long they want to enjoy free stuff in a public traded company and high capitalist country and 97% of revenue still come from online ads. It is laughable and illogic. 

But as a country this negative hype is not good. It creates reverse brain drain and reverse migrations. For example, during last recession in Silicon Valley, the same negative hype created some panic with in immigrants and they just left the country to Canada, Australia and to their own country. The major benedictory of this is India, because after the last recession, India boomed a lot because of available experienced returned Information Technology man power with fresh pool of youngsters. But this phenomenon was not well studied or documented. 

808s & Heartbreak: A Solace

Kanye West’s fourth album released on November 24, 2008, my initial reaction was “wow…excellent”. For first time Kanye West tried with pop, yes this is his first pop not hip-hop. First time Kanye West tried something different style of songs, auto tune and new instruments. I like Kanye West because of his depth of wordplay, rhythm, hi-pitch vocal and trying always something new and most importantly, typical artist’s fearless outspoken, well tamed bloated ego.

This album was obviously out of his heartbreak after his mom’s accidental death and his relation breakdown with his longtime fiancee, and increased media scrutiny after his Graduation album’s huge success. He didn’t want to go with his usual rap because he said that he can’t do rap with broken heart. 808 is Hawaii’s area code because most of the songs were recorded at Hawaii but Kanye West suggests that 808 is the new tribal supposed to invoke emotions drum used for this album’s songs and he named this album well before Hawaii’s decision.

Songs with ranked as my most liked ones

1. Robocop
I liked this song most. The use of 808 drum was apparent in this song. His usual trademark of wordplay, hi-pitch vocals and more importantly music with mix of usual Kanye West’s rhythm makes this song a unique piece.

2. Love Lockdown
The hi-pitch “love lockdown” repetition with high 808 drum beat is something new for pop song. I would say that make some difference for this album. Again 808 drum beat was excellent. I think here he used auto tune a lot but not sure.

3. Heartless
Written for his ex fiancee about his love breakdown. He used his frustration and jealous, ego everything in this song. Very emotional song.

4. Street Lights
Soothe high emotions with high 808 beats and mild melody.

5. Welcome to Heartless
Featured Kid Cudi, I liked this song very much.

6. Coldest Winter
Sad song again about love failure.

7. Amazing
A soul song. I believe he written this song from his heart. Good song to hear. Featured Young Jeez.

8. See you in my nightmares…
Again soul song, presumably he was indicating that he was over with all heart broken. A song of seeking new direction. Featured Lil Wayne.

9. Paranoid
Featured Hudson. A classical pop song.

10. Bad News
Mild beat and melody. I could not recognize the different beat towards end, in fact last 2 mins.

Overall 808s & Heartbreak is an emotional, pop album from Kanye West with overwhelming 808 utilization and going to be another success for him.

PS: I don't know why but thinking due to hi-tech instruments, 808 and auto tune, all songs should be listen from Bose speakers/headset, iPod headset okay. Normal speakers/headsets no good.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/808s_%26_Heartbreak