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. 

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.

Going Local : Chicago Updates

Crime Rate
It was very hot weather in Chicago, so do crime rate, either people are going crazy or they are getting guns very easily from market. Last 2-3 days, evening TV news and Chicago Tribune overwhelmed with crime news. June was worst month for crimes and increased 12.8% over last year. Mayor and Police Chief are pointing fingers to each other, but no solutions, all politics, obviously waste of time. The worst part of these shooting is, young teen kids are got killed. This is inexcusable and highly unacceptable. What is the point of killing innocent kids, they can't even carry a gun.

Taste of chicago got sour experience for visitors, all over internet forums, youtube overloaded with last day taste of chicago shooting videos. So this resonates all across US and world. Eventually this all creates bad image for Chicago and chances for 2016 olympics is in stake.

All this crime rate increasing, because of some people's greediness and drug related gangs. This bad guys are getting more support from Supreme court, which re-affirm 2nd amendment, that allows all US citizen can carry gun for self-defense. If i understand correctly, 2nd amendment was very old and don't had government supported police force . Now we have sophisticated police force, monitoring systems, CCTV, court and many more to protect us from criminals. I don't know what's logic behind that?

Stir Crasy tasteful mix
After a long time, we ate dinner at Stir Crazy this weekend, if you want a spicy and tasty mix, try one spoon of thai masala with two spoon of chilly paste and half spoon of curd, hmmm...taste is really great, nothing can be comparable. Really great taste.

Fishing Report
Today great weather for fishing but high winds, I went to Shabbona Lake. 78F, low humidity, but high winds 32 MPH. Because of wind, i couldn't catch any fish ;-). But great place to visit for picnic,boating and fishing.

Searching logic in illogical world

This world is full of illogical thoughts and events.Some times I feel that I'm the only one left alone in this planet with logical thoughts and finding hard to survive with this illogical. In last week alone, there are this many illogical events :

Logic 1: Fix immediately whatever issues concerns you most (in context of lawmakers, it is whatever issues concerns to people of a country)
US congress passed a bill to save monkeys on last Tuesday "unlawful for any person to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any live animal of any prohibited wildlife species." Source: Chicago Tribune
This is really important to tackle this issue now, because people now really enjoying with Midwest flood, high energy cost, foreclosures, credit crunch and worried about monkeys, dracula, snakes etc.

Logic 2: Don’t talk too much about future, plan for it and take action for todays
McCain announced that he is willing to give $300 Million (I don’t know from his pocket or tax money) to any one, who invents a super-duper battery to power up our cars. He didn’t mention it is for individual, team of people or a company. Is it for only cars? then what about flights, power generators, rocket engine, trains. If McCain and others (senators) works now and take action against US oil corps about not using all available leased oil resources, oil would have came down at least by 50% within 1 month.

Logic 3: Don’t be a coat, be a skin
In business environment, particularly service oriented organization, be a skin with customers. Attach firmly with customers, help them to grow so our business also grow with them. Last week there was a rumor that HSBC is going to buy UBS for $80 Billion, an Indian outsource company stock nose dived. It is just a rumor, what will happen if it really happens, simple matter is HSBC may cut that outsource company as vendor since they are not attached with core UBS business, they just supplied human heads. This service oriented sector is the main source of India's future growth, if they don't know how to glue with business, there is no point of talking about growth, success etc. This is not a rocket science, just read some IBM white papers; there they clearly mention how to support other business and business based consultancy.

Logic 4: Whats gonna to work, team work!!!
“All Indians are our brothers and sister….” this is the oath we took from school days on every Monday in front of Indian flag. This was to eliminate the difference between us, and promote team work and to decrease ego between us. I don’t know our brain was designed to forget everything we learned from school, college, career. Anyways we hate teams, we love cricket, that to, Sachin’s one man play, nothing else. Other sports we loved are not team sports such as chess, carom, formula one and tennis. Last 2 decades, India is ruled by team of political parties, one party ruling was gone long time ago. This is good for some extend, but it is bad when we try to resolve major issues, like the one now Indo-US nuclear deal. This is really important and we don’t know how to trade off between parties and ego is the main source for disagreements. Finally the next election is around the corner, we(people) are just watching this circus again and again.

To be cont.d...

Heat on Outsourcing

Outsourcing/off-shoring is the 21st century modern global economy trends. It is something, sharing some work with other partner or company or an entity, which perhaps located other country/state from the main business location. The main purpose of outsourcing is to increase finance utilization and get more things done with less money. The main driver of outsourcing is currency inequality between two countries. After 2001/2002, tech bubble burst this outsourcing trend increased to several folds and more and more companies wants to “share” their work with foreign entities.

After 6-8 years, outsourcing IT industry losing steam for the first time, this company’s stock price and value started plummeting. Why is that? This should not happen? Is there something fundamental wrong?

1. Big mistake with human resource: The main asset of outsourcing company is brain. Unfortunately, nobody can make brain “out of the box”. It is naturally embedded with each human. So human is the main asset of outsourcing companies. How soon a programmer/engineer grasping new design/code and how soon he/she converting into meaningful document and how soon he/she transfer the knowledge to their peers and how soon they can deliver a work is the fundamental success of an IT outsourcing company. They all are young smart brainier professional, but as soon as these professional crossed ocean, out of their main work location for on site projects, their touch with HR would be reduced, literally no HR policy. No body cares about them, several HR violations; nobody asks some basic humanity needs; they are out of sync with their company. As a result, they try to jump in to other companies, de-motivated and always looking for other opportunities.

2. Business or domain knowledge: Growth is the main ingredient for business success but at the same time, domain knowledge is the main catalyst for sustainable business success. Lot of time outsourcing companies wants to capture market, they make lot of moves, didn’t allow people to be in same domain and allow them to become master of that domain. The excuse would be, hire a lateral domain knowledge candidate for that position, but reality is, that lateral candidate would take lot of time to adjust with culture to provide some value, by the time competitor take all business.

3. Politics: Workplace politics is okay, as long as all politics are for positive purpose. But with in outsourcing companies, politics range from state, language, color, region, religion, direction, social status, history, geography etc. None of these are positives, all are negatives and unbearable and highly unprofessional.

Survived in new workplace for 15 days

Many of us try to join new workplace for various reasons and it is very tough to survive for first 15 days. Here i’m trying consolidating all my experience with survival of first 15 days.

I started with a bank for contract to hire position, i liked this “contract to hire” concept because it very balanced act for us and company before both of us committing anything. Since it is a hiring position, added this is bank, i went through extensive security, background, credit, reference checking plus all kind of testing. This is important because all these process went through for 2 weeks before they asked me to start work, so patience is really important. I liked this also, so my manager knows my financial data and credit balance, did i bankrupt before, my credit score etc.

Day 1: Hiring manager welcomes me and took me to my desk, what a surprise for me? All the equipment was ready, even my laptop booted and ready for login, and all stationary items are in place at my desk. I never ever experienced this “welcomed”. He explained me all the details like documents to setup email, login info, etc. I just setup everything and i accepted his first meeting request that was, welcome lunch at Flattop Grill. So i had a very good time with my team members, they all interviewed me so i had some introduction with them.

Day 2: I thought since it is bank i have to wear very formal and polished shoes. But what a surprise again, i can see tech geeks walking around with jeans and T-Shirts. I think this is “kinda of” incubator so no formal dress required.

Day 3: My first assignment is to design and develop a module. But i faced a challenge from my laptop; it was loaded with, you name it all was there in laptop. So i have decided to clean up laptop first before starting my work.

Day 4: After cleaned up, started work it was very easy for me to finish it within 2 days.

Day 5: My first code with design document checked in source control.

Day 6: My manager showed up my desk with a laundry list of code review comments, again i tumbled; he did an excellent job to capture all technical details and helped me to change code as per comments.

Day 7: We decided to review code with my team. I got other assignment at same time.

Day 8: Code review went fine, they want to use same thing for their module also. I felt very happy that i introduced a new concept here.

Day 9: Busy with new assignment, hard part was to understand banking terms and domain knowledge.

Day 10: Started designing for new assignment and checked with manager, he asked me to start coding.

Day 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15: Happened to attend a road map meeting. Completed new assignments and code checked in source code. Felt very satisfied and feeling a new rock ’n roll started for me. Time to take couple of beers.

HISTORY IN MAKING...

Finally Barrack Obama got Democratic nomination, he entered the auditorium with my favorite song "Beautiful day" from U2 in background. He just before ( while I'm typing ) announced that he got nomination with explode applause. I blogged some months ago, http://ibloggergeek.blogspot.com/2008/01/rise-of-obama-what-does-it-means-to-me.html, here. We are going to witness another historic moment, when he enters white house with the same support.

Optimism Vs Cautiously Optimism

These two words very often used in finance articles, particularly to describe investor’s thoughts about current market condition. I confuse with these and which context or situation we need to use these or follow these. In my mind, cautiously optimism was as equal to pessimism, which is totally unacceptable by capitalist’s thoughts. Capitalist and investors should not be pessimist, if they are then the whole progressive growth and world’s economy will melt like iceberg in artic.

But later on I realized that these two are equally same meaning but the main differentiator is time to take a decision. If an investor is “cautiously optimist” means they are not willing to take any decision soon, such as invest on one company’s stock, they are analyzing the situation very carefully and closely, exploring various options etc. Where optimism means we tend to take decision on the feet, we think that this is the right time to invest, don’t delay, go for it and seize the opportunity.

It is very hard to change the context between optimism and cautiously optimism in terms of thinking. It is all depends on how our “decision making skills” shaped up during the course of our life time. One of the hardest thing is our life is decision making, when to make decision, how to make, can I make decision based on my instinct or need an experienced people’s advice etc.

In business scenario, making decision is really tough. For example, latest fall of Wachovia and Bear Sterns. Both of these companies were very optimistic about sub prime market, they didn’t exercise cautiously optimism rather they want to make decisions on the feet. What happened now? The later made JP Morgan Chase rich by giving Manhattan skyscraper/ and their employees, clients for almost free.

Here is one good article about decision making http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/he691. What I’m thinking about decision making are,

• We should not jump into conclusion based on newspaper articles, news clips and videos. Sometimes media’s would influence or test our decision making abilities.
• No decision is a bad decision – take a decision and move on whenever required.
• Family value and their inputs are the most influential factor of making decisions – I would say 90% of our decisions based on what is good for our family.
• Once you made a decision, stick with it - if it is reversible (in my mind, other than career decisions all are reversible) do it quickly, if not, continue with that, until you feel happy about it or search for happiness from it.

Oil Talk

Again US President asked for oil production increase to Saudi Arabia and again they refused to increase substantial amount, but agreed to increase oil production by 300,000 barrel per day by June, which is, insufficient to cool off skyrocketing oil price. Here is detailed news. There are conflicting reports regarding this increase, some media(mainly US) reported that this increase mainly because of Bush's request, some media reported that they made the decision well before Bush's visit. Again today OPEC member Qatar said there is no need of OPEC emergency meeting because oil price is balanced.

Why OPEC don't want to increase oil production? Oil is under earth like water, why they don't want to cash in all free resource now? Now price is peak and if they pump all available resource now, they can make lot of cash. If OPEC agreed to increase production by lets say 3,000,000 barrels per day, I don't think price would go down $50 per barrel, because of high demand. This is good analysis to answer all these questions. Saudis don't want to push themselves or other OPEC members to increase oil production because they had bad experience of increased oil production and price fell almost 50% during 1990s.

But now situation is different and they simply missing the opportunity of cash in. What will happen if oil price goes high day by day, US try to explore more drilling and use alternative energy to satisfy their needs. India and China people would think twice to drive car because of high oil price and particularly India already has massive public transport in place, hence demand would go down. OPEC will miss the golden opportunity of selling their oil at high price, that is freely available now. Here is chart from http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/countrycompare/oil/1a.html
if we see oil consumption of these 3 countries is almost 27 million barrels per day and there is lot of chances that US would cut down import because untapped resources in Alaska, all they need to do is persuade green concerned people.

Job Search 101.

Job search is always stressful even when economy is in good health. I don't want to tell how stressful with this current economy conditions. But always stay at positive is basic mantra for successful job search. Based on my experience, we have to decide what would be the correct job description before we start searching job. This is specially important for Software related jobs. I have decided to stick with Sr Software Engineer 3 or 4 category, this is normally 30-40% design, 40-50% hands on and remaining would be mentoring team member and helping other organization initiatives such as PMO, Product Management etc.

Brush up fundamentals
I have decided to spent at least 2-3 months to search a good job for me with my expectations. Before starting job search, we have to brush up all fundamentals, coding exercise and puzzles etc., even though you are a 10-15 years experienced professionals, most of the companies want to test your academic level knowledge, very fundamental computer language knowledge and then your project related questions. I found one good book, Programming Interviews Exposed, this is really good book and it covered all basic data structures, algorithms and commonly asked puzzles. One more book I bought to prepare job search is Puzzles for Programmers and Pros I wouldn't recommend this book, it is nice to have. Since I took Java 2 certification in 2003, those books helped me to brush up Java fundamentals. For design patterns I used Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (a.k.a) Gang of Four, I can say that almost every software professional must have read this book multiple times. I found some difficulties to understand some patterns so I read Head First Design Patterns also.

Start Attending Interviews.
Once we finished all reading and have confidence, now start applying jobs and start attend interviews. Most of the companies first do a telephonic screen before asking you to come for face to face interview. We have to make sure to talk with low pitch and reply as much as short answers, because the interviewer may judge you as aggressive if you speak in high pitch and as talker if you talk most of the time, because the body language totally missed here. One web site even recommended that consider telephonic interview as face to face, so wear formal dress with suit before attending telephonic interview, but I didn't buy-in that idea. Low pitch and short answer are most important. I found some difficulties, when some interviewer asked me to write a code over phone because I have to write code in paper and explain at same time in phone. But after one or two try I'm okay.

Face to face interviews
This is most important one and face to face decides whether you are going to get an offer or not. As a candidate, our main thing is capitalize the environment and not to get nervous or stress. Most of the interviewers assist you get settle down first by asking some easy questions and later on some complex things and coding exercise. Based on my experience, some interviewers get rough and tough on you, that could be to test your character or they don't know how to contact an interview. Any ways, face to face would be most important one and basic is not to get nervous and calmly you have to explain what ever you know, how you solved an issue, your project experience etc.

My Experience

I attended 5 or 6 telephonic interviews and 2 face to faces. I got an offer with my 2nd face to face last week. I just followed what ever I explained here, stay positive is the most important thing to find a job.

The investor vs. The speculator

I waited for Communist Party Of India's statement regarding future trade ban for some commodities, as expected they are not satisfied with Indian Government action and they want to ban 25 more commodities. Here is statement from CPI(M) general secretary Mr. Prakash Karat

"The CPI(M), which supports the ruling UPA coalition from outside, had charged the government with making a “wrong diagnosis” of the causes behind price rise and said the steps announced to control inflation would in fact stifle the high growth rate. It demanded a ban on futures trading in 25 commodities, alleging that allowing multinational companies to get into speculative trading in food grains had “resulted in price rise.”

Based on Karat statement, speculation is the main reason of price rise and as usual he blamed multinational companies. Sir, first you need to understand the difference between an investor and a speculator. I urge you to change 1947 mentality of labeling an investor as speculator. An investor is who do all basic research and home work before buy anything and a speculator is one emotionally attached and buy anything they want without doing any home work and based on price movements. These markets are now controlled by investors. If an investors thinks that market is infest by speculators, then price would automatically come down. Great example would be this decade's dot com burst. A good investor always sells when speculator comes into the play. As of now, commodities trading in India or oil future trading is not infested by speculators. It is just reflecting real state of price.

Here is Channa price for last one year contract from Multi Commodity Exchange of India(MCX) . See how our investors bring down price from peak of little over 3000 to 2400 with in last 2 months. Either it could be speculator infested effect or supply increase and demand subside, either way it is reflecting current real price.



Source :http://www.geojit.com/commodities/CommCharts.asp?index=3&Symbol=CHANA&ExpDate=2008.05.20&Exchng=MCX&SPeriod=-12&ChartType=1

Bad Move by Indian Government.

Finally Indian Government backed Forward Markets Commission (FMC) suspended trading of futures trading in chana, soyabean oil, rubber and potato till September 6. I think that it is bad move by leftist dominated current Indian government. There is no link between inflation and future trading. This leftist (Communist) are playing their cards to win next election by painting themselves as a saviour of poor and middle class people of India. But they are halting Indian economy growth and stopping money flow into Indian economy, ultimately that is going to hurt poor and middle class people of India. India is a vastly "black money" dominated economy, if we close some money flow channels like future trading, money would be again stagnate as black money and government going to loose sum of money as tax. How come price would go up if number of investors decided price after amount of brainstorm and scientific study vs small number of selected group of people fixing based on some unscientific way? I think that the former should reflect real state of price.Future trading helping all of us by discovering prices early so based on future price everybody adjust their demands well in advance, I think Montek Singh Ahluwalia explained really well here about future trading and inflation.

Inflation now is a global phenomena. We can't blame anybody for this, we have to adjust ourselves to live with that. This price hike going to continue until Iraq oil flows into main market or US drilling some more in Alaska (I think Alaska will not happen because of US election year and more global warming concerned people in US) What will happen if we suspend oil future trading, now price determination would be in hands of OPEC who is both price fixer as well as producer. In that scenario, how come we trust them that they are playing a fair role of fixing price, definitely they can set what ever price they want, no question asked. In order to avoid that only we found this future trading for a stable price determination. Why we need currency future,suspend that also and let each country fix their own money value like communist China. No democracy.

Microsoft's gamble.

It is clear that Microsoft is playing gamble by pulling out Yahoo's bid. Microsoft never withdraw anything they want to buy. Even now, Microsoft pulled back, because of Yahoo's decision to join Google for sharing search ad business, not because of bid price. Microsoft knows better that Yahoo's share price plummet starting tomorrow, and Yahoo investors would not get benefit from Google's partnership for at least next one year. Yahoo can't steer company towards profit for next one year, because Google itself struggling to show growth from their search ad business, because of current economic conditions. 

As everybody knows, more beneficiary of the Microsoft + Yahoo deal is Yahoo. Because they are the one in middle between powerful companies (Microsoft and Google). Yahoo is simply rejecting Microsoft bid for simple "bay area microsoft haters" and "some ego" reason in my opinion. As soon as, Yahoo's stock start go south, their stockholders going to get nervous and going to pull some triggers to accept Microsoft's bid. 

So the Microsoft strategy is, "okay we are pull back bid and waiting for you to go down further and you come back to me after your investors would pressurize you because we are sure that you can not get any benefit from Google because of current market condition and we are sure that it won't improve for next 1 year".

Hats Off to Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)

After achievements after achievements, finally ISRO delivered cluster of 10 satellites by using PSLV rocket to break all previous records in a single mission. This is world record because earlier former Soviet Union used 8 satellites in a single launch.

The following is from Space.com

"An Indian rocket lifts off successfully with two domestic and eight foreign satellites from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched without its usual six strap-on boosters and carried its heaviest payload yet in this configuration — roughly 1,800 pounds (823 kilograms). The rocket had previously carried a maximum of four satellites into space within a single launch, according to Indian Space Research Organization (IRSO).
Once the rocket reached an altitude of almost 400 miles up (637 kilometers), it released its main payload of the Indian CARTOSAT-2A satellite into orbit. The Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1) followed 45 seconds later. Lastly, the eight nano satellites built by Canada, Japan, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands separated in sequence"

Hats off to ISRO engineers and scientists to make this happen.

Back to work.

After 2 weeks of vacation to India, returned to Chicago yesterday. Time in India was great and quality one for me and my family. My 4 year and 5 month old enjoyed to the fullest with their grand parents. But the flip side is, my 4 year lost little discipline, due to over affection from grand parents and relatives. The truth is we all are lost our daily strict routine and lost our discipline, which is why we need vacation. The lost of daily routine and little discipline is most wanted for all humans at least once in a year. This vacation was good since it was full of functions, first my brother in law's marriage and then my son's birthday. We met all our relatives and friends on one go. I can see lot of improvements in india's quality of life, earlier we didn't have any issues with car parking in marriages halls, in fact we can see only 2-3 cars, now there were lot of space issues with car parking. Everybody now has car and everywhere we are facing car parking issues including in marriage halls. Every aspect of quality life improving slowly and steadily.

Back to Home.

Here I'm in India after 28 hours of hectic and long travel from Chicago. Where ever you are, what job you do, how long you away from home, back to home is always a wonderful experience and I can't describe the feeling, all I felt is something that mind state changes from "turbulence" to "smooth". This time my hometown we are experiencing some sweet pain that we are getting lot of lot rain, which is unusual in this summer months. But it is good for me and my kids, as we are enjoying in rain and more greenish Nagercoil.

First time in my recent visits since 2004, I'm seeing some negative changes in India, which is not good. There is some loss of capitalist version of India, Reliance Petrol(Gas) station closed its stores all across India since it couldn't afford to competition with state run petrol stations. This time we are missing flashy and attractive gas stations on road. In and around my home town and South Kerala, a lot of infrastructure development works are on hold or no improvement at all. People are crazy about food and other essential items price. As per government report inflation rate now holds all time high of 7%. But there should be always a peeks and valleys in all aspects of progressive developments.

Apart of this, People doesn't change at all, same affection, same kindness, same politeness all are same as before.

Wasting of Powers.

      As everyboby knows India has man power and US has money power. Are they using it properly? The answer is big NO. US banks are loosing money even a basic home loans collection, such a big country and finance power house of entire world, struggling to collect their own money from own people, as a result all over the world chaos and confusion in banking system, finally US government had to interfere into banking system to clear up mess. What a bad example set here? So you can do any mistakes and finally government will rescue you, rather than changing law to strict bank loan outflow and monitor system to regulate banking systems. This is all because US has money power hence wasting something from it doesn't matter now.

     In other side of world, India has man power and India is wasting man power on agriculture, which is, highly unregulated. The whole agriculture contributing 18% of country's GDP but 60% of population working in agriculture field. So almost 40% of indian people not contributing anything to Indian economy, even though they are working very hard. Here India can waste something since they have lot of man power, as long as everybody getting food. But the problem is future growth of India, India has to convert every people's work directly towards development otherwise we can't achieve projected growth in coming years. But India is always slow in transforming, but once changed, it would be solid and robust. 

   As compare this two great wastes, money waste is something recoverable and it won't hurt much as compare with man power waste. So if you have something more than enough than what you need, you might waste it since it doesn't matter much now.

Up in the air : A special work.

The current space mission STS 123 to International Space Station(ISS) by Space Shuttle Endeavour is special one. This mission provides first module of Japanese Experiment Module (Kibo) and Canadian Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator. Dexter is fully automated robotic arm which reduce some of the space walk activities. It would save lot of time and effect for astronauts since some actives can be done by this robotic arms rather than spacewalks. Dexter also duped as Canadaarm. The Japanese Experiment module is largest planned module for US side. This module final assembly will be completed on 2010.

Already ISS is the most expensive object ever build by mankind[Source:Wikipedia], after all these additions it would become more expensive and greater scientific achievement .

Spike of Oil Price.

Many of us, still remembers the scary Goldman Sachs Oil price predication back in March 2005, at that time oil price was $50-$55, some body even ridiculous about this predication. what a losers??. After 3 years now, Oil price spikes to $110 per barrel and no signs of price decrease for foreseeable future. US economy is now in recession, due to declining demand, oil price should come down, but it is not happening. The main reason would be, as George Bush said during previous state of union address, US people are addicted to oil and they have no choice also because of poor public transportation infrastructure. Now what is happening is people are driving to shopping mall but not buying anything because they want to save some money for gas.

With combination of credit market meltdown, oil price and decline home equity, things are looking very gloomy and positive signs are far away, may be summer of 2009 unless oil price come down and stimulus rebate checks going towards shopping not to pay off loans.

GOP Steady and Dems still ...

Yesterday after major primaries, GOP finalized their president nominee for 2008 general election. McCain officially started his campaign yesterday. This is good for Republican party, from now on, Republican can rally behind McCain and promote him as next US President. But in other hand, Dems are still up in the air. They don't know who will win nomination and probably they have to wait until National convention. I think both Obama and Hillary are very tough fighters and capable of running this country, but now for the sake of party, one has to agree for vice president nominee. Based on one statistics, even if Obama or Hillary wins all the remaining contest, they can't fulfill mandates delegates for nomination. So Dems super delegates come into play to choose their nominee.

One more controversy is brewing from FL and MI that their voice has to be heard since Dems top leaders rejects FL and MI delegates all together because both the states conducted primaries earlier than party guidelines. I think that even court can't intervene here because the process is internal to one party and its leadership decisions.

As I learned more about these primaries and Caucasus, I believe it is true democracy and I wish all demarcate countries should follow this system. But associated cost and time with this is unbearable by most of the countries. As I know India has the similar set up but we are not utilizing it properly and everything there is finally decided by party leader with help from his/her close friends and relatives :).