"Vaccum before you dream again"

“The stock and commodity markets seem to go just one way and that’s down. Hundreds of millions of market cap eroded, value destroyed. The recession is here to stay and no policy measures, interest rate cuts, liquidity infusion seem to work. OMG, it’s pushing us back to where we started out – point zero.

Not that I am scared. But it’s a daunting task to claw your way back from such depths. I’d managed it with little resource and a lot of will. But I was a lot younger then. Now after a couple decades, if I’ve to repeat that trek, I might have to reinvent. Then I was alone; now I’ve got a family too!”

This was the kinda’ talk that did rounds when a bunch of us old pals met recently. There were software pros, engineers, finance pros and even one professor of economics in the gang. This concern about the future and the hard times that we’re forced to go thro was the common thread.

They say if we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. But who knows? Suddenly we feel like a bundle of beginnings. In front of us lay a stone with a hole in it. Who could’ve bothered to drill it? Nature. The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling. That meant something. It really did. You can't go through life quitting everything. If you're going to achieve anything, you've got to stick with something. Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. The race of life is not always to the swift, but to the one that keeps running. Fall seven times, up eighth.

Coming to think of it, this recession is like a mountain. Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. So why despair? It's often the last key in the bunch that opens the lock. You may not be there yet, but you're closer than you were yesterday.

And what if your dreams turn to dust? Simple. Just vacuum before you dream again ;-)

.

"Hire, but sterilize"

Ok. So the global financial meltdown offers a very good opportunity for Indian Investment Banks and Brokerages to poach back talent from global peers.

As the hirers seem to reason, the investment bankers with global experience could win some bulk institutional clients for their masters and will be adept at selling exotic derivative instruments etc. as they have a better understanding of such products.

But hey, wait a minute… Is it not the same tribe that brought their clients (and Masters) down by inventing toxic `Yen Carry’, `MBS’, `CDO’ and `CLO’s that finally did them in? Who will want a re-run...?

.

So I mangle the old signature phrase Ron Reagan used while warming upto Soviet Union - "Trust, but verify"..... I go "hire, but sterilize"

.

Go, freeze your balls at Davos

And you thought yes, the US has problems, a credit crunch brought on by reckless mortgage lending - and maybe in commercial property and credit cards, too - but we are safe. Not just us, China, Singapore, Korea and the oil rich Arab neibhors are all doing well. In fact, their Sovereign Wealth Funds are so strong that they are busy bailing out failing Wall Street banks. We are convinced. The global prospects could weather an American storm.

Before we could say `decoupled', the Asian stock markets crashed again. The two-day sell-off in Asian markets is a reminder that the world has been dragged along by the insatiable desire of the US consumer for stuff, much of it made in China. If the US really does slow down, so - goes the fear - will all those factories up the Pearl River Delta whose wages are keeping millions of Chinese happy. To meet the margin calls, traders exited their positions at huge losses and even sold gold and commodities. They fell too. Domino effect. Do you still say we are decoupled...?

Meanwhile our economic chieftains are busy freezing their balls at Davos. Few of them are already there, as seen on TV this morning struggling to part their frost bitten lips to talk to the media. Rest of the pack will be off soon. The theme at Davos is interesting this time around – "the power of collaborative innovation". (If Wall Street catches cold all markets should sneeze… that’s collaboration for you. Isn’t that innovative?) For Chidambaram, there’s no better way to escape the political heat than head for the Alpine ski slopes.

.