US Debt Crisis - 2011

Hello friends,

Its been a while I have not written anything here. Today, I was discussing about "US Debt Crisis" with one of my friend. It's most discussed topic now a days, specially in a financial world. I have been going through various news articles , blogs on this topic. So thought of sharing the info -

The first questions came in mind, why Aug 2?

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, “Tax receipts for June and July are not more than expected. So U.S. will exhaust borrowing authority on Aug 2nd and after that date there is no way to guarantee we will be able to meet all of the nation’s obligations”. Few investment bank’s analysts are predicting that the end date is not 2nd but 10 Aug (as per Barcap), Sep 9 ( as per Nomura) . But still it’s not that far.

Currently, total public dept is $14.29 trillion; just $25 million shy of the debt limit. The U.S. has $87 billion of maturing debt next week. So to avoid default on bond obligations, Republicans and Democrats are trying to reach an agreement to raise the $14.3 trillion borrowing ceiling and to reduce future annual deficits.
What would happen if there is no decision on raising borrowing ceiling by Aug 2? I was reading one interesting blog, he has mentioned below points for my above question.

• Interest rates in U.S. will start to rise and continue for some time. Remember, the Federal Funds rate was over 20% in June 1981.
• The housing market will start a double collapse due to a rapid rise in mortgage interest rates.
• In the uncertain environment, housing sales will stall and the terrifying housing data in September, October and November 2011 will have a knock on effect i.e. home sales will completely stall.
• This will precipitate what should have occurred in 2008 and 2009 had the banks not been bailed out. The assets underlying many of their creative financial products will drop massively in value causing many banks to fail, this time without a bailout.
• Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency and many countries are holding Dollars, US debt and dollar denominated debt, a world financial crisis of epic proportions will begin to unfold.
• If ratings agencies actually downgrade US debt, the effect will be catastrophic. Many banks, countries and other organizations are required to keep a specific mix of risk on their balance sheets. This will force world-wide balance sheet restructuring as countries and companies move away from the US dollar or dollar denominated debt – specifically US government debt.
• The dollar will increase the rate of it’s current slide.
• Gold prices will hit $1800 in September/October and $2200 or more by year end.
• Credit will once again dry up wreaking havoc among businesses and banks.
• Expect massive layoffs world wide as businesses deal with lack of access to credit and batten down the hatches preparing to weather the storm.

So what good will come of this?

• With a declining dollar, US exports will earn more money.
• There will be a massive power restructuring in corporate America as incumbents fail by the hundreds, opening up opportunities for young, innovative businesses.
• Some wealth will be transferred back from the wealthy holding US dollars to the true innovators in this country as the dollar declines and the value of exports increase.
• Manufacturing jobs will return to the USA as it becomes cost effective for other countries to use local labor force and base operations in the USA.
• US politicians will be exposed as incompetent and old power bases and old boy networks will crumble giving way to new blood, new ideology and possibly a new political party in the United States.

What's view of "Standard & Poor's" on this?

Failure to pay off maturing debt or missing interest payments (approximately $62 billion of interest is payable on Aug. 15) would constitute a selective default pursuant to our criteria, and Standard & Poor's expects it would lower the sovereign rating to 'SD'. Even if the Fed and other central banks managed to keep the financial system functioning, we expect that markets around the world would be severely damaged. In such a hypothetical scenario, we expect that equity markets would generally plunge, borrowing costs and interbank lending rates would soar, and corporate credit markets would be closed to all but the highest quality issuers. We envisage that consumers and businesses would likely stop spending on all but essential items, and the value of the dollar would drop by 10% or more against other major currencies. With the dollar heading lower, investors would likely look for hard assets like oil and other commodities, driving prices higher.

For the rest of Q&A, please visit -
Here

-Raju

Photographs taken at Anand Sagar, Shegaon ( 31-Jul-2010 )

Career Path Finder !!

Hey ,
Do you know anyone who recently passed HSC or SSC? Ask him/her , what he/she is going to after it? Most of them even don't know what are the different options are there for them to build the career. Below is the CAREER PATH FINDER which will help them to decide their career.

my public speech :)

Hi All,

After few months gap , I am back on blogspot :)

Recently I have joined a club called "Club Communique".

The very first day , our mentor asked us a topic on which we would not be able to speak at all. She said, "You will have to come on the stage and speak on any topic except the one you are going to submit now". So everybody was very honest while disclosing a topic, so as I. Topic which I don't like,no other than "HISTORY". Now everybody was so relaxed with the hope that at least we are not going to speak on the topic which we hate most. But nobody was aware what game our mentor is going to play with us. After getting a topic from everybody, she looked at us , smiled wickedly and announced that you will have to speak on the topic which you have submitted to me :) .. everyone of us was so shocked and feared of a speech now. I remember a saying in Marathi "Aliya bhogasi asave sadar" ( means be ready for bad time always ).


I prepared my speech. My first speech on HISTORY was as follows-

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello everybody,

Today I am going to talk on HISTORY, the subject I used to hate most in my school days. But over a period of time I realized that history plays a very important role in our life.

First of all, what does History mean to you? Very simple definition is "Set of events which had happened in the past". However, few of our leaders defined history little differently. According to Napoleon Bonaparte, "History is a set of lies agreed upon". Similarly, as per Konrad Adenauer, "History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided".

But for me, "History is an ability to look back". Just imagine if our leaders could not look back at World War-II. How would they understand what should not be done in case of conflicts.

We can learn and improve by studying events occurred with our ancestor. But have you ever thought that these historical events might not have been written fairly, impartially.

Let me ask you a question related to Mahabharata. How many of you know the real name of Duryodhan? "He is actually named as Suyodhan which means a great warrior, he changed his name to Duryodhan which means impossible to conquer, many people have misconception that he is been called as duryodhan because of his misdeeds". This reminds me of a very good quote , "History is written by the victors". I guess, had the Kauravas, won the war, we would have had read a very different version
of Mahabharata. I strongly believe that history is just a view of particular events. If two people are writing something about a same event, they may end up describing it completely differently. Let me give you an example, if two people, one from New York and one from Iraq, are writing on US-Iraq war, they will picture a completely different story about the war, and depending on which author you decide to read, you
will have different opinions about the same even.

History is not only regional, it can be personal too. We could learn loads of things from our ancestors. How did they handle things thrown at them? Since they could face those, we also should be able to. What went wrong? What could have been avoided? Etc.

Couple of days back I was having discussion about this speech with my team-mates. My team-lead made a very brilliant statement that "History can not be complete without MASALA".

Just imagine, if our history books contains events with its date. For example, "Shivaji Maharaj won battle of Pratapgad against Afzal khan on 30-Nov-1659".
Will such a history book excite students to read it? That's the main reason history is been written with very interesting stories.

In summary, History is very important in our lives.

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A LOT OF "RESPECT" FOR WOMEN

One of my friend, (desperately wanted to mention his name here,
but he may reply back by writing some wonderful blogs about me),
respects women a lot. In our office canteen, we were discussing about
two girls. He promptly entered into the discussion and said, "Don't
you think that these two girls look similar?" We glanced at both of
them and none of us found them "similar".

After lunch we came down stairs and were chatting about something
important. Again, fortunately or unfortunately, two girls were walking
towards us. My dear friend was at it again. This time, he
whispers,"Are these girls twins?" Dono ek jaise hi lagte hai (Both
look similar). We glanced at them carefully, but again none of us found them
"similar". I mean their faces were so different or at least appeared
so to me.

Then, we got into a discussion to try to figure out his meaning of
"similarity". Next, the obvious question - "What do you mean by
similar?". He gave us general replies and nothing seemed unusual.
Just at that time, one among us commented - "Their faces are so
different"

Well, the puzzle was solved by that comment in seconds. Any guesses??

The basic problem with our dear friend is that "he never looks at the
face of women". Well ..... We then looked at the two girls from his
perspective and we found them strikingly similar as well.

I jokingly asked, "Why don't you look at their face man". He replied
in muted voice, "I HAVE A LOT OF RESPECT FOR WOMEN".

We all started laughing. Some respect, I must say.

CAN YOU BE "UBIQUITOUS"?

I was going through an editorial of Sunday Times and came across a word “UBIQUITOUS”. Tried to guess the meaning with respect to the sentence but could not do so because of statement complexity. Fortunately my computer was on so I just typed that word at http://www.answers.com/. This site gave me a meaning of the above word - “Being present everywhere at once”. Synonym is OMNIPRESENT. When I looked at the meaning I could not control my laugh. No guys, I have not gone mad to laugh at meanings of each and every word that comes across my way. This word’s meaning represents someone I know and he is no other than my BOSS. I always discuss about his presence with my colleuage, exactly like UBIQUITOUS. You go anywhere in the company such as smoking zone, break-out , car parkings, library, canteen, lift or any floor for that matter, you are definitely going to see him. The first thing that comes in a mind is that does he has his clones around and if so, how many of them? :)

Are you planning to take GMAT/CAT/SAT/GRE?

Hey Folks,

if you are a MBA/MS aspirant and preparing for GMAT/CAT/SAT/GRE, here is a very helpful site http://learnhub.com/.
There are many people who are experts in various areas ( quant , verbal etc ). Just create an account and join the community you are interested in to get online help from these experts. Also there are various practice/mock tests which you can use as a preparation tool.

All the best.

TEACH INDIA - my experiences - part 1

Hi All,
On 26-Aug-2008, at 4pm, I was on my desk in the office. My phone rang and I got a SMS. SMS from TEACH INIDA saying “You have been placed with REAP NGO, your volunteer ID is M-G-----. Please attend orientation meeting on 29-Aug-2008 at 5.4”. It was so fortunate that I got a SMS from TEACH INDIA, but it was unfortunate that it was in-complete. I had wait for sometime to get complete SMS but it did not come. Now what to do? Where to go to attend the meeting, on what time? I was having no idea. So I visited to TEACH INDIA’s official site but I did not get their phone number. What I got from the site is a mail id. I sent an email to that id saying I want full information regarding the orientation meeting. Till 28-Aug-2008, I did not get any response. So I was thinking what to do?

Then one of my friend gave me an idea to visit to REAP’s site and try to get some information from their. I visited to REAP’s site and got a number. I dialed number and got the information what I wanted. HOLI CROSS School, Thane (W) was the venue for meeting. It was scheduled at 6 pm.

To reach to the venue I will have to leave at 4-4:30om office. It was Friday so it would be little bit difficult to leave the office at 4-4:30 pm. But I had decided to go for it since I had been waiting for this opportunity since long time. I left office at 4:30. In the train, I was thinking how many guys would be there? It should not happen I am the only who has come for that meeting. I told to myself lets see what happens. It was 6 pm at Thane station. It would take another 15 mins to reach to the venue. I was late by 15 min. Finally I reached at HOLI CROSS School and was shocked by looking at room where meeting had been started. There was big class-room which can occupy 70-80 guys and it was packed. There were 20-30 guys standing out side. I collected my appointment letter and managed to enter inside the class-room. There was no space to seat or stand, so I had to stand near to the stage.

“Fr. Trevor Miranda” was addressing to the volunteers. He is the director of REAP NGO. He was telling about the REAP that “Reach Education Action Programme (REAP) was born out of a need to combat illiteracy and ensure every child is in school. It was started in 1999 with 15 literacy centers and within a short period expanded its network to over 450 centers by 2005 covering more than 10,000 learners. These include children on the street, slums, rag-pickers, child laborers and tribal children. Every year about 3500 children are mainstreamed in formal education. REAP also networks with government schools to upgrade quality education and prevent drop-outs. REAP soon grew into a literacy movement for empowerment. Beginning with adult literacy, awareness programs, human rights, skill training, income generation and currently 100 Self-Help Groups, women are trained to be agents of social change in their community. From being penniless to deciders of their group’s income and marketing is a success story of self reliance and development. “(For more details about REAP, please visit to http://www.reapchild.org/ )

At the end of his speech, he asked everybody to fill the form and give it to him. He also wanted to give TEACH INDIA Badges to everybody who is going to teach to the children. So he requested me to hold BADGE bag and distribute it to everybody once he/she submitted the form. At the time of submission of form he had asked to the volunteer about his/her profile. I was standing with him so could able to listen to the conversation which he had with everybody. There were all kinds of people, few of them were young, few of them were from age range from 30-45, and few of them were retired employees as well. I was amazed by knowing the profile of the volunteers. They were Doctors, Engineers, Teachers, IT consultants, Medical Students, MBA Students, retired employees etc. I felt really good that these guys who are very much busy with their jobs in week-day were not only ready but also keen to teach to the under-privileged children. One guy asked to the Father, “What is the timing of the School?” Father said that 10 AM to 6 PM. He was dam depressed by hearing the timings. He said, “I am the MANAGER of retail operation of ULTRA-TECH and it would be very difficult to get two hrs in office timings. There is no point in taking this responsibility just for the sake of taking it. It is not just about taking classes. It is commitment; commitment towards society. If I do commit something I should adhere to it. “ I was very much impressed by his statement. It shows that how much people are serious towards this program.

One girl asked that “Does REAP provide the material which requires for teaching?” Father said that No, we provide only the children :) . Then she asked what if I bring it to the class. Father said that if you want you can. Somebody asked, “Can I take to the children outside sometime?” Father said, yes, please do. Children will be delighted by such picnics. But you will have to manage everything for that.

After submitting the form everybody was suppose to get his/her classes from the REAP representative. He tried to give suitable location for a class to volunteers so that they can avoid traveling. I got the class in Bhandup (W). I got the number of miss who manages the classes there. I will have to call her and get my class timing. I am really so exited for my first class.

It was really an amazing experience. I could see the lots of guys who were willing to do anything and everything to make this program successful.

I will be taking my classes soon and will keep you updating my experience.

Thanks,

Judgment

One day I was correcting one of my friend’s mistakes in his blog. Then I thought, am I eligible to do this? As I am not good at writing, how can I correct someone’s blog? But then, don’t you think its happening everywhere in day to day life?

Do we expect the umpire in the cricket to be a good batsman, baller or fielder? No, he should know only the rules, nothing else. There are lots of singing competitions happening on television. Not all the judges in that competition are good singers, right? Just take an example of “Indian Idols”. Farah Khan was one of the judges in that show. She is a choreographer/Director and not a singer, she doesn’t know A, B and C of singing. When she speaks you can easily notice her horrible voice. Can you imagine her signing? But still she judged the singing of the participants. Just take another example, we, common man, judge our leaders. Thought not everybody could perform well as a politician if given chance.

My mind always asks a question that whether Judge should be very good at things which he is going to judge? Or we should allow guys like Farah Khan to be judge of singing competition?

Please let me know what is your opinion on the Judgment?

TEACH INDIA - Let's learn to teach

Hi All,

TEACH INDIA is a nation building initiative from TOI that brings together children in need of education and people who can contribute a little time towards teaching them.


I liked their principle for this initiative. Principle says , "If you have the desire to teach, we will put you in touch with underprivileged children who are willing to learn".



Few days back, I registered myself for volunteer ship and amazed by looking at the responses to this initiative. The weekend batches were already allocated to the volunteers. There was only option for week-days batch. I have registered for Fridays batch but still I am waiting for acknowledgement from TOI. I always wanted to give something back to the society and I feel "TEACH INDIA" is the best opportunity for that.


There are lots of celebrities are also joining TEACH INDIA, few days back AMIR KHAN joined the team as an AMBASSADOR. According to Rahul Kansal, brand director, Times Group, Aamir was selected for his strong sense of ethics for a social cause. “He stands out as credible and honest,” says Priya Gupta, assistant vice-president, brand, The Times of India. The role that Aamir essayed in his last movie, Taare Zameen Par, teaching a dyslexic child and helping mentally challenged children, also went in his favor.


If you want to know more about TEACH INDIA, please visit to the site http://www.teach.timesofindia.com/index.aspx

-- Let's learn to teach