The Death Spiral beckons ...

Bloomberg reported that as of August 10, 2011, 186 US-based financial services companies traded for less than 60 percent of their book value, or common shareholder equity, including Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, AIG and SunTrust Banks Inc. Together, they had a market capitalization of $300.5 billion, compared with $686.4 billion of book value. This means that a fall in their share prices to this extent (40%) is well nigh inevitable. 

How likely? These banks are very, very vulnerable. For example, earlier this week, AIG filed a suit accusing Bank of America of securities fraud; demanding damages of $10Bn. This sent the BofA stock down 20%, in addition to the bloodbath that the Dow Jones has experienced in the week after August 2, and the S&P downgrade. Its market cap stood reduced to $68.6Bn. Compare this with just one year-end intangible item on its 2010 Balance Sheet: Goodwill is shown at $73.8Bn (see p.130, Table XIII. See also Footnote 1 below)  – forget the rest of its balance sheet, BofA would have the world believe that this intangible item alone, built up from excess over book value paid for its past acquisitions, is worth more than the entire BofA is worth on Wall Street. How many will believe this, and for how long? There will always be the small boy who shouts, “The Emperor is not wearing any clothes!”. After reading Page 114-115 of its 2010 Annual Report, any accountant will understand that BofA will have to write down goodwill significantly (it wrote down $12.4Bn in 2010) - and to keep the shareholders' equity intact after this write-down, it would need to raise more equity. The dilution this would almost certainly drag the share price lower. Which will require them to raise more equity at even lower prices ... leading to a death spiral.

What about the demand for financial sector shares? All but non-existent. Retail interest was never very visible in the US in equities; now it has disappeared. Institutional investors are worried about what write-down of such intangibles would do to the Balance Sheet – and will stay away from any further issues in sufficient number as to make a public issue a very big gamble that could very easily fail. So the only solution – a government bailout wherein the financial institutions that still bear the TBTF tag (Too Big To Fail) are partly nationalized. Expect this to happen in the not too distant future, when the pressure of reporting numbers that have no relation to stock market prices forces them to look for ways of raising their net worth to blunt the edge of the writedowns that are inevitable already. 
What if the US Government finds it politically unpalatable or impossible to rescue these firms with a QE3? Refer to the title of this post! 




Footnote 1 referred to above: 
Table XIII on p.130, and Table XII and Table XIV before and after it, were the result of BofA's attempt to dress up their Income Statement and Balance Sheet, and the justifications for using these were on page 40. If they had followed GAAP alone, the Tables and the explanation on p.40 would be unnecessary. They used "non-GAAP measures" - euphemism for accounting legerdemain to make accounts smell sweeter, euphemism for which is "additional clarity". The footnote to Table XIII reads: Presents reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial measures. We believe the use of these non-GAAP measures provides additional clarity in assessing the results of the Corporation. Other companies may define or calculate non-GAAP measures differently.

What goes around, comes around ....

The US, IMF, and the World Bank have lectured India on the need for fiscal discipline, how to allow market forces full rein, and allow businesses and companies to close down rather than support them in difficult times, which is what the Government was wont to do. The US have not taken their own advice, on the specious plea of "Too Big to Fail", and bailed out top investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies.  The IMF and the World Bank conveniently forgot to lecture the US for the same folly - of letting deficits go haywire.
What goes around, comes around ....
The UK Press had a great time, roundly criticising the organising gaffes of the Organising Committee for the Commonwealth Games. They preened over the fact that with one year to go, their preparations for the Olympics were ahead of schedule. In less than a week after this, the London riots have exposed the seamier side of the recession-hit economy - about how thin the veneer of civilisation is, even in what is considered one of the more civilised countries in the world. All it requires is a little financial discomfort in enough people to spark riots, arson and looting. And now, there are worries about how secure London really is, with a few sports ties being called off due to the riots. Who knows if the 3rd test between India and England will happen now? If you think such rioting is uncommon, see this from November 2010 and this protest in March 2011 pushing for greater profligacy from a Government that already has racked up a cumulative deficit of 4 times the country's GDP. 

What goes around, comes around ....
The BBC calls the London arsonists and looters as "protesters" - a cute euphemism - but coyly refrain from saying what they are protesting against. A far cry from what they call helpless victims in unmanned drone attacks and in cross-fire between the "Coalition" forces seen as interlopers and those protesting their continued meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan  - "insurgents". See synonyms of insurgents here and judge for yourself how many of these terms apply to those perpetrating violence in London more accurately than "protesters".  And then Google this phrase: "Insurgents Iraq Afghanistan BBC". Orwell's 1984 is well and truly upon us. Long live Doublespeak!

The US Debt Crisis: What does it mean for the World?

Let us do some crystal-ball gazing. 

1. The US debt crisis would certainly have spooked central bankers the world over - they will already have stopped thinking of the dollar as impregnable. If dollar is not reliable as a reserve currency, what is? A few years ago, the Euro would have been seen as a viable alternative. No longer. The Euro and the Dollar are locked in a waltz on a downward sloping dance floor. 
2. No single alternative will emerge. Over a period, before the US gets hit with its next politico-financial crisis (see para 7 below for a more detailed explanation), central bankers of smaller countries will move out of the dollar, eventually maintaining (maybe) no more than 3-4 weeks' US$ transactions worth of dollars. China will do it slowest of all, because they will get hit the most if they were to enter the market as sellers - China is an 8,000-pound gorilla in this arena. Three alternatives come to mind: (a)  more bilateral, regional and broader multilateral initiatives will emerge, for transacting in currencies other than the USD. (b) Gold will be a natural alternative for both, central bankers and the population in general, and (at least in dollar terms), gold will soon zoom past $2,000 per ounce though the present price, an all-time record, (at the time of writing) was at $1,637 in the spot market. (c) some strong currencies like will emerge as temporary havens, for example, Swiss francs.
3. Rating agencies will have to revisit their sovereign rating norms. Currently, it is unthinkable in their models to question the rating of AAA to the US. The rating is maintained even though the country is (by their President's own admission on prime-time television) four days away from default. India's rating was junk grade in 1991, when India teetered on the brink of default, having forex reserves to pay for three weeks of oil imports.  Today, besides the US, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy (all these countries are either on the brink of default or have been bailed out at least once) are rated higher than India in Euromoney's 2011 country ratings. This already looks so untenable as to damage the reputation of the rater, rather than the country that is rated low! What's worse, rather than downgrade countries, Moody's created three sub-categories within countries with the same rating: resistant (the highest), resilient and vulnerable. So you have countries considered vulnerable in the sense that there is high probability that it may default on its debt. Yet, they have a credit rating of AAA. A higher rating means that companies in these countries can raise money more cheaply from anywhere in the world. 
4. So it is ridiculous that world-beating companies from India have to pay a higher rate of interest on their borrowings when: 
5. • both, the country and its companies boast of far better than average financials and economic projections,
   • very stable Government and political establishment, where successive Governments headed by different political parties have demonstrated continuing commitments to reform and globalization, 
   • the world's most transparent and efficient secondary capital markets (with T+2 settlement cycle), 
   • healthiest banking sector compared to almost any country in the Western world, overseen by the world's most competent central bankers, 
   • higher GDP growth rates and projections than most countries in the world of any consequence bar China,  
   • and world-beating companies and innovators that are major contenders in every major acquisition of any consequence in almost every country in the world.
6. About gold, there is something strange going on: the record prices are bringing people in Europe to the jewelry stores, selling their necklaces and earrings. In India, the reverse is happening. Indians are buying up more gold than before, even at never-before prices! Make no mistake, the Indians are the wise guys. 
7. The US debt crisis is worse than one thinks. The US Government has gotten used to record fiscal deficits. There is no way they will mend their ways. Even if the August 2 crisis is averted, President Obama himself has said that the current law raising the limit will only enable the US to pay for what they have already spent. Nobody seems to notice, especially the sovereign credit raters, that this is the classic definition of a debt trap - struggling to borrow to pay for what you have already spent. Before long, the US will need more limits, to pay for the deficit they are already building up. Obama will end up specializing in going to the House to ask for more money to pay for his predecessor's follies and his own inability to entirely reverse them. A simple statistic is telling: From April 2010 till today, the average per capita GDP has gone up by $1,100 with rising unemployment ("jobless growth") while US per capita National Debt has gone up by $5,200. 
8. China has to manage the other end of the sword - while the US's declining influence will mean its rise, economically, it will hurt more than any other country save the US, from a declining dollar, because they have trillions of them in their coffers.
9. I was amused to read that Apple Inc is today more cash-rich than the US Government, the most powerful Government on Earth!  

Tight Coupling of Financial Markets

Nassim Nicholas Taleb made famous the concept of "tight coupling" to explain why there were sudden, interlocking failures in different markets or sudden crashes in prices of securities.
A recent example highlights and illustrates this problem beautifully. An obscure book on genetics of a fly, The Making of a Fly, created a record on Amazon.com when the price quoted for a used copy of this out-of-print book went up to beyond $23 Mn (shipping $3 extra) as recently as in April this year! (At the time of writing, the price was down to $65) 
What happened? 
Apparently, two booksellers who listed this book as among their offerings, had an algorithm (i.e., a computer program) that quoted the price of the books, esp. used books, they offered for sale, so that the price that was quoted was never very far from the market price. Quite independently, the algorithm both used took, among other things, the price quoted by the other as a benchmark, and raised it by about 10%. So, effectively these algorithms competed with each other to set a higher price! It is easy, knowing this, to understand how this caused the price to spiral beyond reason. With no human being checking the price quoted, the price soon went beyond the dictates of reason, with no stopper!
Exactly the same thing happens in stock markets as well. This is especially true in the so-called High Frequency Trading (HFT) firms. Today, well over 70% of the trades by volume as well as value in the US are carried out by HFT firms' computers that initiate orders based on information received electronically, before human traders can even read and process the information they observe, leave alone decide and implement the decision. 
Algorithmic trading, or algo trading, or simply black box trading, is also used to divide large trades into several smaller trades in order to manage market impact, and risk. Sell side traders, such as market makers and some hedge funds, provide liquidity to the market, generating and executing orders automatically. Algo trading is also used almost every investment strategy for market making, arbitrage, or pure speculation (including trend following). That is the "good side" of algo-trading.
It is very common for traders to also put in "stop-loss" limits in algorithms - the point to which, if the price falls, a sell order at market is implemented. This is intended to cap the downside of any bet taken. However, there is a major side-effect of this: When prices are falling, when stop-losses are triggered, the number of shares being sold sharply rises - which results in the prices falling further, which then sets off a fresh wave of stop-loss orders ... and so on, till you have a price crash that nobody can stop, because it all happens faster than the human mind can comprehend and act on! This is analogous to how we get pile-ups on high-speed superhighways, but much lesser scale of accidents on very crowded roads.
That is the reason why, today, sudden single-day (or even single-hour) falls in several markets all over the world are unsettling, but alas, not infrequent occurrences.
In the next few days, I will be writing more on algorithmic trading. Look out for more!

Some scary statistics about the US - revisited

In April, 2010, I had blogged about some scary statistics about the US economy. I revisited these statistics, and here are the results. While everyone is absorbed about whether the Republicans will agree to increase the US debt ceiling, let us revisit some statistics that looked scary to me in April, 2010. Let us see what has happened since then.

• US National Debt has gone up from 89% of US GDP to 98% of GDP.
• Total US Public Debt stands at $14.293 Trillion; by August, it will touch $14.3 Trillion, which is the current ceiling.
• US GDP per citizen has actually gone up by a little over $1,100, in spite of increasing unemployment numbers.
• However, US National Debt per citizen has gone up by $5,200 in the same period.
• US Debt held by foreign countries has gone up from $3.875 Trillion to $4.584 Trillion.
• US external debt to GDP ratio has crossed 100%. The equivalent figure currently for India is 21%. For the UK and France, this ratio is at a staggering 388% and 208% respectively.
• Assets per citizen has gone up by $8,900 while Liabilities per citizen has gone up by a staggering $674,000. Similarly, Interest burden per citizen is up from $1,493 to $11,664.
• There has been winding down of about 5% of currency and credit derivative exposures, but a much longer road remains to be traversed.
• All-in-all, a dismal report card. For a Nobel Peace Prize-winning President who has got the US involved in a third senseless aggression in Libya, and so far failed to unwind its involvement in two other messy wars it has been engaged in for more than a decade. 

	8 Apr, 2010	26 Jul, 2011
US National Debt to GDP (%):	89.12	98.18
US National Debt per citizen ($):	41381	46619
US GDP per citizen ($):	46381	47488
US Total Debt per citizen ($):	180484	176113
US Personal Debt per citizen ($):	53787	51441
US Interest Burden per citizen ($):	1493	11664
US Total Assets per citizen ($):	234181	243086
US Total Liabilities per citizen ($):	350054	1026974
US Gross Domestic Product ($):	14.333 Trillion	14.809 Trillion
US Debt held by Foreign Countries ($):	3.875 Trillion	4.584 Trillion
US Government Bailout ($):	6.387 Trillion
Currency and Credit Derivatives ($):	648.975 Trillion	611.499 Trillion

• One point about India: Gold is a bulwark against uncertainty. Indian Government's holding of gold currently is higher than all countries save 9; if the private hoard of gold in Indian families is taken into account, India's gold holdings would be at least twice that of any other country on Earth. Gold prices are at their record high of $1,600 and John Paulson (the hedge fund manager who made a killing in 2008 by betting that the sub-prime crisis would result in CDO/CMO defaults) says it will touch $4,000 an ounce in the next 3-5 years.

An old haunt gone!

I squirmed unhappily when I read today that the New & Secondhand Bookshop at Dhobi Talao has closed down. This had been a regular haunt for me during my college days, when, unfortunately, when I coveted so many books in their collection, I made do with lovingly browsing them because my pockets were almost always empty in those days. I squirmed because of the thought that crossed my mind - that my inability to provide them custom when I could afford it partly contributed to their closure. While I regularly visit Strand, either at their flagship store off PM Road, somehow, I never did visit NSB since the time I graduated. Yet, the sheer joy I experienced when browsing for hours without a penny in my pocket to buy any book, was enough to immediately evoke pure nostalgia tinged with regret when I read the news of its closure.
I also remembered my uncle, Chaitanya D Haldipur, who had first pointed out NSB to me when I was probably still in school - he was also the first person I knew who undertook a project to plot our Family Tree - a task which I had the pleasure of completing last year, culminating in a 76-page self-published book. I was glad to remember him in the preface to that book (p6). I am equally happy to remember him now, as I write, for pointing out NSB to me. The lifelong love affair with books was nourished by my browsing experiences at NSB. I now realize that my uncle had subtly changed my life in more than one way. One of his daughters, Swati, now settled in the US, used to write a scrumptious blog called Khane bhi do yaaro till she got pre-occupied with bringing up her first child. Swati, if you read this, please know that at least one fan is waiting for you to resume writing soon!  
106 years is a long time to run a bookstore - it was run by at least 3 full generations of the Vishrams. My thanks to the family that ran this unique institution - you have played a great role in my life, and I am sure, in the lives of many others, by inculcating a lifelong passion for books.  

Which country does each Indian state compare with?

We know that we add an Australia every month to our population.

We know that each state of India is big enough to be a separate country by itself. Like each vertical in an Infosys or TCS could be a respectable-sized company itself.

But The Economist has done a great job bringing such comparisons alive. We know now that Maharashtra's GDP is as much as Singapore; its per capita GDP compares well with Sr Lanka's and its population with Mexico. Karnataka's GDP is as big as Coratia's; per capita GDP as much as the Phillipines and population as much as Italy's.

Enjoy this interactive map and gain insight into relative size of India's states and other countries.

Yeh hai Mumbai Meri Jaan

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When I was in my teens, I remember thinking how unsightly the TV atennae were, on the terraces (and sometimes outside the windows) of almost every building. Worse, kites and kite strings would be dangling from several of them, adding to the unsightliness.


In my teens, there was one TV Tower, 300 metres tall, that could be seen from almost anywhere in Mumbai. It was like the Eiffel Tower of Mumbai.  I imagined hundreds of such towers springing up in remote corners of India, as I heard news on Doordarshan (TV and Doordarshan were then synonymous) about one new TV station opening almost every day in the early 1970s. Today, we can hardly see the Mumbai TV Tower, dwarfed as it is by tall buildings in all directions. Today, most of Mumbai's arterial roads have become 2-storeyed most of the way, with multiple levels in some places like Kings' Circle.


As I grew up, and technology touched our lives in many different ways, we noticed huge cable TV dish antennae on a few building roofs. I remember thinking as a young college-going student, that it looked so sci-fi-like and quite out of tune with the times.


A few years on, these have given way to DTH dish antennae and mobile phone towers. Equally unsightly, I can assure the younger generation. With the additional ability (?) to roast our brains if we go too near the towers too often, and for too long. However, by now, we have forgotten how to fly kites; indeed, only a small minority of kids have ever flown kites themselves. So, there are no faded paper kites stuck to these towers - anyway, these towers are no longer a few storeys high.


Up to my teens, I gazed wonderstruck  at Usha Kiran, a 26-storeyed skyscraper (the first time I heard this word, I remember thinking it to be very appropriately descriptive). Today, Usha Kiran is barely visible on the skyline of Mumbai, what with 70-storeyed residential towers, and 14-storeyed car parks springing up.


In a few years, we will see the first 100+ storeyed building in Mumbai. Situated off a road so narrow (cannot be made broader because of flyovers already built). Was just imagining what life would be like for the 101st storey residents.


A 10-minute wait for the elevator, followed by a 5-minute downward journey in the elevator that leaves you yawning to open up your ears. This 1,000-foot drop is followed by a 5-minute walk to the car in the multi-storeyed car park. The ultra-rich resident then gets into a state-of-the-art 2,500-cc engine car whose cost matches the cost of the residence he has bought himself, and drives to the gate, where he joins a queue of other residents' cars, all waiting to join the traffic outside. He takes 25 minutes for the 3 kms to his place of work, never once going beyond the 2nd gear of this 7-gear monster with a low-pitched growl. The higher gears are for use on weekends only. Or for return journeys on nights out, if one is not drunk. That too, only upto Gear 5 for a few seconds at a time. At home, they cannot open windows on both sides of the living room, because the sheer force of the cross-ventilation breeze might easily suck and carry with it some of the Swarovski display pieces into the void of the city down below. (Who knows, some of these homes may even feature oxygen tubes and masks for asthmatics, due to lower levels of oxygen in the air at that height. Future builders may offer this as a unique amenity!) Worse, they will still be low enough to be able to hear the blare of the Bhangra and Disco music in the slums, 100-storeys below, and 1 km away as the crow flies, if they keep a window open.


Yeh Hai Mumbai, Meri Jaan!
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Passing of a grand-aunt

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Today morning, my grand-aunt passed away. If you ask me, how close I was to her, I am not sure. But if you ask me how close she was to me, I have a different, emphatic answer. 


She was unobtrusive, quiet and soft-spoken. She was small-built, being less than 5' tall, and frail and delicate, like a fine, porcelain doll. She never uttered a harsh word ever, to anyone, or so it seemed to me. The only thing large about her was her heart. She was kindness personified. Which meant that for over 60 years now, their spacious apartment has been home to anyone from the extended family visiting Mumbai, and staying even for months and years, sometimes, no questions asked or answered. 


Many, like me, felt close to her, because she was always there, for anyone who wanted to meet her, be with her. And now that she won't be there any more, it feels like a part of my emotional skyline has disappeared. I do not remember feeling like this even when my Mother  and before her, my Father passed away, sad though I felt then. I felt emotionally strengthened when I saw my grand-uncle take it stoically and philosophically, at age 101. "Everyone has to face this in life", he said. He continues to be an exemplar.  


About 2 weeks back, on hearing that she was not keeping too well, I, with my family, visited her, an hour's drive away. My teenaged children, like most of their age, do not particularly like visiting relatives. But visiting her was special, for them too.  They wanted to accompany us, said so, and did so. Not that they even understood what she spoke. She usually spoke in Konkani, my mother-tongue, whereas they are not comfortable in that tongue. English and Tamil is what they are comfortable with. Yet, they just wanted to be there.  


She was very expansive and inclusive in her blessings: May you be happy and succeed in whatever you do, wherever you may be! she intoned softly. She was devout to a fault, till the very end. 


In law, a person is said to have attained a particular age on the day before his/her birthday. By that logic, my grand-aunt and grand-uncle completed 75 years of married life today. They tied the knot on 29 May, 1936. That was really way back - when my father was a 4-year old, and my mother yet to be born. This union, that brought forth three children, but extended a protective umbrella for perhaps 100 others from the extended family, is destined to shine in our extended family's memory as an unusually rich and productive union. Not because of its sheer longevity, but because of the rich tapestry they wove out of the threads of family, keeping them together for over half a century as pater familias and mater familias. Tomorrow, probably 100 or more relatives would have gathered to wish both of them and seek their blessings. Instead, many more will probably make it there a day early, to pay their last respects to one of them. Indeed, their youngest son was on a 2-day visit to be with them for the 75th marriage anniversary celebrations, which will, sadly enough, now not happen. 


When I last met her about 2 weeks back, she was very talkative - to the extent that she felt out of breath. She bemoaned the fact that she came to know of my mother's passing away over a year after the event. This fact was hidden from them by all of us, knowing how close my mother (their nephew's wife) was to both of them, to spare them the sadness and possible shock. In that period, she never failed to ask after my mother whenever I met her.  


A brief statistical note:
Recently, I researched a bit on the Web and found that my grand-uncle and grand-aunt could lay claim to a rare distinction - that of being the oldest living couple in India reckoned by the sum of their ages. This sum, as of today, was a staggering 193 years and 184 days, when their union came to an end. In deference to the wishes of the immediate family I did not publicize this fact earlier. Indeed, they are probably the second oldest ever in India, second only to Philipose and Sosamma Thomas of Kerala. Sosamma passed away in 2006 at which time their combined age was 201 years and 198 days. 


Revati Atmaram Haldipur, R.I.P.
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The Death of Privacy

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A big hullaballoo has been made recently about the lack of privacy because of your iPhone storing data that can give away your movements. This is as nothing when compared to the collection of data about your life that can be reconstructed by collating the data that telecom companies possess and store about our movements, and the public domain data of our social network interactions (read, Facebook, Twitter et al). More ...

Osama bin laden is dead, announces Obama http://goo.gl/4ezqe

Chemicals in what we eat

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Recently, the guy who wallpapered my office told me that the gum they use is CMC powder mixed with water. CMC powder is also used in making icecream; and since he came to know of that, he has stopped eating icecream! 
50 grams of CMC diluted by more than a full bucket of water made enough gum to wallpaper the entire office! 
More on CMC powder is available here - it is a man-made gum with the technical name Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose Gum. A companion piece on artificial strawberry flavouring - you can read here. And a little more about milk.
We eat so many chemicals that our bodies don't even decompose fast enough after burial. See this article.

The Murky Business of Sovereign Ratings

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Feb 2011 ratings show United States and United Kingdom at Ranks 15 & 16, with India at Rank 56. Norway and Switzerland are at the top of the table (no surprise here). The surprises are Italy (30^th) (Its debt is 116% of GDP! Its financial mess is well known), Spain (34^th), Ireland (43^rd) (which has asked for a bailout package from IMF in Nov 2010), Iceland (46^th) (which went bankrupt and has twice refused to bear losses of their private banks in 2008) and Portugal (44^th) being ahead of India. Greece is the only one out of the so-called PIIG countries that is below India (65^th). One can quarrel with these ratings, but I suspect that won't help much. More ...

Sathya Sai Baba departs

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Expect some sleazy stuff of palace intrigue and financial misdoings to come out, now that Sathya Sai Baba has departed, leaving no clear successor or succession plan, but huge wealth and assets meant for public charity. The rumbles began even as the Baba was on his deathbed.


One prosaic, non-spiritual lesson we can learn from this is, WRITE YOUR WILL. Howsoever rich or poor you are. So that your heirs do not fight or do not have too much trouble with paperwork where nominations are not recorded, or where property title deeds are mortgaged, or where your property may need to be sold in order to share proceeds.
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Linux at 20, and My Personal Experience

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Linux has turned twenty, though there might be more than one known "birthday".  
A few months back, I moved my whole office progressively to Linux. 84% have Ubuntu and the rest have Fedora. Since then, I have moved almost everything to Linux and OpenOffice, StarOffice or LibreOffice (I have all three whose files are perfectly interchangeable. 
Recently I read with pleasure the following paragraph: 
Linux runs everything from air traffic control systems to infotainment systems to nuclear submarines. Linux also powers the $10-billion CERN super collider, the special effects in Avatar. Zemlin also pointed out that Linux-powered stock markets now trade “72% of the world’s equity trades in 2010.” This, I might add, was before the London Stock Exchange went to Linux earlier this year. And of course, there’s been a “complete inversion” in supercomputing. In ten years, the top 500 supercomputers have switched from 96% Unix to 96% Linux. (taken from here). 
Looking back, I think I made the right decision. I had hardly any teething troubles,  got my assembled OS free machines much cheaper, and now my employees actually prefer Linux because of its speed and its cool graphics. They also regularly raid the Ubuntu software store and use nifty little and large applications for a variety of purposes. We have a script that automatically backs up contents of each machine in the office, including the Windows partition on 2 hard disks, onto a 2TB hard disk every day between 10 am and 12 noon.
Large part of the thanks for this transition are due to Nandan Bhat who runs Linux-based certification training courses from Novell and Red Hat in my city. My only gripe is that our heavy-duty printer, a scanner-cum-printer from Canon, has a Linux driver that for some reason does not work. So occasionally, for long print jobs, I need to switch one machine to Windows.
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Google out-googled - and that too by an Indian company!

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Google features quite often in this blog for all the interesting things it does. However, here is an offering that out-googles Google - and that too, on GMail and Google Apps! What's more, this quiet, really useful product (you will really be missing out on something if you don't check this out) has been developed by an Indian company, headquartered, where else, but in Bangalore!  More ...

Libyan Mess: The Awkward Position Obama Finds Himself In

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Why does a woman agree to sleep with a known serial womanizer? Because she naively believes that she will be the woman who will cure the poor man of his womanizing ways. 
Why does a leader of a republic wedded to democracy attack nations run by despots? Because he believes (whether naively or not) that he will be the one who can liberate the poor (actually rich!) country from the despot, and introduce a happy-ever-after democracy. More ...

The NDM Virus controversy is back!

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The recent controversy over the NDM-1 bacterium a.k.a "superbug" is important - any drug-resistant infection needs to be stamped out, wherever in the world it occurs. So while I am not suggesting that the findings of the researchers are wrong, I am suggesting that the focus on New Delhi and India almost exclusively is as a result of a deep game played by Big Pharma.
Naming the bacterium after New Delhi and conducting follow-up surveys, taking samples surreptitiously from the Indian sub-continent, and warning the rest of the world about this "superbug" from India is an insidious game being played by Big Pharma to detract attention from the fact that the same bacterium was discovered being repeatedly introduced into the UK from the US and 3 other European countries, before it was discovered in a Swedish patient transiting India en route to the UK. Given below is this story, which no  newspaper has so far written about. More ...

Google's mother-of-all business model

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Google makes its money from search. We all know that. But how many of us know the crushing blow that Google is delivering to several small and big companies in several industries? We are not speaking of the rude shocks that thousands of small businesses get from displacement from their usual place in search listings when Google tweaks its search engine algorithm. More ...

The Libyan Mess: An American Opinion Leader's Viewpoint

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What I have feared in earlier blog posts - that US involvement in Libya is ill-considered and can turn into another Iraq - is coming true much, much quicker than I feared.

Look at this. A real mess is in the making!

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