What Am I

The first thing that one can observe after a series of very high inflationary periods is, higher denominition notes. Recently Zimbabwe launched 100 million zimbabwean dollar bills owing to the very high inflation which is hovering around 165000%. Imagine the situation, where each loaf of bread costs around 16 million zimbabwean dollars. The currency depreciation made the currency trade at around $1 = 200 million zimbabwean dollars. This lead me to a search for the world's largest denominition bills: To begin with, a) The largest denomination banknote ever officially issued for circulation was in 1946 by the Hungarian National Bank for the amount of 100 quintillion pengo, (100,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 10 to the power of 20). The Post-WWII hyperinflation of Hungary holds the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate ever — 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 1016%) for July, 1946, amounting to prices doubling every fifteen hours!! b) Largest bank note with zeroes ...

Couple of weeks ago I said these statements in a rally. Guess who am I? Iam running the country for the past 28 years, after some heroic efforts. In all these years of rule I hardly did anything for the economy, but I've ensured that I had all the luxuries. Now Iam 84 years old, but still Iam eager about power. Because of lot of international pressure I agree to conduct elections...My main opponent is a trade union leader and has been the strongest critic of mine for a long time...looking at the situation I predicted that it might be a landslide win for the opponent, so I went ahead and started annihilating all the supporters of the opponent party. I even scared the people who were willing to vote to the opponent member. In order to act as a mediator I invited the prime minister of the powerful country in the continent, who is the only supporter of mine and ensured that any troubles are overcome. In spite of all the efforts, in the elections held in March' 08 I lost the electio...

"Lets not burden our children.." these are the quotes of Mr. Manmohan singh after the fuel price hike declared yesterday. It is a basic common sense that all the oil companies will be dead without these price hikes. Not that these price hikes will lift them from the deep losses, the amount of direct subsidies atleast will come down. The imminent affect of the fuel price hike will be felt by the normal consumer is two ways: a) The increased price per litre b) The quality of the fuel One may wonder, how does increasing the fuel price hike affect the quality of the fuel. Because, the increase in the fuel price hike occurred on Petrol & Diesel but the prices of Kerosene remain UNTOUCHED. The arbitrage value can be understood from the below graph. This will provide more impetus to the petrol aduleteration whose victims are the millions of vehicles, the environmental pollution and the famous Mr. Manjunath of IIML who was brutally murdered because he suspended the license of pet...

This title has got no relation with the movie Water :) I guess one would have already guessed what I intend to speak...It is about China's strategic interest in Tibet.... WATER There is already a saying that the future wars are not likely about oil but about the basic requirements of food and water. I was trying to understand the reasons China would be so interested in Tibet...Agreed all the countries are bent upon acquiring as much geographical area and hence as many natural resources as possible, but Tibet especially stands in a very strategic location. 1/3rd of the World's population directly or indirectly depends on Tibet..Guess how? Almost all the big rivers in Asia originate from Tibet, be it the Yangtze or the Yellow River or the Brahmaputra or the Indus or the origins of the Ganges all take its roots from Tibet. This is the image showcasing the rivers around Tibet: The Yangtze river alone is such big and has such huge potential that the world's biggest dam i...

There was an interesting artcile by Thomas.L.Friedman, The World is Flat guy.... He quoted that one of the other depressions that the world is facing is democratic depression. He quotes that the economic freedom decreases with the increasing oil prices. It is certainly vis-a-vis the countries like Russia, Venezuela etc. who are oil exporting nations but are not under democracy. The article arose certain questions... But is democracy a matter of concern now? Is china a democracy with hardly any press freedom or verbal freedom? In the countries who boast about their democractic standards what are the achievements received? I may sound a communist, but Cuba has acheived somethings like near 100% child nutrition, education for every child etc. that most democratic biggies could not acheive? So, what is so significant about democratic recession? There are countries which are certainly sending grotesque examples like the Zimbabwean president, who has ensured that the elections become void..s...

The genesis of sub prime-crisis is the riskier credit policies provided for the housing sector in US. Considering the existing situation, I wanted to know what is the situation prevailing in US regarding the housing scenarios As can be seen from the above image, the housing prices in US have been steadily increasing until 2005. It took almost 3 decades for the prices to reach the 1975 level. But since 2005 the decline has been so steep that in less than 3 years the prices have reached levels below the 1970 prices. In the fiscal year 2007-08 alone the prices have declined by more than 15%. With this steep decline, the amount of investment that goes into the housing sector has obviously reduced a lot. This is reflected in the graph below: As can be seen above the decline in the investment in the housing sector has decreased by around 25% and that the contribution of the housing sector to the GDP has also declined drastically. This in turn means that the employment in that sector has de...

There is a saying at our place that one is not able to take care of himself, but has started to protect the neighborhood. But it would be ironical if the neighborhood agrees that he can take care of them. Similar situation happened with European Union and US. Rather, I should say, US is pushed into this deal by Mr. Bush who has had a terrible 8 years of near deplorable foreign relations. US wants to keep a missile shield over All the NATO countries as a protection to any future attacks. Earlier the EU wasn't convinced about it, but under the existing circumstances, where US makes everyone believe that Iran may attack, eventually EU fell for the trap and approved the defense shield. I bet that most of the contracts for the defense shield will be awarded to US companies, and since US is heavily dependent on the performance of their military, this will certainly prove to be beneficial to their economy which otherwise is in doldrums. It would be interesting to see how Russia and especi...