What can you do if you get Rs 500/- (approx US$10)?
Maybe nothing!... it is so little
Maybe everything!... it is so much!!
One of my students sent me this amazingly simple - yet unsettling - 2min clip by Nitin Das of Filmkaar (Our mission is to make 'Extraordinary films with Ordinary people'):
500:
The Global Economy, as we know/ believe/ are told, is in recession/ downturn/ meltdown....and the corporate and global leaders are trying their best to repair/contain the damage. Ordinary people around the world are told that everything will work-out fine with the new initatives where the government and industry leaders are working hand-in-hand... They will, so to speak, put the humpty-together again!
Of course, these are complex decisions, having wide-ranging impact on the national and global economy; most people don't know/understand how these decisions are taken.
Here are some examples!!
Fed Hires Failed Bank Executive
The Federal Reserve Bank is drawing jeers for hiring a former top executive from the now-defunct investment bank Bear Stearns to help it gauge the health of other banks.
The Federal Reserve Bank has hired the former head of risk management for Bear Stearns, which imploded this spring.
Michael Alix was head of risk management for Bear Stearns for two years until the institution imploded this spring, a victim of its (risky) subprime-mortgage related investments.
Last Friday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quietly announced it had hired Alix to advise it on bank supervision... [Read on...]
...On Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds
The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.
Even as their companies fail, Ford and GM CEOs continue lavish lifestyles.
The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.
All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.... [Read on...]
AIG Execs At Posh Resort After $85 Billion Bailout
News cameras watched as American International Group, or AIG, executives were once again living it up at a fancy resort in Phoenix.
Cocktail parties, limousines and dinner at a top Phoenix restaurant were part of their latest retreat.
AIG instructed the hotel to keep everything secret, no signs with its name were allowed.... AIG made significant efforts to disguise the conference, making sure there were no AIG logos or signs anywhere on the property.
An AIG spokesperson said there were no AIG markers in order to minimize signage costs and to lower the company's profile.
A hotel employee told ABC15, "We can't even say the word [AIG]."... [Read on...]
$500 wine at White House Financial Crisis Meeting?
The global economy may be undergoing a significant downturn, but the White House's dinner budget still appears flush with cash.
After all, world leaders who are in town to discuss the economic crisis are set to dine in style Friday night while sipping wine listed at nearly $500 a bottle.
According to the White House, tonight's dinner to kick off the G-20 summit includes such dishes as "Fruitwood-smoked Quail," "Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb," and "Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus."
To wash it all down, world leaders will be served Shafer Cabernet “Hillside Select” 2003, a wine that sells at $499 on Wine.com.... [Read on...]
Continuing from the previous posting:
Almost two decades back, in a 1989 essay, Francis Fukuyama had declared The End of History (a thesis which he later elaborated in a book titled The End of History and the Last Man). His basic constention was that with the dawn of Liberal Democracy and Free Market Capitalism, mankind had achieved the fundamentally most effective and the final stage of human government and method of organising the economy.
With this achivement, he stated, all competing ideologies have fallen, or will fall. He wrote:
"...What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such... That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
Such a momentus claim about the triumph of western (American) politico-economic system made Fukuyama something of a celebrity, and a poster-boy for the neo-liberals...
Recently, however, like Alan Greenspan's self-enlightenment that free-market capitalism is not flawless, Fukuyama too accepted that along with the Wall Street, the utopian vision of capitalism has also collapsed.
Excerpts from his article The Fall of America, Inc. (Newsweek, October 13th,'08)
"The implosion of America's most storied investment banks. The vanishing of more than a trillion dollars in stock-market wealth in a day. A $700 billion tab for U.S. taxpayers. The scale of the Wall Street crackup could scarcely be more gargantuan. Yet even as Americans ask why they're having to pay such mind-bending sums to prevent the economy from imploding, few are discussing a more intangible, yet potentially much greater cost to the United States — the damage that the financial meltdown is doing to America's "brand."
Ideas are one of our most important exports, and two fundamentally American ideas have dominated global thinking since the early 1980s... The first was a certain vision of capitalism—one that argued low taxes, light regulation and a pared-back government would be the engine for economic growth.... The second big idea was America as a promoter of liberal democracy around the world, which was seen as the best path to a more prosperous and open international order....
...But now the engine of that growth, the American economy, has gone off the rails and threatens to drag the rest of the world down with it. Worse, the culprit is the American model itself: under the mantra of less government, Washington failed to adequately regulate the financial sector and allowed it to do tremendous harm to the rest of the society."
Fukuyama goes on to justify that the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of unleashing the "free" market forces was appropriate in that historical context, but does accept that:
"...Like all transformative movements, the Reagan revolution lost its way because for many followers it became an unimpeachable ideology, not a pragmatic response to the excesses of the welfare state. Two concepts were sacrosanct: first, that tax cuts would be self-financing, and second, that financial markets could be self-regulating.
...Reaganomics introduced the idea that virtually any tax cut would so stimulate growth that the government would end up taking in more revenue in the end (the so-called Laffer curve). In fact, the traditional view was correct: if you cut taxes without cutting spending, you end up with a damaging deficit.... globalization masked the flaws in this reasoning for several decades. Foreigners seemed endlessly willing to hold American dollars, which allowed the U.S. government to run deficits while still enjoying high growth, something that no developing country could get away with.
...The second Reagan-era article of faith — financial deregulation — was pushed by an unholy alliance of true believers and Wall Street firms, and by the 1990s had been accepted as gospel by the Democrats as well. They argued that long-standing regulations... were stifling innovation and undermining the competitiveness of U.S. financial institutions. They were right — only, deregulation produced a flood of innovative new products like collateralized debt obligations, which are at the core of the current crisis.
....the downside of deregulation were clear well before the Wall Street collapse. In California, electricity prices spiraled out of control in 2000-2001 as a result of deregulation in the state energy market, which unscrupulous companies like Enron gamed to their advantage. Enron itself, along with a host of other firms, collapsed in 2004 because accounting standards had not been enforced adequately. Inequality in the United States rose throughout the past decade, because the gains from economic growth went disproportionately to wealthier and better-educated Americans, while the incomes of working-class people stagnated..."
Full article is available here
Two "free-market" evangilists retracted their beliefs this past week...though slightly too late!
Here is the first one:
WASHINGTON (AP): Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the current financial crisis has uncovered a flaw in how the free market system works and that has shocked him.
Greenspan told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that his belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders had proven in the latest crisis to be wrong.
Greenspan said he had made a "mistake" in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions.
Greenspan said that he had found "a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works."
This week, Tatas drew curtains to their Singur Nano project...
...This being a highly govt-subsidised project (ref: Nano-economics), this withdrwal perhaps also perhaps saved the exchequer (and therefore the taxpayers) around Rs.3000cr
The "public" discourse on this project (which ,unfortunately, has now got reduced to the MSM's rant, and the corporate press-releases) has typically been tinted with a with-us-or-against-us kind of argument, i.e., the terms of debate are: if you don't support this project, then you are against "industrialisation"/development.
As an old adage of public deception says:
"if you get them to ask wrong questions, you will never have to give the right answers."
So since no one has asked this:
"are/were there alternatives to the Singur model of land-acquisition/industrialisation?"
Actually there are a few which I could find:
This is bizzaire and hilarious...
The $700bn Wall Street bail-out proposal was defeated in the US House of Representatives last week. One of the criticisms - among many - of the proposal was that it hardly had anything for the Main Street taxpayer.
To be fair, the new version, which was approved by the US Senate later, has several provisions (e.g., disaster relief breaks, better deductions for costs of higher education, relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, etc.) which will help many ordinary americans...
These new provisions - which also add another $112bn to the bailout plans! - contain some other measures of tax relief, which... err.... well, here are some examples:
The recent Outlook Magazine - which carries the survey of India's Best B-Schools - has two very refreshing and insightful articles.
Excerpts:
1. The Matchstick Managers
The "Market" is supposed to "correct" itself - so we have been told... And a good government is one which governs/intervenes the least in the "free" market dynamics!
But then, last week - actually last few months - at least one government, which has championed/ branded/ enforced the cause of the "free" market, has been interfering with the "free market" - actually bailing out companies (Countrywide Financial, Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, etc. - many more to come)...
Here are some reflections/links - sent by some friends - on this changing paradigm...
It is still called a "flood" - which it is not!
It is a river - Kosi- which has changed its course by almost 30-degrees, inundating a huge chunk of land with water...
This may also be one of the largest mass-migration and rehabilitation challenge in the history of Independent India - we still do not know the numbers... 1 million... 3 millions... Who knows?!
Words/number/language, however, are linear; they do not convey the multi-dimensional reality and often fail to evoke the typically natural human empathic response... And therefore, these pictures to make this appeal:
..etc.
...maybe our/your chance to get out of The Logic of Inaction...and support those who are doing something to tackle the situation...
... And so:
Today is the "Teacher's Day... and an occasion to remember and thank those who continue to teach me...
Sometime back, somewhere else, I had written about On Being a Teacher...
...which were essentialy my musings on the dilemma about what "teaching/learning" is all about (still trying to figure that out!)
A few days later, an old student sent an invite on Orkut:
"...have attended some of ur utterly confusing n thot provokin lect."
Curious about what this meant, I wrote back:
"How can something be simultaneously utterly confusing and thought-provoking?"
...and got the response:
"there were times... when we were faced with ideas/beliefs completely opposite to what we had carried all along... so confusing because we kinda never expected that the opposite side ever existed or was appreciated.... Thought provoking because then later we end up appreciating (or at least start looking at the logic) for all sides of the argument."
That made sense to me - and I learned something about teaching/learning from her mail...
Today, among the many heart-warming mails/messages which one gets on the Teacher's Day, one which captured this teching/learning matrix, had this quote about learning/teaching in these verses from Rainer Maria Rilke:
Live the questions now
Perhaps you will then, gradually,
Without noticing it,
Live along some distant day
Into the answer.
Like him, I also "gradually, without noticing it, live... into the answer" through these myriad messages and interactions.
So this post is just to say thanks to my many teachers - many of who sat through my classes...
