Monday, August 17, 2009

Morning News (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo): August 17, 2009

In this part of the world, today is New Year’s Day. Wish you a very Happy New Year.

In today’s paper, H1N1 is already competing with SRK for attention. For more information regarding swine flu, please read the article in the Economic Times titled “What India should do to combat swine flu”. Also, please check the Ministry of Health site which seems to be dedicated to this (I presume the homepage is still being connected to this – on the top there is a wobbling title “Influenza A (H1N1) (SWINE FLU)” but I could not find any links when I last visited the site). As for the SRK episode at Newark airport, I am trying to imagine the scene: an immigration official at Newark facing a computer screen with the list of suspicious names – Jane Doe, John Smith, Quick Gun Murugan, Khan, Obama, Singh, Swapna,…

Hurrah! Dravid is back in the team. I have stopped counting the number of times he has had to return or be considered once again. I do not believe in heroes and the old order has to change yielding place to new. But, with some people it seems safe to assume that they will hang their boots when they know their time is up. Till that time, let’s enjoy their art. It was so for people like Steffi and Sampras and I believe it will be so for Federer, Tendulkar and Dravid.

It is tough not to comment on the world of finance. The latest FOMC statement says “economy is leveling out” – now, what is the nature of the apparent fixed point: minima or inflexion point? If you have not heard about the guy who gets a nine-figure salary in USD (will you settle for a nine-figure salary in JPY?), please read the article in WSJ about Andrew Hall. A few small banks have started closing shop, some are guessing that commercial real estate might cause the next crisis and there is just old news regarding big banks like Goldman Sachs and Nomura from Rolling Stones and Times Online respectively.

I still keep searching for news/columns that I want to read.

No comments:

Post a Comment