Blame it on the … Chindians!!

Highly opinionated! That’s what I am.

One of those opinions being – The west is too obsessed with itself, and knows too little about the rest of the world. What they think they know, is surprisingly inaccurate and misinformed.

Only to prove this point, the western media and the officials of Public or Private Service keep going on and on and on about how China and India are responsible for all the ills that the world is facing today.

On the Commodity pricing front – They keep going on about how the fast increasing demands of foodgrains and energy fuels is igniting the price of commodities all over. Of course, some bit of it is our contribution, but… but… but…

a) I am sure speculators and all these traders on energy and commodity exchannges have a HUGE part to play

b) Actually, per capita consumption of foodgrains is HARDLY going up in India, even in comparison to the US. Especially if they consider how much they are now converting into biofuel etc. Some big names, who keep passing the buck to Chindia like the man known as Bush, just love leading the public down false paths. Obviously he has all the information and all the data… but of course the American people like to hear that someone else is responsible for all the so-called misery.

On the energy and fuels front, of course there is growth in India, but does anyone BOTHER to check what is the per-capita consumption in the west and what it is in India. If not that, have they checked what is the TOTAL consumption of western economies or America as compared to India???

On the global warming and emissions front – has anyone checked what is the total emissions of the US against the total emissions of India? Forget per capita, that thing is not even worth mentioning. Every leader is convinced that the environment cannot be helped unless the “fastest growing” economies come on-board, but has anyone thought how much emissions can be controlled if the US emissions went down by 5% or 10%?

The west has been polluting and developing at this pace for the last 50 years. They are enjoying the living standards and the economic conditions for which the price has already been paid. Now they should be the ones making up for it. Give these new economies a chance to flower.

I would sincerely advise these leaders to stop misleading their vote-banks and take some hard decisions. Of course no one likes to say/hear the truth, but blaming it all on Chindia will not help. Even the most logical person will neither expect the Chindians to keep living like the scum of the planet and nor will the Chindians pay the price for all the havoc the west has wreaked on the planet. We will drive gas-guzzling SUVs too and we will eat junk food and becomes obscenely fat like American kids too. If you’re hurt that the government subsidizes gas prices, then you should read the fine print and know that they tax us back and make gas still MORE EXPENSIVE than it is in the US.

Stop crying babies! The real growth and transfer of power is yet to come.

Decoupling and all that!

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about decoupling in the worlds economic markets and how Europe or China or India are not going to be affected as much when the US goes down.  And now, as the whole world catches a cold, there are more comments of how that is not true. To me, both of these versions are flawed. It is obvious that it is neither black nor white. Anyone in the world can not claim to be not affected when the US economy goes down, but, what we can definitely say is that businesses are on the whole far more “insured” today as compared to 10 years ago. On the one hand, every market in the world will swing wildly when the biggest FIIs start pulling money out of investments, but on the other hand companies (especially in India) will still march onwards to stellar growth and results. It is the panic of the domestic investor that is causing them to lose money. I’ll write more on that in another post, but basically my point is:

a) Decoupling is true, and more so for India than most others, in the sense that we are not so export-dependent as China. The biggest companies in the sensex will go on doing amazing business and keep growing in spite of what happens in the US. Of course there are some export oriented segments or US oriented companies which might suffer in the process. The fact that stock prices have gone down does not mean that the companies have just become unprofitable, or not-so-profitable or anything else. Its just a case of demand and supply of the shares – it’ll change again soon enough.

b) Decoupling is NOT true in the financial or equity markets. Today money flows almost freely from one country to another. But of course we are going to see a fall in Indian equities if the institutional investors are all pulling out money. Moreover, this decoupling will never happen and more in my next post.

Cocky Ozzie and his ramblings

My previous post about the ongoing India – Australia series was a monologue on the standard of umpiring and how it needed to improve. No matter, our friend Ray Dixon at the Alpine Opinion has gone and made some senseless comments on my blog and then goes on and on and on (ala duracell) about the issue on his own blog. Now that’s what gets you really bugged. It’s funny, sad, irritating and exasperating all at the same time of you read his replies even to the sanest comments made by others. For example, you will soon see a cocky reply on this post too…. and he thinks he is so smart. Like for example when I wanted to keep it simple and point to him that he was going on senselessly, I wrote on his blog – “you don’t quit, do you” to which Mr. Cocky replied – “No, and neither does the Australian Cricket Team”

Oh, someone please explain to him that a few things we are definitely good at are:

a) English

b) Talking and writing (So stop acting smart-alecky…. two can play at the game)

c) Numbers… dude we got more in a city than you got in a country. Wrong war to fight!

I just thought I would point one or two more people to his blog that he can busily fight off and prove how great the Australians are. He really does forget that its not going to last forever and that being friendly is a much better attribute than being bossy. But I guess its THEM being racist at heart that forces this i’m-better-than-you mentality. Just go through his brilliant comments on his pages to see what I mean. Maybe a generation or two down the line, these whites will know their new place in the world order 😉 This is also racism?? You whites should see the way a white behaves when serving a brown, whether in a restaurant or an airplane.

Edit on 20th January 2008

Our man has since commented a number of times on this blog, to which I was replying for a bit, but then I realised my friends will chastize me  once again for petty fighting, so have removed his comments and mine from this blog. Apparently, this is highly unjust, but thats the way my blog goes, and since I refuse to visit his blog, I hope this ends soon.