Poor economy is good reason to travel abroad.

Our most revered Finance Minister is off to the US and Canada for one whole week to drum up some coppers for India. Earlier he went to South East Asia and Europe. We hope the weather is good and he has an enjoyable time with good food and company. Apparently he wants to get $20 billion worth of investment from the US and Canada. Trouble is US business fellows look for profits before investing. And they can be pretty blunt. Maurice Taylor, CEO of a tire company, Titan International pulled out of talks to take over a Goodyear plant in France. In a letter to the French Minister for Productive Recovery, Arnaud Montebourg, who is a Socialist, Mr Taylor wrote," The French employees get high salaries but only work three hours. They have an hour for their breaks and their lunches, chat for three hours, and work for three hours. I said this in front of French union representatives. They said that's the way it is in France." Indian workers work hard but last July workers at Maruti's Manesar plant rioted killing one manager and setting fire to expensive machines. That is because our labor laws are antiquated making it impossible to fire anyone and trade unions are controlled by political parties, which create problems for point scoring, so most companies rely on contract workers who are poorly paid and have no rights. However, our FM is not looking for productive investment but for loans to somehow fill the large Trade and Current Account Deficits and prop up the sagging rupee till the elections. 1. He wants to raise the cap on foreign investment in rupee denominated government debt by $5 billion which means that if the rupee falls the debt will increase. 2. He wants to reduce tax on such investments, which means foreign funds will happily make huge profits on sovereign debt. 3. He wants to make it easier for Indian firms to borrow abroad because interest rates are near zero in the US, UK, Japan and Europe. Indian firms happily raised money between 2006-2008 on Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds which could be converted to shares in the companies on maturity. However, the government managed to strangle growth, bringing down profits in these companies, so no one wanted to convert the bonds into shares. Falling growth meant the rupee fell increasing the load on these companies. Last year 56 companies had a total debt of $5 billion of which only 5 were in a position to pay back. 4. He wants to increase the cap on foreign investment in sensitive sectors such as defence, telecoms and media, finance and trade. Officials think this will raise $3-5 billion. All this is hot money and can flow out any time. " But we do not have really too much of choice than relying on portfolio inflows," said Jyotinder Kaur, an economist at HDFC Bank. Wonder if he has a son in law who has a sister. Like the other fellow.