Why are we so different from others?

One week back 9 black people were killed in a church in South Carolina in the US by a white young man, called Dylann Roof. Even 150 years after losing the civil war South Carolina has still not reconciled itself to the loss of slavery and flies the Confederate Flag in front of the state capitol to this day. Even after the shooting 8 lawmakers supported the flag as part of their history. They cannot see that it is precisely because of the their history of slavery, that this flag represents, it must be consigned to a dustbin. Although Barack Obama is half black the Republicans have not accepted his election as president and have opposed every measure he has proposed. Whites in the south of the US vote 85-90% for the Republicans. They will not expand Medicaid, funded by Washington, because blacks will benefit. But then 93% of African Americans voted for Obama in 2012. Is that racism or is it just a manifestation of black pride after centuries of oppression? Is it only whites that select friends based on color while blacks are color blind? Apparently not as these photographs of young British football players show. Black players eat at a separate table, exercise together and congregate together in the swimming pool. They were probably all born in Britain, all speak in similar accents and went to mixed schools in arguably the most politically correct country in the world. Perhaps it is instinctive, in that we find comfort in those who look like us. After all the first faces we see after birth are those of our families and maybe that memory stays with us for the rest of our lives. Or are their genetic differences among groups of humans that make us different animals? While whites mourn the abolition of slavery and blacks are asserting their freedom how do we explain highly educated Indians voluntarily seeking their own subjugation by supporting the imposition of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi 40 years ago? Siddhartha Shankar Ray was a barrister and grandson of a freedom fighter. Yet he was the main instigator of the Emergency, in complete violation of the constitution. But the violation of the constitution did not end in 1977. Seems that Ms Sonia Gandhi approved of the Emergency. Between 2004 and 2014 Ms Sonia Gandhi ruled India without any accountability by appointing a Prime Minister, not elected by the people, and on the advice of a bunch of leftist imbeciles, who made up the National Advisory Council, also not elected. The Congress will do anything to keep this family in power. Is their something in our genes that makes us so meek that we allowed Muslim invaders to rule us for centuries, followed by the British, and have repeatedly returned all the gains made by the sacrifice of our soldiers against Pakistan? Perhaps races are different even if it seems unpalatable.

Bonds of trust are better than gold bonds?

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to the Indian economy is a lack of trust between the government and the people. Our politicians, civil servants and police inherited an adversarial system from the British which has given them powers of an invader and made us feel helpless. Naturally they do not want to give up their feudal privileges while the people do everything to bypass the system, thereby subverting it. One such behavior is the love of gold which baffles economists and frustrates politicians. Most of it is in the form of jewellery, which includes wasteful labor costs, lies in bank lockers, making it totally unproductive, and is a waste of foreign exchange, because India does not produce gold. Indians hoard more than 20,000 tonnes of gold costing $1.16 trillion, half our GDP. If this money could be brought into the economy it would pay for all our infrastructure projects and growth would rocket. To entice people to give up their gold the government wants to issue gold bonds which will pay interest and can be redeemed at any time at market cost. There could even be a trading market for them. But will people give up their gold reserves? Apparently Indians have an emotional attachment with the metal, so may invest in the bonds but may refuse to give up their previous buys. Maybe people are not so irrational as these clever people think. Maybe they do not trust politicians not to change the rules in the future, real interest rates to become negative again, as they did under the Congress regime, or the rupee to plunge. There are only 2 ways of hedging against loss of wealth, real estate and gold. Real estate cannot be bought in small quantities, entails huge taxes, cannot be smuggled in to meet demand and cannot be hidden in lockers. Gold is perfect and jewellery can be claimed as family heirloom. It is not just the government, 80% of people think business fellows are crooks and so do not invest in the stock market. Risky investments, meaning in stocks, fell from a high of 10.7% in 1996 to 3.8% in 2014. We are being constantly advised that investing in shares gives the highest returns over a period of years. Does it? They trick us by highlighting the indices, namely the Sensex and the Nifty. What they do not tell us is that the constituents of the indices keep changing, the loss making companies being replaced by those which are profitable. From January 2008 till now, shares in over 300 firms have lost 90% of their value while the Sensex has risen by 32.85% in the same period because 469 stocks have doubled in value. Koutons has dropped from Rs 1000 to Rs 2.45. Imagine the losses to shareholders. According to one analyst bonds have given better returns since 1991. The share market is too complicated for stupid retail investors, so invest in mutual funds, we are told. Alliance Capital Mutual Fund, a subsidiary of Alliance Capital of the US, has disappeared. The only solution is to increase trust of the people by promising not to trick them, but then who knows which party will win elections in 2019. And therein lies the nub.

Hands off our money.

The government extorts money from us by force in everything we buy or sell in the form of taxes. We spend years of hard labor studying for higher degrees, our parents suffer massive anxiety in trying to get us into good schools and colleges and spend a fortune on fees. When we start work we are at the lowest rung which means very hard work for meager wages. Without realising we start paying tax from the very first day at work, long before receiving our first paycheck. We pay tax on petrol as we travel to work, we pay tax on the lunch that we eat outside and we pay tax on the internet service that is essential for work today. There is great delight when the first paycheck arrives but even before it reaches us the government has sucked its share of blood in the form of TDS, or Tax Deduction at Source. There is a tax of Rs 16.44 on 45 tablets of R Cinex 600, which is used through the entire period of treating TB and TB is much commoner in the poor. Not content with such extortion the government is thinking of taking our money from us altogether. They want all transactions to be ' cashless ' or by electronic transfer. It proposes to do away with service charges but not service tax on cards. It will get rid of convenience charges, whatever that is, but what about yearly bank charges for issuing cards. It proposes tiny reductions in Value Added Taxes if cards are used. But why are politicians so keen on doing away with cash? It is not because the government loses money in printing notes, as they claim. They make money from cash through ' seigniorage '. The US makes $20 billion a year so India makes less, but they do not lose. They claim that if there is no cash there will be no counterfeit and drug smuggling will become impossible. Perhaps, but we will lose our privacy completely, which means that they will be totally in control of our lives, which is unacceptable. Just as high taxes on alcohol regularly cause deaths because the poor look for cheaper alternatives, as in Mumbai, it will be a disaster for the illiterate. All of us have filled out withdrawal forms at banks for illiterate people wishing to withdraw money, but they have control because they can count the cash they receive and they recognise notes by color and size. They will need help from others to use cards which means their passwords will become common knowledge. If money is transferred to a wrong account it is impossible to get it back. When you applied on forms for passports you paid Rs 200 to a fellow to fill it out, stand in a queue and deposit it for you. Now you need to pay Rs 1500 to a fellow to get an appointment at the passport office. We, old people, find computers incomprehensible anyway and ever since Mr Amitabh Bachchan called it computerji it has taken on divine qualities, vastly increasing costs. Be satisfied with extorting taxes, do not plunder all our wealth. Keep your hands off our cash.

We are Indians. We know what it means.

Yesterday was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. People in colder countries celebrated the onset of summer. For us in India it is the worst day of the year as the long day heats up the earth, roads and buildings, making the heat unbearable. Which makes today the best day of the year because from today the days will get shorter and we can look forward to winter. In a couple of weeks we can expect the monsoon to arrive in Delhi when roads will flood because the municipality has not cleaned the drains. Ever since it was elected with overwhelming majority the Aam Aadmi Party has been engaged in a vicious guerilla war with the central government, without any reason, and has refused to release money to the municipalities which are controlled by the BJP. Sanitary workers went on strike for not being paid and garbage has piled up on streets. It is criminal to play games with taxpayer money, making people suffer, for mean political pleasure. Just punishment for voting for AAP and not seeing that it is a fifth column for the Congress. The roads will develop big potholes which will cause accidents, especially for 2-wheelers, because they cannot be seen under water. There will be huge traffic jams. Delhi police will be conspicuous by their absence, busily guarding the useless politicians who are responsible for the mess. The rains will clear by October when the festival season will start. Navaratra, which means 9 nights, will start on 13 October, Durga Puja starts on 19 October and Diwali is on 11 November. This will be a time of meeting friends and relatives, exchanging gifts and an auspicious time to buy new goods, such as utensils, clothes and cars. Markets will be keenly watching sale of consumer goods because this is when companies make maximum profits. Consumer confidence will be key. A good monsoon will boost rural income, by increasing crops, and will encourage spending in urban areas by suppressing food inflation. It will start getting cold after Diwali when t shirts and shorts will be put away and woollens and shawls will appear. A cold winter with heavy snowfall on the Himalayan mountains is essential to replenish glaciers so that snow melt can keep our rivers flowing in the summer that will follow. Chill winds from the snow will cause enormous suffering for the homeless and may even be lethal. Fog will bring flights to a halt. Smoke from burning wood and leaves by poor people, to stay warm, will get trapped in the fog and cause terrific pollution. Those with respiratory illness, such as asthma, will end up in hospital where they will be fleeced of tens of thousands of rupees. December 21 will be the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the cycle will repeat itself. Even with so many problems children will dream of a wonderful future, people will plan holidays and friends will laugh together. As Indians have done for thousands of years. 

Fact: Russia has been a friend and the US wanted to nuke India.

A man with a Russian sounding name, writing for Bloomberg of the US, has written a venomous article against President Putin of Russia, accusing him of paranoid delusions regarding a western conspiracy against Russia. No surprise there. We regularly see brown skin Uncle Toms pouring venom on India. " Putin and his people are now far outside the realm of the conventional. They see themselves as warriors of light in a world suffocated by a Western conspiracy. To them, there is far more at stake than just the regime's survival. That's what makes them dangerous," he rants. Conspiracy theory is an easy taunt but why did the west generate the crisis in Ukraine unnecessarily, when they instigated an armed coup against an elected president causing him to flee for his life? Now suddenly the Germans have discovered a man with inside knowledge about who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine last year. MH17 was flying at 33,000 feet. A satellite map shows 15,000 flights over the world, with hundreds flying over India. We cannot see or hear them at such heights. The rebels could not possibly have tracked MH17 but the air traffic control at Dnipro certainly did. It is therefore much more likely to have been shot down by the government. Have they already forgotten ' Curveball ' whose lies about WMDs in Iraq precipitated George W Bush's invasion of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of 200,000 people and the rise of ISIS? Gaddafi was killed by the British who deliberately lied about protecting civilians in Libya to the UN Security Council, resulting in the deaths of 30,000 civilians that they were supposed to be protecting. Libya is in a mess with thousands of migrants flooding into Europe. A former hitman for the mafia claims that he killed John Kennedy. All Putin conspiracies? US stooges abusing Putin is not new, but what is really amazing is that all the lies are repeated by the Indian press without any challenge. Russia has been a constant friend of India while the US has always helped our enemies. Russia has used its veto power at the UN Security Council repeatedly to protect India. It stopped the US forcing India to give Goa back to the Portugese and to stop support of Pakistan in the 1971 war. President Nixon threatened nuclear strikes against India. Even today the US is supplying Pakistan with advanced weapons systems to be used against India while issuing stupid reports about its support of terrorism. The Indian government is worried about British help in getting Pakistan's ISI to infiltrate into Afghanistan. The US and Britain are behind all that is bad in the world today. That is a fact. Not a conspiracy theory.

If we get rich we would not worry about the Fed.

In its last meeting the Federal Reserve in the US resolved to go slow in raising US interest rates as the recovery is still seen as fragile. The IMF has already advised the Fed to postpone any rate rises till next year because of weaker than expected growth in the US economy and the massive volatility in asset prices, stocks, commodities and currencies, it may cause. Fund managers are trying to work out who will win and who will lose when the Fed does raise interest rate. Sure losers are corporate borrowers, who will have to find more money as the dollar becomes stronger, and emerging markets, which might see a fall in currencies as funds transfer money back to the US. Reserve Bank Governor, Raghuram Rajan has been blunt in his criticism of the ultra-lose policies of the central banks of rich countries, forcing previous Chair of the Fed, Ben Bernanke to defend his actions. We do not care what the Fed does except in so far that it affects us. Two years back the rupee collapsed to 69 to the dollar when Bernanke talked about tapering quantitative easing in the US, in what became known as the ' taper tantrum '. Today the situation is much improved. The RBI has built up foreign exchange reserves to over $350 billion, the fiscal deficit was down to 4% last year and the current account deficit is down to 0.2% of GDP in the first quarter. The trouble is that the Congress allowed companies to borrow overseas because massive government borrowing to finance the fiscal deficit left little for the private sector. Precisely the opposite of what the US did, when it took over AIG, and what the British government did when it took over the RBS. Many of these Indian companies have not bothered to hedge their loans and will find it difficult to repay if the dollar were to rise further against the rupee. A default by a large company could lead to loss of confidence and a sell out by foreign investors. If the RBI lowers interest rate substantially it would allow banks to restructure loans at lower rates and give the companies some breathing room. But if interest rate is lowered what happens to the rupee? The rupee has fallen by 1.6% against the dollar this year but other emerging markets have fallen even more. The Indonesian rupiah has fallen by 7%. The strength of the rupee depends on a lot of factors. Apart from the Fed we have to worry about the monsoon, the international price of oil and what our politicians do, especially on taxes. Apparently, money held in Swiss banks by Indians fell by 10% last year. Rs 126 billion seems too little. There must be more, but where? If interest rate and the rupee fall further it would make sense to save invest in the US and in Europe. How will they tax properties there? Not much point assuring foreigners on taxes, assure your own citizens. Foreigners will invest for profits, not if we are kept poor by taxes.

Magna Carta: as seen by brown sahibs and firangis.

Britain is celebrating 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, which means the ' Great Charter ' in Latin. No harm in that. Now that the Empire is gone, and with it the massive plunder of wealth from colonies, such celebrations bring in tourist and much needed cash. But how important a document was it? That depends on who you read, the brown sahibs are effusive in their praise about how it was basis of liberty and human rights while the firangis are much more tempered in their analysis. " The fame of the charter lies in its extraordinary provisions whose moral strength is familiar to the present world," writes one. And again," The Magna Carta is an early reminder of the crucial difference between freedom and liberty. Liberty is freedom that is unique to humans, it is guaranteed by law." Another sees Nelson Mandela as great because he was inspired by the Magna Carta and the present South African President, Jacob Zuma as a small man for allowing the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to leave the country even though there is a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court. He sees nothing wrong in the racist court pursuing only Africans and leaders of former Yugoslavia, while mass murderers, Tony Blair and David Cameron, enjoy complete freedom. " Civilization began with equality," he says with complete certainty. Really? Humans have been killing each other before history began. " Magna Carta in 1215 was never a blueprint for human rights," said Julian Harrison, a curator at the British Library while Graham Smith, senior Lecturer in History, said," I think it's being misused." The concept of habeas corpus was present before the treaty was signed and King John repudiated it almost immediately after. The charter was " a declaration of economic rights " according to a lecture. The barons were trying to restore their feudal rights which the king had violated by imposing very high taxes. What we still face in India today, but instead of one king, we have hordes of politicians, civil servants and business fellows sucking away our vitality as a nation. The feudal system was based on possession of land and the barons wanted to protect their heirs from any interference by the king in inheriting their properties. In India today the super rich invest 50% of their wealth on real estate and are planning to buy more. In the feudal system the king was seen as corrupt, today corruption is more widespread as banks game the system, companies hide their wealth overseas to avoid taxes and organised crime operates in the shadows of the internet. Finally, a professor writes that the fame of the Magna Carta is based on myths. Apparently Oliver Cromwell called it Magna Farta. Wonderful to know that a Puritan used such a word in the 17th century. That is true liberty indeed.

Economy climbing a greasy pole?

All of us remember the math problem in school wherein a monkey managed to climb 3 feet up a greasy pole only to slip back 2 feet. Our economy seems to be doing the same. Wholesale prices have fallen by 2.36% in May after falling by 2.65% in April, which makes it seven straight months of fall. That statement is misleading because the WPI rate is a comparison with the same month last year and not with the previous month. Which means that prices are not falling continuously for 7 months but have been lower compared to last year. This could be because prices were very high last year and have cooled because of the fall in commodity prices. On the other hand, Consumer Prices rose by 5.1% in May compared to 4.87% in April. This is hard to understand. If prices of raw materials and fuel are lower compared to last year why are consumer prices still rising? Is it because greedy business fellows are making excessive profits by gouging customers or is it because this government has raised taxes, even higher than the Congress did, despite talking about being consumer friendly? Industrial production increased by 4.1% in April after falling to 2.5% in Arpil. General Electric has built a multi-modal industrial plant near Pune in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs 10 billion. Phase 2 will be ready in another 2 years. Unlike old production lines, which used to be dedicated to only one product, this plant can change products depending on demand. India needs huge improvements in roads, railways, electricity production, ports and airways. If GE can produce heavy machinery, such as locomotive engines and cranes, in India the costs will be lower, saving money for the government, as well as creating decent jobs. On the other hand, Nestle has to destroy 27,000 tonnes of Maggi noodles because of excess amounts of monosodium glutamate and lead at a cost of over Rs 3 billion. It needs 10,000 trucks and 6 cement plants to destroy such huge amounts. Contract workers will be sitting idle while Nestle sorts out its production problems. We hope cement fellows do not adulterate cement with noodle powder. That could cause a disaster in an earthquake. The Current Account Deficit has fallen to 0.2% of GDP after rising to 4.8% of GDP in 2012-13. This is probably due to the fall in the price of oil. But oil prices are rising. Petrol price has been raise by 64 paise while diesel price has been reduced by Rs 1.35. Why? If both come from crude then prices of both should rise. Apparently, international price of diesel has fallen. But we do not buy diesel, we buy crude and the world's largest refinery is at Jamnagar. Diesel is slightly more expensive than petrol in the US and Europe. We hope that the government is not trying to control retail inflation by lowering transport costs. So, is the economy poised for vigorous growth in the coming months or is its weakness being camouflaged by low commodity prices? Perhaps a neutral person will explain.

Indians are suspicious of good news.

Just 928 households out of a total of 263 million households hold 20% of the total wealth of the nation, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group. These 928 possess wealth over $100 million each and are known as ultra-high net worth households. Households with wealth over $1 million, Rs 64 million at today's exchange rate, hold 36% of total wealth. Their number has risen from 33% in 2009 to 36% in 2014 and is projected to rise to 38% by 2019. This when the average household income was Rs 157,683, which is $2895, in 2012-13, while per capita income was Rs 33,107, only $608. How could the number of millionaires be rising from 2009-2014 when the Congress was in power, with its socialist policies of redistribution, financed by very high taxes? Probably because a succession of scams generated trillions of rupees in black money which, with very low interest rates, led to rocketing property prices. At 928 India has more ultra-high net worth households than Germany with 679. Is that a bad thing? Not if the money was earned through productive investment, creating jobs, and not through corruption, asset price bubbles and illicit control of national resources, as in the 2G scam and the coal mines scam. Ultra rich individuals in India invest more than 50% of their wealth in real estate, which is the highest ratio in the world, and a whopping 87% are thinking of buying more properties this year. But danger is lurking for the real estate market.  The BJP government in Mumbai increased Ready Reckoner rates by 15 to 40% and the AAP government in Delhi is in the process of increasing Circle Rates by 100 to 150% in Delhi. If the circle rates were higher than market rates in certain parts of the country last year what these moves are going to do maybe imagined. The real estate sector is in for a crash as demand freezes completely. That will really hurt as black money, earned through risky corruption, disappears to a large extent. Hence the anguished howl for a lower interest rate. Studies show that high interest rates encourage household savings and low interest rates encourage greater spending and purchase of physical assets, such as real estate and gold. Savings in physical assets comprises more than 60% of total household savings and the higher it is the lower the growth in GDP. In Financial Year 2010 financial savings constituted 15.3% of GDP, falling to 10.3% by FY 2014, when retail inflation was over 10% due to the profligate policies of the Congress. Investment in risky assets, such as shares, has fallen from a high of 10.7% in FY 1996 to just 3.8% in FY 2014. Gold imports have jumped by 10.47% to $2.42 billion in May. Why are people buying gold with falling inflation and high real interest rates? Perhaps they do not believe in the good news.

A concentration camp called Greece.

The negotiations between Greece and its creditors, consisting of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, have broken down once again. The troika wants Greece to cut expenses, by cutting pensions, so that it can generate a budget surplus to pay off its debts. The present left wing government was elected to negotiate an easing of austerity, if not an end, to ease the suffering of its citizens. And how they are suffering. The condition of the health system is so dire that average life span has been shortened by 3 years during the 5 years of austerity. " The situation is like a war zone without the bullets," said a charity worker. No wonder the Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras told the troika to  get real. But, unlike Brazil Greece is a part of Europe, where prices are falling compared to Brazil, where the rate of inflation is over 7%, the Euro is a stable currency whereas the Brazilian real has fallen by 14%, the interest rate in Europe is 0% compared to Brazil's 13.75% and being a member of the European Union means that Greeks can travel and trade freely all over the continent. Surely Greece should not be in this state. The creditors insist that Greece must have a primary budget surplus by reducing government expenditure and increasing taxes and Greece did have one in 2013. Trouble is that unemployment has increased to 25%, so direct tax collections are bound to suffer, plus reducing government expenditure, by sacking civil servants, cutting salaries and cutting pensions, has caused a contraction of 25% in the economy which means less indirect tax collections. Germany being the largest economy, and the main lender, insists on painful structural reforms because any leniency would encourage Greece and other nations to get back to the bad old ways. After World War II creditors wrote off half of all German debts, allowing the economy to grow again. The troika gave loans to Greece to pay off private lenders, essentially European banks. This transferred the debt from private lenders to central banks and saved banks from a Lehman Brothers type of collapse. All this was playacting to gain time to protect banks while making Greeks suffer extreme deprivation. Banks in Cyprus, on the other hand, were made to write off 47.5% of depositor and shareholder money because Russians would be the biggest losers. As cynical a piece of deceit as we are ever likely to see. Yet they could have helped. If they wanted to punish the government they could have lent money to private companies, such as Volkswagen and Siemens, to manufacture in Greece so as to create new jobs and give some hope. If Greece has to exit the Euro it will have to default on its debts and will struggle to find new financing. If the Euro breaks up Germans will suddenly find that an expensive Mark will make business very difficult indeed.

We are human, they are jackals, what will the outcome be?

A court in South Africa has asked the government to stop Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, from leaving the country where he is attending an African Union summit. There is an order from the International Criminal Court for his arrest for crimes against the non-Arab people of Darfur. Apart from the fact that this is an illegitimate court which targets only Africans and people from former Yugoslavia this stupid arrest warrant compels al-Bashir to try to stay in power forever. He knows that if he loses power he may be handed over to this white construct, based at the Hague in the Netherlands, so he will do anything to stay in power. He may succeed just as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who recently celebrated his 91st birthday after being in power for 35 years, despite all the venom that the west has thrown at him and despite the local currency having lost all value due to hyperinflation. Zimbabwe now uses the South African Rand and the US dollar as currencies. Contrast that to Charles Taylor who made the mistake of losing power and is now serving a 50 year sentence in a UK prison. The irony is exquisite. Tony Blair, who earned the sobriquet of George Bush's poodle, for his support of the illegal war in Iraq has become super rich by acting as public relations officer for dictators of central Asian countries while David Cameron whose illegal bombing of Gaddafi resulted in the slaughter of 30,000 civilians in Libya has won a second term in office. The leader of this pack is Barack Obama, who promised change, but has turned out to be one of the vilest serial killers in history, killing thousands of innocent civilians by his indiscriminate and illegal use of drones. Not content with creating the mess in Iraq he now wants to instigate a war with Russia. The US is going to station tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and heavy armor, enough for 5,000 troops, in Baltic and east European states in response to the losing war in Ukraine. He is thinking of supplying arms to the good terrorists in Syria who, he hopes, will fight both the ISIS and Bashar al-Assad. Just as he undermined the former President of Afghanistan by talking to the good Taliban. His deal with Iran will help them to build nuclear weapons, according to the previous chief of intelligence. Meanwhile China has developed a supersonic vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear missile. The Chinese military is confident that it can continue its aggression in the South China Sea because Obama is their friend. Why do they think so? Because he has slyly agreed to supply China with nuclear technology as well as the means to make submarines quieter. How did a bunch of jackals come to power at the same time? The end of the world may well be nigh.

For good health we need to get rid of disease.

A high priced lawyer, Janhavi Gadkar ploughed into a taxi late at night, killing 2 men. She was driving with an alcohol level of 200 ml per 100 ml of blood, the legal limit being 30 ml per 100 ml of blood. According to the police she had paid a bill for 6 shots of whiskey at an hotel and 3 shots at a pub, before driving at 120 mph along the wrong side of the road. A bill does not mean that she consumed all the alcohol herself but if she did drink around 240 ml of whiskey, which is one-third a bottle, and did not throw up, she must be a habitual drinker. Her lawyer claims that she is also a victim. Perhaps she is. Her friends should have prevented her from driving and insisted on calling a taxi. But, would a taxi be safe, especially for a drunk woman late at night? She has admitted drink driving and causing the accident. The police have samples of her blood proving her guilt so why are they insisting on keeping her in custody? However, it is good in one way. In police custody she cannot be harassed by the media and the delay allows anger to cool. The case will drag on for years which will give her a chance to pay off any witnesses. Witnesses get fed up of being called to court repeatedly only for the case to be postponed after they have wasted entire days. She can benefit from a precedent. Sanjeev Nanda killed 6, including 3 policemen, but was sentenced to a paltry 2 years in prison so, having killed only 2, she can expect a maximum of 8 months, which will be waived because of time already served. If she has to spend any time in prison she can avail of various conveniences such as parole to attend to her sick mother, she maybe released on bail to campaign in elections and she can even get married, if she is still single, while out on furlough. As a lawyer she will be well aware that after the initial attention dies down she can get back to her normal life with the occasional inconvenience that our humorous criminal justice system may cause. What of the police? In his dying declaration a journalist, Jogendra Singh accused a bunch of policemen and thugs for burning him seriously for writing critical articles about the Minister for Dairy Development in UP, Ram Murti Verma. Police are under control of state governments who prevent them from investigating crimes of politicians and use them as private militias to beat up opponents. The great anti-corruption party the AAP has decided to appoint police officers from Bihar to the Anti Corruption Bureau against the orders of the Lieutenant Governor. Not only had the Law Minister of AAP, JS Tomar a fake law degree but an RTI provided as proof was also fake. A fake RTI for a fake minister of AAP, a fake branch of the Congress party. Crime is a disease. Unless that is treated India cannot be healthy.

That is why we are lagging so far behind.

Ordinary folks like us often wonder why India is so poor when China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have raced ahead. Our politicians love socialism because that gives them state control of industries, creates a license/permit raj, which facilitates massive rent seeking, and allows them to bribe the ' vote bank ' with taxpayer money to ' reduce poverty '. But surely we must have had economists who would be annoyed by and object loudly to such corrupt behavior to keep politicians under check? Well, we have a one page article by one such economist - Deepak Nayyar, Emeritus Professor of Economics, Jawahar Lal Nehru University. He was the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India from 1989-1991 and Vice Chancellor of Delhi University from 2000-2005. Wow. We remember that the great Balance of Payment crisis occurred in 1991 which resulted in India having to pledge 67 tons of gold reserve to the Bank of England and the rupee being devalued from 17.50 to the dollar to 45 to the dollar. There was a net outflow of NRI deposits from 1990-91. He writes that high inflation is good for developing countries and that the RBI should be cutting rates aggressively. Perhaps he supports President Erdogan of Turkey who accused the central bank of treason for not cutting rates. The interest rate in Turkey is 7.5%, in Indonesia it is 7.5%, in Russia it is 12.5% and in Brazil it is 13.75% while in India it is 7.25%. Perhaps he thinks governors of all these central banks are idiots. Savers lose when the interest paid on savings is less than the rise in prices. Borrowers gain from negative real interest rates, so it is a transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers, and since the government is the biggest borrower by far, low interest rate acts as a tax on savers. Perhaps the professor will explain why people bought 974 tonnes of gold in 2013 despite high prices. Last year gold worth Rs 10 billion was smuggled into India, which is about 10% of the total. Does he want another BOP crisis such as 1991? " If firms and households are credit constrained, lowering interest rates may mean that firms will have more money to invest and households will have more money for consumption," he writes. Firms are awash in credit which they are unable to repay so that bad loans at banks are over Rs 4 trillion. Banks are reluctant to lend until they can clear their books. Households do not need credit to buy items for daily use. They are unable to buy because of very high prices. Reason? Inflation. Credit card charges do not change with interest rates so why are shopping malls running empty? Finally, low interest rates do encourage asset price bubbles, as demonstrated by the sub-prime crisis and real estate prices in India are nearly the same as in the US. A long rambling article, with no evidence and full of left wing mumbo jumbo. Wonder what the good prof taught his students.

Deceitful laws turn all citizens into criminals. Scrap them.

India is perhaps the only country in the world where there is a collective obsession with the stock market. The narrative is simple. The stock market must keep going higher and higher, and for that to happen the economy has to grow faster and faster, for which interest rates must be brought down to low levels. There is no Bloomberg of Forbes to analyse the various parts of the economy and combine all the data to deliver a comprehensive review. One reason why the market is falling is because foreign investors are selling out. So far they have sold a fraction of their total holdings of over $150 billion, so we can imagine what will happen if they were to panic. Foreign investors are selling out on India because company earnings are not growing. For us simple folks this is very hard to understand. Can a company's profits keep on growing infinitely? Vast numbers of people in India are poor and if the economy grows they will make more money which they will spend on consumer goods and services, which will increase profits. We understand that. But surely, as soon as one company starts making pots of money in one field new ones will start up to take away some of the business. Just as every company in India has gone into construction to take advantage of the explosive rise of real estate prices due to the massive increase in black money under the Congress. While Volkswagen cars are selling well in India Skoda, which is a division of Volkswagen, is not doing so well. Hindustan Lever and Nestle are both foreign companies but whereas HUL has had Indian managers for decades Nestle relies on white men from Europe. Which may explain why Nestle responds with the white man's arrogance when challenged about the quality of its products. And then there is the government, which sees Indian consumers as a kind of blood bank to be bled at will. Our Chief Economic Adviser is ecstatic that indirect tax collections have gone up which must mean that people are spending more, which means increased demand, which can only be due to economic recovery. Is it? Business sentiment is down, estimates of future earnings per share is down and the purchasing managers index is down. Animal spirits has its tail between its legs. With the economy faltering and expectations of inflation rising, our esteemed Finance Minister has increased Service Tax from 12.5 to 14%. He has also sneaked in a law which forces us to deduct tax when buying anything from abroad. Firstly, we did not know about this tax and secondly, how in hell are we to know which company is abroad. Amazon advertises on our TVs and Foxconn is to manufacture iPhones in India. When buying anything from abroad you pay by credit card which carries service tax and there will surely be a tax on currency conversion. It violates the Double Tax Avoidance Treaty with other countries. People will ask relatives in other countries to buy for them and pay them in rupees when they come here. That way the government loses all taxes. Why do we always have lawyers as finance ministers who bring in laws to turn us into criminals and increase their own earnings. We hate sneaky gestapo laws. Get rid of them.

We don't need no education.

First, a Nobel Prize winning economist writes that education does not increase individual wealth or reduce inequality. While corporate profits are soaring wages are not rising in tandem. Most of the wealth is going to those who run monopoly type businesses. In the nineteenth century robber barons founded huge monopolies in railways, oil and telegraph so today the ' silicon sultans ' control around 90% of the markets in which they operate. Last year Prof Thomas Piketty caused a storm when he wrote that most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of those who already have assets, and hence can create more wealth through financial deals. Now, another professor writes that education does not increase the economic growth rate of a nation. Being teachers these professors hasten to add that education does provide more options and is necessary for all round growth of people, so as to enjoy life, but does not create wealth, either individual or national. In 1965, the labor force in France had a per capita income of $14,000 with less than 5 years of schooling while in 2010 countries with a similar level of education had a per capita income of $1,000. In 1960, China started with less education level than Tunisia, Mexico, Kenya and Iran and made less progress than them by 2010, but in terms of growth these countries were nothing compared to China. Increased spending on education misses out all the adults who are in low wage jobs today. On the other hand the world's richest man advises everyone not to be like him and not to drop out of college. What does it mean for us in India? We desperately need innovation without which we will be stuck in third world rut. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison may be college dropouts but they all had high school education and are billionaires because there are huge opportunities in the US whereas in India the first rule is to make sure of survival. Recently we had a terrific drama about the number of people killed by the hot weather but it seems that lightning kills more people every year than any other natural disaster. As opposed to floods or heat lightning strikes a very small area so it is shocking that so many are killed by it. What has that to do with education? It shows that our population density is so intense that a lightning striking a tiny area kills many people. Too many people leads to poverty and studies show that bright students from poor families do 50% worse than those from middle class ones. Even worse, children from poor families have smaller brains than those from better off ones. The implications are that unless poverty is removed inequality will remain and money spent on education is not going to benefit poor children because their brains are already affected. The only solution is to reduce the number of people but poverty lovers, like the Congress and NGOs, will howl.

Seems that boom-bust cycles cannot be avoided.

Since the sub-prime crisis of 2008 central banks have kept interest rates at 0% in the US, Europe and Japan poured trillions of dollars into banks through purchase of bonds, to help avoid Lehman Brothers type of collapse of banks, and hope that this flood of liquidity would increase lending to businesses to increase global economic growth and lead to falling unemployment. But apparently all this extra money has had the opposite effect on markets, which have become increasingly illiquid. There have been a few instances of such lack of liquidity in markets. There was the flash crash in May 2010 when US stocks crashed by nearly 10% in 30 minutes, in 2013 long term interest rates jumped by 100 basis points when the then Federal Reserve Chair, Ben Bernanke talked about tapering the quantitative easing program and in October 2014 US Treasury yields fell by 40 basis points, which apparently can only happen once in 3 billion years. Also, recently yields on German Bunds have risen from 5 to 80 basis points within 10 days. With interest rates at 0% funds have been investing in illiquid instruments in search of higher yields which means that prices fluctuate wildly when everyone seeks to enter or leave at the same time. In India negative real interest rates along with huge black money creation during the 10 years of Congress saw an astronomical rise in real estate prices, shown by the difference between lending rates and yields from rent. Now real interest rate is positive, big scams have disappeared and states have increased circle rates to market levels so that people are being forced to pay the entire cost in white money. The market is almost static. After the recent earthquake in Nepal there is a fear about buying flats in high rise buildings. Prices are so high that no normal Indian can afford to buy property so a fall will be welcome. Wild gyrations in markets and assets is not good for investors or the government who have to make decisions regarding the future. One would expect that economists would be able to prevent crises by seeing problems as the arise and advising corrective actions but they have failed to predict the East Asian crisis, the dot com crisis and, more recently, the sub-prime crisis. Now economists are going for evidence based models. Some are using new data, but how do you weigh the importance of what you see. For instance, do you believe that a Grexit will have minimum effect on the Euro, as the Germans believe, or will it set off a slow dismantling of the Eurozone? Some are studying history to prevent future crises but Ben Bernanke, being an expert on the Great Depression, could not prevent the present mess. Seems that we will continue to go through boom-bust cycles.

Can Indian politics be cured by homeopathy.

Homeopathy depends on the supposition that a poison, that produces the same symptoms that the patient is suffering from, if given in dilution, will cure the patient. In other words, if you use a poison, similar to the one causing the illness, they cancel each other out. Many of our politicians seem to believe in this hypothesis. For instance, Raja Bhaiya was made Minister in charge of prisons in UP by the Samajwadi Party. Now the Law Minister of Delhi, Jitender Singh Tomar has been arrested for using a fake degree in law.  This is being done to tarnish the image of the AAP. This is political harassment," fumed the esteemed minister. " This is illegal and has been done as revenge. We are contemplating our future course of action," thundered the Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia." The Delhi government has been elected to serve the people and has a mandate like no other in the country." He should be thankful. Having won the election with fake promises that they cannot keep this is a nice diversion, fake degree to hide fake promises. For us Indians it is great entertainment. There will be a fake investigation of the alleged fake degree of the allegedly fake minister, followed by a fake court case in which nothing will be proved and the case will be closed after spending billions of taxpayer money. Just as happened in the Augusta-Westland helicopter scam, the Bofors scam, the submarine scam,the Tatra trucks scam, the Barak missile scam, the Denel arms scam, the Taj corridor case and the Mulayam Singh Yadav case. Our valiant investigating officers can never find sufficient evidence to nail the culprits. To make absolutely sure that politicians and their broods are totally safe there are not enough police personnel in India. Large numbers are assigned to protect the very politicians who are never found guilty so the remaining police are made to work extra hours without any relief. When the poor fellows manage to find sufficient evidence to convict murderers they serve their time in ' day out, night in ' prisons where they are allowed to go out to work during the day and have a safe, comfortable cell to sleep in at night. These fellows are in great demand in the marriage market. Wonder if they have air conditioners and televisions for comfort. Manu Sharma, was let out on furlough to get married. Furlough is normally leave given to soldiers, who risk their lives for the nation, and not to scum who kill an innocent woman because she would not give him a drink. Whether Nestle's Maggi noodles contain an excess of MSG and lead remains to be established but when a journalist wrote about it in 2011 she was bullied into silence by Nestle threatening to stop all advertising in the newspaper she worked for. The same arrogance was visible when Nestle CEO insisted that Maggi is safe without any hint of apology. Perhaps we should appoint an expert in adulterating to catch fellows who sell dangerous goods. A crook to catch a crook. Like in homeopathy.

We ain't seen nothing yet.

Technology is changing the world with increasing speed, disrupting old ways of living and doing business. After the telephone was invented it took 50 years for half the homes in the US to possess one but it has taken a mere 20 years for the mobile phone to spread from 3% of the world population to over two-thirds today. The authors list 4 disruptions that are going to have a profound effect on the world. GDP growth will shift towards emerging economies which will see a growth of huge cities. Mobile internet will encourage new types of business but older ones will suffer, with loss of jobs. In 2013 60% of countries had fertility rates below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman, which means that populations are getting older so that there will be fewer young people working and paying taxes to fund the pensions and healthcare costs of increasing numbers of elderly. Lastly, capital is flowing easily around the world and people are following. More than 1 billion people crossed borders in 2009, 5 times the number in 1980. Disruptions caused by new technology are difficult to deal with because no one has any experience with them, so we do not know what to expect. The disruptions are all the greater because a lot of the advances in technology are accessible to everyone and is free. So rogues and governments have equal access and, as the hacking of US government computers has shown, unexpected incidents become common. Just as the internet has created enormous opportunities it has also resulted in a vast increase in government powers of collecting information on its citizens, of pornography, of abuse and allowed terrorists, such as ISIS, to recruit more volunteers. The industrial revolution completely changed the world by giving us machines but also provided tanks, bombs and airplanes, which vastly increased the numbers killed in the various wars since then. Free flow of capital allows US companies to hold $2.10 trillion of their profits overseas to avoid paying taxes at home. As capital moves around so people follow, as is happening in Europe right now. As the numbers of locals fall due to lower birth rate the numbers of immigrants will increase, causing great social stress. Increasing armies of robots will reduce the cost of production and will be a cheap way to take care of the increasing numbers of old people but there will be large scale loss of traditional jobs. We do not know which way it will go. We could have armies of robots doing all the dangerous work, such as mining, no traffic jams as cars whizz round without drivers and endless free energy from the sun. Or someone could hack into missile systems with a stolen mobile phone and start a war. Perhaps it is good not to know.

Corruption can be eliminated only through speed.

The Professional Examination Board scam in Madhya Pradesh, also know as the Vyapam scam, involved selling seats in medical and engineering colleges for money. Around 1800 people, mostly students and parents, have been arrested so far and police are looking for another 800. These are merely small fry, the big fish are all at large, busily getting rid of evidence. Apparently 41 suspects connected with the scam have been killed so far to scare off whistle-blowers. The list of deaths includes Namrata Damor, a medical student, DK Sakhale, former Dean of Jabalpur Medical College, Vijay Singh Patel, a pharmacist and Shailesh Yadav, the eldest son of the Governor, Ramnaresh Yadav. We are talking an immensely powerful criminal gang of the level of Dawood Ibrahim here. One can understand buying seats in engineering colleges but why waste money on buying medical seats when pharmacists, physiotherapists, homeopaths, vaids and even unani fellows are allowed to call themselves doctors, prescribe all allopathic medicines and even perform surgery? MP has a BJP government but Congress honchos seem to be curiously silent about this enormous crime being committed on the people, while banging on about trivia, such as the ' suit boot ki sarkar '. Then we have the former telecom regulator accusing the former Prime Minister of actively helping the culprits in the 2G scam, prompting the ex-PM to say that he did not use public office for personal benefits, which is not the point and definitely not true. The ex-PM is also being accused of having presented coal mines to Mr Naveen Jindal, who was a Congress MP at the time. All these crimes led to the generation of massive amounts of black money. It is estimated that $44 billion was being transferred out of the country every year over the last decade, 120% more than the government's education budget and 100% more than the healthcare budget. But what about civil servants enjoying Rs 1 billion of aid money in hotel bills, travel and on good food after floods in Uttarakhand in 2013? If all the money was spent locally and not siphoned off into bank accounts then was it not a good thing? Uttarakhand depends on tourists for a large part of its income and after the floods even the largest city, Haridwar was empty so an injection of Rs 1 billion into the local economy would have been a welcome stimulus. Only a fraction of black money is transferred abroad. Most of it is in real estate in India. In a sign that the government's efforts against corruption maybe working real estate prices are dropping and even the cut of 25 basis points in the repo rate could not stop stocks in construction firms from tanking. Witnesses get killed because cases drag on for ages. Will our judges speed up the system?

Economics of competing fear.

From the constant chatter about interest rates in India it may seem that everyone who matters is totally focused on what our RBI does but the truth is that everyone is waiting with bated breath about what the Federal Reserve in the US is going to do. The US added 280,000 jobs in May which increases the chances of a rate rise this year. The IMF has advised the Fed not to increase rates this year because growth in the US economy is still weak, the dollar is overvalued and an increase in rates will have repercussions all over the world. Just the prospect of a rate rise has already brought down bond prices, increasing yields. Yields on old 10 year government bonds rose to 8%. Rising yields means that the government will have to pay more to borrow and if banks are earning so much from sovereign bonds, considered totally safe, they will ask for much more when lending to riskier businesses. That partly cancels out the fall in the repo rate, announced this week. Increase in employment in the US means more people working, which means more spending money, which means greater demand, which means rising prices, ergo interest rate must rise. But apparently it is not so simple. The consumption of durable goods is weak although their price index has fallen for 15 quarters. If durable goods are becoming cheaper why are people not buying them? Because there is a hedonic price adjustment of such goods. This adjustment deducts a calculated value for improvement in quality from the actual increase in prices. For instance, according to this calculation, car prices have risen by 1.14% from January 1997 to February 2015 but in dollar terms the average price in 1997 was $17,000 while it is $33,000 today, near 90% increase. ' Hedonic ' means ' relating to pleasure', which makes it similar to the luxury tax in India. By understating inflation the government saves money by not having to increase pensions or social security and allows the Fed to keep interest rate lower than it should be. Does that mean that the rate is definitely going to rise? Apparently not. Despite interest rate at 0% and injecting around $4 trillion into banks through quantitative easing growth in the economy remains weak. Growth was just 0.7% in the first quarter, which has been blamed on poor weather. Europe grew by 0.4% in the first quarter. So, no risk of deflation. But what about Greece? Greece has delayed a payment of 300 Euros to the IMF to the end of the month and is unable to reach a deal with its creditors. Seems that European countries enforced huge sacrifices from the Greeks, driving its economy down by 33% and unemployment up to 27%, worse than it was in the US during the Great Depression, only to buy time. Now that the ECB and other Eurozone countries think they are safe they are trying to drive Greece out of the Euro. But as the East Asian crisis, the dot-com bubble and the sub-prime disaster have shown you never can tell. A banana peel maybe lurking.

Guns kill instantly, pollution takes longer.

An American journalist had a torrid time in Delhi, with his son suffering from asthma and his wife crying her eyes out. We in India know that our air is bad and we do not want children to suffer or a mother to cry over her son's health. But why is it pollution and not allergy and there is an infinitely greater chance of your son getting shot or, what is worse, taking a gun to school, as happens regularly in the great US of A. You get paradise only after death and there is a much greater chance of attaining it early in the US. As is usual, Indian journalists are kowtowing to American in vilifying Delhi. Trouble is that the same journalists echo the socialist nonsense that cars are the major source of pollution and should be banned. How can it be possible when over 16 million cars were sold in the US last year, most of them big size, while only 1 million cars are sold all over India, yet they are blamed for pollution? The solution is simple - make it mandatory for all cars to have the latest Euro rating, equalise the prices of petrol and diesel, so that people stop buying diesel cars, and reduce taxes on hybrid engines. Only one journalist had the guts to stand up to the stupid US ' bitch-slapper '. We salute her courage. The US can do anything it wants. It is now trying to take away the World Cup from Russia in 2018, for not surrendering in Ukraine, and from Qatar in 2022, because the British wanted it. Ever since Qatar won the right to host the 2022 World Cup the British have mounted a vicious racist hate campaign against Qatar. At first it was how the heat in Qatar would kill the players and when the tournament was moved to winter months by FIFA they started portraying Arabs as brutal, inhuman camel drivers who were treating workers as slaves. The US is too strong but the Arabs must punish Britain. Stop all trade with Britain, demand investigation into the London 2012 Olympics and propose that England be suspended from the FIFA for racism. Even the mighty US rolls over where China is concerned. Chinese hackers, almost certainly state sponsored, hacked into US government computers and stole personal details of over 4 million employees. As is usual China has responded aggressively to US suggestions that it was responsible. " These reports are totally groundless," said a Chinese flunkey." These allegations are highly irresponsible." Dirty games are afoot in India too. Although Christians make up just 2% of the population they receive 78.1% of funds from abroad, mostly the US. Of this, 28% go to social causes, 24% to cultural and 21% to religious causes. Which means a massive 73% is going into conversion. Bitch-slappers should be careful, bitches bight back.

Is democracy an elected form of dictatorship?

We are conditioned to believe that a dictator is a very bad person. We immediately think of Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong who were responsible for millions of deaths of their own people. So, who is a dictator? " When there is no turnover in power of the executive, then it's a dictatorship," defines Natasha Ezrow, senior lecturer at the University of Essex. Dictators have cost millions of deaths - 49 million in Russia under Stalin, 30 million in China under Mao and some 3 million in Cambodia under Pol Pot. Even today 106 nations, or 54% of countries, are under full or partial dictatorships, comprising of two-thirds of the world's population, of whom 2 billion are under oppressive rule. If dictators are so nasty why do people tolerate them? Because a small group of people will profit hugely from the absolute powers of a dictator and support him to the death. " When you depend on the support of very few people to stay in power, then the efficient way to govern is through corruption, bribery, blackmail, extortion and so forth," says Prof de Mesquita," You can keep a small group of people loyal by paying them really well." Can you not bribe a majority of people to stay on in power? Hugo Chavez won elections by using Venezuela's oil money for social schemes, making him hugely popular with the poor. He easily won a referendum to change the constitution so that he could stand for a third term. His social policies led to high inflation, increase in crime and waste of massive amounts of money, supplying cheap oil to neighboring countries, in trying to build a consensus against the US. Today Venezuela is an economic basket case after oil prices fell but if Chavez was alive to run for president he would most probably win again. So was he a democrat or a dictator? The same is the case with Turkey. President Erdogan keeps winning elections by exploiting other groups, by using religion and by demonising the army. The fall in the price of oil, which devastated Venezuela, has been a boon for Turkey but for how long? Is dictatorship confined within national boundaries? China has a change of government every 10 years but citizens have little power as proved by the lack of information about the recent ferry disaster. China aggressively claims territory of its neighbors, which made Philippines President Aquino compare it to Nazi Germany. Can a nation be democratic at home while behaving as a dictatorship outside its borders? The US claims the right to attack any country for its gain and has slaughtered millions in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq. It uses drones to kill suspected terrorists in other countries, killing scores of innocent civilians in the process. Is it an international dictatorship? Perhaps the difference between a dictator and a democrat depends on wealth - if the country is poor then the dictator kills within his own borders, if it is rich then he kills abroad, and is know as a democrat.

A dirty market will always be volatile.

For months politicians, stockbrokers and business fellows have been begging for a reduction in interest rate but when the RBI cut repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.25% yesterday the market fell by over 600 points. So far the interest rate has been cut 3 times this year, from 8% to 7.25%. Apparently the rate cut was already factored in, so there was a collective shrug when it actually happened, the government announced a reduction of monsoon rains to 88% of normal and the RBI expects inflation to creep up towards 6% by next year, which means that there is no scope for further cuts. One enraged broker said that to think that the RBI can control inflation like the Federal Reserve does in the US is a " dangerous line of thought ". In his opinion the RBI should not have increased interest rates in 2011 and should have cut more aggressively this year. Which means that the RBI's sole function is to support the stock market so that share prices keep on rising infinitely. Somewhat like the voodoo economics espoused by Turkey's President Erdogan who thinks that lower interest rate will lower inflation and not reducing rate is betrayal. Other writers are questioning the RBI's logic of reducing rate when it foresees rising inflation. The fall in share prices may have been an overreaction but Indian companies are being downgraded because earnings growth is weaker than predicted. Earnings growth is weak because consumer spending is suppressed and will only improve if inflation stays low. This is mostly in the hands of the government and there is nothing the RBI can do about it. The Service Tax rate went up from 12.5% to 14% yesterday which will add to bills, from cell phones to restaurants. Some politicians want a weaker rupee to increase exports but that will increase the price of imports, especially oil. It is no point comparing with China, Japan, Europe or the US, all of which have inflation at lower than 2%, whereas the Congress scorched us with retail inflation at over 10% for years, while it went on an irresponsible spending spree to bribe voters. One reason why our market is so volatile is because Indians have reduced their exposure to equities by half in the last 15 years. Only 2% of total household savings are invested in the stock market. Retail investors tend to hold on to their portfolio and hence provide a stability to the market, but Indians have a deep distrust of stocks. They are wise because promoters of companies are pledging their shares to banks to raise money. Banks lend a portion of the market value of shares and if the price falls they ask promoters to make up the difference in cash or sell them off. Forced sale in a falling market exaggerates losses. Unless our market is cleaned up people will stay away. Whatever the politicians and brokers may say.

The planet of the apes is not out there. It is Earth.

Human beings are apes. For proof all we need to do is to look at what politicians are doing all over the world. A few days back Russia handed over a list of names of people, who are banned from traveling to Russia, to the European Union. EU leaders have reacted furiously to this ban calling it " unjustified ". A spokeswoman of the EU said," We consider this measure as totally unjustified, especially in the absence of any further clarification and transparency. If Russia's intention is to put pressure on the EU to ease sanctions then this is not the way to do it." How else can Russia show its indignation at the criminal behavior of the west? The US imposed an embargo on Vietnam for 2,200 American soldiers missing in action during the war. It did not matter that the US slaughtered millions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for no reason other than their desire for communism but Vietnam was punished for a bunch of dead soldiers. The embargo on Cuba is only just being lifted. The EU and the US imposed sanctions on Russia to destroy its economy and bring down President Putin. The mystery is why is the west so eager to destroy Russia, which has an elected government, while they suck up to China, a dictatorship of the Communist Party, with a highly aggressive policy towards its neighbors. Just as the west sucks up to terrorist Pakistan, supplying it with weapons with which to kill democratic Indians. Sanctions rarely work. They have not worked against Zimbabwe, North Korea or Iran and they have not worked against Russia. But just as EU sanctions hurt the Russian economy, Russian sanctions on the EU have hurt European businesses, at a time when the Eurozone economy is very weak. The whole crisis is totally stupid because it was created by the west engineering an armed coup against an elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych who had to escape to Russia to save his own life. That enraged the Russian speakers in the eastern part of Ukraine who are demanding a separate state. The present president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko was elected by the Ukrainian half of the country and is not accepted by the Russian half. He is playing a dangerous game of inciting Putin by appointing a US stooge, former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili as mayor of Odessa in the south of the country. Saakashvili is renouncing his citizenship of Georgia to take up the post. What an amazing patriot! Shows that he does not care for his country, but is a mercenary, for sale to the highest bidder. Meanwhile in Syria the Islamic State has attacked the ' good rebels ', supported by Washington, in the town of Azaz on the border with Turkey. If they take Azaz the rebels in Aleppo will be encircled. You would expect rational behavior from humans. These fellows are proving that we are apes after all.