Financial Crisis...A Summary

Something went wrong. The whole world economy is just shaky now, rather at a downfall. There is total chaos in the financial world. With this the tremors are spreading to every domain now. Slow down, recession, economy crisis, bail outs, bankruptcy; these are the every day news.

Actually I wasn't following anything of this and I was just too happy in my world. Slowly I started reading all about it. How it started and how things are getting worse day by day. I used to hear in US that real estate market is down and US economy is not doing well. But as a common man the repercussion to day today activity was not that high. I don't know somehow I getting the feel of it mentally.

Just in 5 weeks there was a financial turmoil. How it started, here it goes in simple terms a company of worth some x billion borrowed 25 times its net worth creates funds to lend and invest. In 2005-2007 the real estate market was on a steep growth and it was assumed that this will continue forever. Mortgage lenders became lenient in their lending standards with the greed of making more money without worry much about the repayment as this can be recouped with the property itself. Now the property bubble burst lead to steep depreciation in the property prices. People could not repay their loan on time and repayment defaults kept increasing leading to those huge chunks of toxic mortgages. These investment banks purchased the mortgages from banks thus freeing them to lend more money. Investment Bankers used these as assets and sold them to various institutional investors like hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and banks in all parts of the globe including Europe and Asia. The real risky mortgages were charged with very high interest rates. Overall approximately $1 trillion was invested in securities thinking they get huge returns later. As the tide turned down, all institutional investor suddenly faced this erosion of the capital. This big chunk of money was all sold and chained through the whole financial system and then there was no real value in those mortgages at all. Now there is no real money with these financial institutes at all. Suddenly everything started falling with huge deficiency in the liquidity and every major company started declaring as bankrupt. Now the government had to come to rescue the whole economy by bailouts and buying the banks the financial institutes.


The two hedge funds owned by Bear Sterns collapsed. The Federal Reserve staved off a Bear Sterns bankruptcy by assuming $30 billion in liabilities and engineering sale to JP Morgan Chase for a price that was less than worth of Bear's Manhattan skyscraper. The biggest American lending companies, which I consider them as the main cause for all of this, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in big trouble with their stock prices falling out. On September 7th the Treasury Department took over them for some $200 billion. One of biggest investment banker Lehman Brothers was totally wrecked and it filed bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch which is again one more big icon of investment banking sold off itself to Bank of America to avoid similar fate of Lehman Brothers. Washington Mutual was down; Barclay Capital bought bits and pieces of Lehman Brothers. On September 16th American International Group, AIG an insurance giant was on the verge of failure which was bailed out by Fed again for $85 billion. The $700 billion bail out plan which was rejected was finally passed. How much this would rescue the economy is not really known. The Dow Jones has fell to 9200 odd points, BSE yesterday had gone below 11000 mark. Strange it has reached to roaring 20,000 points but now down to this level. European markets are down, Asian markets are down. There are many financial institutes in bankruptcy in Europe. Yesterday Kamal Mehta and P.Chidambaram were giving repeated press conferences to build the confidence in the investor and Indian Economy is very much in convergence with the Financial Institutions and we are in a growing economy and we won't face such a situation.

Bus yaar! Yeh saab hogaya. Finance ke bahut sare funde bol raha huun. If you don’t understand anything of the above I conduct special classes on the weekends. Special rates available if you call within the next 24 hours… ;)

Chal abhi aramse chai peeta huun.

What are you searching...

I had a life in Kansas for long time. So many things happened in past two years that my life has stirred up completely. I could really see ups and downs of a life, good and bad things of life, personal life, professional life. I did meet lot of new people at a new level and they did share their life stories. I am not 65 years old and the people I met were not even 50. But for the first time I was seeing with vision of life as a whole. I don't know, optimistic person like me, was turned to a pessimistic person. My faith was shook, the principles and fundas were questioned again in my mind and suddenly nothing was meaningful. This whole thing was a big confusion. What was I searching all along, I don't know...

Anyway this crap philosophy and all doesn't work. Life is rude to you sometimes. Time up boss! Get your ass out of here. So what all I had till now, had to packed in my just 2 suitcases. Damn! I was doing this packing past last 2 weeks still I couldn't finish it till the last minute. I did one thing though, everyday I paid visit to each of the places in which I had spent my past time. That was a amazing recap. Actually this time I was not feeling sorry to leave the city. I felt good. Change is always good. Change always bring about a new excitement and new colour to life. But certainly the experiences and learning that I had would always remain etched in my mind.

Now coming back to my room was such a Ah Ha feeling. I got access back to all my good old stuff. In many cases, I felt India or Bangalore is far more advanced. I have so much better options here. Suddenly I am back in the crowd, among the people who love me, who care about me, all this just makes you feel wonderful. Things started getting clear in my mind. Although the confusion is not totally washed away, but work is under progress. While I was cleaning some of the stuff on my book shelf, my sight fell on this good old book "The Alchemist". I have read this before and it is amazing. This is a magical fable written in such a incredible way which makes to glued to the book and at the same rate it keeps on telling you life fundas. I have started reading it again and even if I have read it before, even though I know the whole story, still I am able to relate myself much better. When I read it before I was in a different phase of life and now I am in a different phase, so view point have changed a little bit and this book is teaching me new things now.

It is all about following and realizing a dream. It is a matter of a destiny how ones path of life gets decided. These are some excerpts from this book.

"Destiny is what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young know what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny. It's a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth" Courtesy Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

Airport

One of the most interesting place that I have come across is the Airport. Well! It is quite strange, only for past few years I am getting this opportunity to see this family of place more often, before that it was always either bus stands or the railway stations. Although my first flight in plane was on January 1st 2000, what a beginning! that was the first day after the millennium celebration.I still remember I was in Engineering first sem, I was made to sleep early and we were awake by 3 AM and watching the millennium celebration happening all around the world in TV. My first flight on plane was to Chennai on the way to Andaman Nicobar Islands. Probably that is a different topic altogether by itself.

After staying in Kansas for nearly 2 years, I had almost become a host over there. I used to come to airport on numerous occasions to drop-off so many of my friends. Saying Alvida to so many was always painful. Certainly Life is Big, and I am sure I will bump in with all my real friends again. Finally I had to probably make my final trip to Kansas Airport ( I am not sure if that was the final one, for this year at least ). The strange part is I was always there to send off all of them, but no one comes to send me off. That's fine!

Airport is such a heterogeneous mixture of all kinds of people, from all countries. There is certain smell or should I call it as fragrance in every airport that is kind of very different. Is it the smell of the toilets, phenol or the mixture perfumes of so many people, or air by itself in which we all fly. I hate waiting anywhere, however in airports that is the only best work to do. So my best time pass is to observe people around. All these business people with their formal wears, suit boat show off so much of a class look that as if they are the only people who are making the world to work. Always stressed with their laptops, blackberry, hi fi mobiles holding a first class ticket, which is more of booked at the company expense. Then there are these young teenager who prefer to sit at some corner on the floor instead of the chair which their gizmos connected to power slot. Girls often with a pink ipod, pink laptop, chewing a gum, looking very serious around (Oh! God this pink obsession). Then the young hunks with some sporty shoes, with haphazard bags, caps, some junk style, raw look with some food in hand. There are our desi people too. What do they do, they just stare at the other desis. I don't know whatz up with this staring business. There are some families with kids with their own mini-DVD players, video games. So much of electronic stuff in airport myan! Then these rollers in between for the babies. These rollers are so much of a mess, they are annoying to others too, they always take so much space and are always parked on the way, with the babies and some even grown ones sitting happily in it. Probably I will not understand the use of this now, but I feel it is a big irritating luggage (of course I am not referring the baby). There is other category of people too, these hippies, some art guys, or the music guys, they are always in a different world. Oh! yeah these airport or airline people too, with their uniforms, remove that remove this uuff this security checking, so much of a hassle. Sometimes I feel these guys are still going to school, because they still wear uniforms. Anyway this above sentence is silly. It happens like this because waiting and watching kind of develops a boredom. Finally with boarding call, that be as per the zone, we finally get to enter the plane. First 10-15 mins is all about fitting the big lug gages inside those boxes. Now the excitement of who will be your neighbour, you know it what it turns out always.

Till now I have seen Chennai, Port Blair, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Frankfurt, Paris, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Chicago and Kansas Airport. Of all I like the Paris Airport, why it is stylish and fashionable as per its city. Although this time the toilet was bad. May be that particular one. Anyway it is damn good. I haven't seen the whole world there is a separate ranking available for airports based on many criteria. In fact I expected more out of the new Bangalore International airport. It is of course big and good, but to the international standards, it should have been more a lot more different.

Anyway that's it, I am feeling less interested to write more on this topic, but it is quite fascinating on how the directors have managed to make a movie "Terminal" Tom Hanks on it. Really a good movie. Well! All the way on this travel back I was tired tired tired. The very first leg from Kansas to Atlanta made me feel such a long flight. Then Atlanta to Paris and Paris to Bangalore, back home and then slept like a log. End of the story.