Around the world in one blog

 So, Western nations sounded red alert for their citizens traveling to India. According to them (US, UK, Australia and even Canada!) another terrorist attack is imminent in New Delhi. I don’t think I heard anything of this sort coming from Indian government. But then to expect that is to believe that the current administration is actually interested in saving and protecting Indians. They are not. They don’t give a damn. They are happy to be in the power. They haven’t done anything to capture any of the masterminds (there are quite a few) of Mumbai terror attack and what’s worse they are actually having peace dialogue with Pakistan.

Pakistani Prime Minister - “Thanks for letting us kill innocent civilians in your country”
Mr. Manmohan Singh – “you are welcome”

Indian citizens – “can we at least expect you act tough against Naxalites ?”
Mr. Manmohan Singh – “absolutely not, they have right to do what they are doing. In fact, they have first right over resources available in this land”
Indian citizens –“thanks for letting us know. We will continue to vote for you”

 The simmering pot of BJP seems to be quite calm lately. That is a development in itself. For quite some time none of the senior leaders could act like senior leaders. Toys were thrown out of pram all the time. Every day someone would get up and start talking. They finally got rid of old party chief and installed a new guy. This seems to be working so far. Rebels have fallen in line and infusion of fresh blood seems to be making its way to the brain. Let’s see how they fair in next round of state elections. One thing’s sure, they know that Delhi is still quite far but what they should know that the road to Delhi will have to go through Gandhinagar.

 The Modi-IPL fiasco is finally off the front page but it will make a grand re-entry on May 11, the day Lalit Modi is asked to submit his response to the accusations. It was hilarious to read that most of the paperwork related to IPL is either non-existent or not available. In short deals worth of billions of dollars (the TV broadcasting rights alone were sold for a billion dollars i.e. forty-five thousand crore rupee!) were done either verbally or that there is so much to hide that the papers are locked in Swiss bank. The Board shouldn’t even wait for the enquiry because his ass can be fire for non-existent governance. Whatever happens at the end it’s certain that Mr. Lalit Modi ain’t coming back anytime soon. The conflict of interest was so rampant and so non-chalantly arrogant that none of criticism bothered to mention that Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri were making money doing match commentary and they were also part of the governing council.

You too Sunny?

 The Greece seems to be off the hook, at least for time being. They were binge spending and now when the sugar daddy came knocking the door they are behaving as if they are the victims here. The recent article in Times paints Greeks as corrupt and tax-evading and yet they are protesting against the budget cuts. This whole crisis casts serious doubts on the future of EU. In college I took a course on economic integration of EU. The course detailed the formidable challenges faced by the member nations and how they dealt with them. The sheer amount of effort contributed by all the member nations is not only impressive but it also gives confidence that these nations can deal with any crises in the future. Sadly in their first major crises EU failed miserably. They dilly-dallied in their response and precious time, the most important component in such crises, was wasted for no sensible reason. When the big brothers of EU (Germany and France) did came around to rescue Greece they already lost their credibility and now, they will also loose truck load of money in Greek-hole.

 And we will close this bulletin with Goldman Sachs. The financial behemoth, the elite amongst the elite, the cut-throat competitor etc. is lately getting whipped, slapped, slammed, kicked (in groin that is!) by every Joe Shmo. Perhaps, they should hire a better contingency planning team and top of the business PR firm. How arrogant you have to be to actually give out multi-billion dollar bonuses when you actively worked in brining economy down? Well, look no farther, Goldman’s right here. They are arrogant; they are crooked and of course, they are super rich. On one hand they sincerely believe that their counterparties, (i.e. their customers) who they cheated, were sophisticated and should have known better and yet they felt no shame taking billions of dollars directly from Government and indirectly from AIG when the bets they put in the market went sour. I guess their sophistication level needs some calibration.