G-8: RIP?

Lets take Neembu for example. For all the brow beating and randi rona about corporates and wall street etc, her pension fund still allocates towards Alternatives and open market positions as part of running a balanced portfolio. over 90% of americans are vested in someway,directly or indirectly in the stock market. Now compare that to how many americans are invested in the auto industry, eithe directly or indirectly.

On a global basis, if you look at large emerging markets like India and china, domestic flows constitute the bulk of the investments in the capital markets. FII flows while significant over time are becoming less and less as percentage of the total. And these markets are highly regulated, no shorting, strict rules on derivative trading, lack of rating prowess for corporates etc etc...yet when the markets here sneezed, both countries caught the flu. Russia had to shut down the exchange for two days.

so going to back to DM's point about death of the G8, I think the demise is a bit premature. And unilke the postulates provided by Romair, which come form a world is flat perspective, and offer really no tangible evidence of what the world will look like other than chinkoos and muslims and indians will be mroe in number...the reality of global leadership is firmly placed in the hands of the US for decades upon decades to come.

chalta, who? Start with neembu! :)

Ultimately, such people will not be able to make any fundamental change (and we can all be grateful for that), but there will be a struggle to change/modify the system.

Going back to your original point, numbers within a system may not matter much. You are right. So long as the system remains intact, real power will remain in the hands of a few - those have asymmetric information advantages, are creative and innovative.

The only threat comes from people who reject the system itself, who have alternative vision.

Kaal, who would be doing this?

As far as the second point...gains are always made based on asymmetric information....so I don't see how that is relevant. Individual greed is not a bad thing. People can ofcourse argue about that.

Bubba yaar, Urdu is now integral to Pakistan, so hopefully nobody will take it out of Pakistan. We are just speaking hypothetics. :)

Besides, where there is a will, there is always a very good argument to serve it. If need arises, one can even counter-argue that Urdu is the original language of Pakistan - sort of mother lanugage of Punjabi and Sindhi. No Indian would buy that either, but some Pakistanis will. These are all political decisions, and have little to do with facts on the ground or any real history of any place.

chalta, IMO, there will be two challenges. There will be efforts to show that (1)people don't own the casino, and (2) risk assessment issues are related not to natural difficulties posed by incomplete information and operations of mass psychology but to individual greed.

These are the accusations you will hear. But I don't see any real risks of the instruments themselves being abolished in the long run. I confess, I am not an industry insider.

Re #113, majumdar,
Who is Sir Alex, and how is he a muslim?

Re: # 117 Posted by KaalChakra on November 20, 2008 3:35:30 am

[Hyptohetically, take Urdu out of Pakistan completely, and there is nothing common left between someone say from Madhya Pradesh and any Pakistani. NO?]

No, please don't take that. It is only Urdu that has brought some decency amongst these pakis. It you can take away anything from these pakis take away the insane punjabis (except for Hamid mian) who are constantly on some kind of self-praise. I say take away paki paindoos, and we might get back some sanity and world respect for the pakis. while you are at it, take away those paki-waki arabs-wanna-be's also.

No no no kaal, it is not about beating the house....the metaphor of the casino was merely a way to show that the system for wealth creation is going to change from human intervention in production of goods and services to trading of ideas where values can be assigned to those ideas. Unlike a casino where the house always wins...in this scenario the equity owners of the casinos are people themselves....it has already started....people investing in exotics through pension funds...was the beginning...stock exchanges themselves going public allows for greater participation for folks in this paradigm.

This recent correction in asset values calls for a deeper review of risk not abolishing of the instruments.

Re: # 120 Posted by _arjun38 on November 20, 2008 4:05:07 am

[everything coming out of capt clueless is from his south...]

couldn't 've said it better

LOL, tree bhai, this is not at all how INDIANS think. We are speaking specifically of Romair's beliefs. :)

-----------

DM ji, in fact, Microsoft has followed the strategy of (combining some inhouse innovation and creativity) with taking simply taking over creativity and innovation wherever the latter existed.

from your discussions one can draw the conclusion that north india shall become a part of pakistan.
get rid off these south indian(dravidians) like pakistan got rid off bengalis.
i like this idea.

nkg#99:

"indian offices of MicroSoft, Intel, HP, IBM, Google are doing good quality work."

That is indeed the problem that I was referring to. We have a saying in Punjabi:
saari umar tunakay assi maaray, guddi lokaaN di charH gayee!

Loosely translated, it means that while we worked hard, someone else gets the big reward.

#116 bulleye: Given your vast experience in dealing with Indians, could you please confirm certain things I have heard about Indians:

1. I hear before going to bed they take off their heads and put them on the bedside table.

2. They have shifty eyes, teeth going in different directions, and feet pointing backward.

3. They lay eggs instead of bearing children. The only other mammal known to lay eggs is a platypus, so I assume they are distantly related.

4. At PMA kakul, they teach you to count to 10, since that is the minimum number of indians each fauji should take on in order to have fair and square fight.

Thanks in advance for your confirmation.

capt clueless disproves the north-south theory...

his head(north) is indistinguishable from his rear(south)...

and just as infosys et al are from the south, everything coming out of capt clueless is from his south...

"The world is heading towards being a casino...and those who can bet correctly will win. It has nothing to do with how many people a country has."

Chalta, that is one of the smartest things I have read on chowk. But IMO, it covers only half the picture (as do all views on innovation that focus on creativity and knowledge alone).

One way to win in the Casino is to bet correctly more often than others. The other is try to bring the casino down, to get other players thrown out of the casino, or to build something else in place, or to take over the ownership simply through threat or any other means - trade in something they want.

Granted, that seems beyond absurd because that is not how the Casino system works wherever it works today. But think of technological innovation. One can either innovate oneself, or simply take over other's innovations using some other means of power (money, mostly but not always).

Ok..so here is my view on what will humans do. We will either trade those things made by machines, who made us redundant as part of the production cycle, or we will trade the derivatives of those the things we trade. The fastest growing segment of the global GDP is....drumroll...financial services!!! innovation is not just limited to tangible items but also to esoteria like derivative products.

We have gone through a massive correction brought about by one type of derivative instrument.but we are still trading weather derivates, futures contracts in commodoties and currencies, options on equities, clos, heck I just saw a structured note by BNP with the underlying corporate debt of AAA rated companies at quite a significant yield.

The world is heading towards being a casino...and those who can bet correctly will win. It has nothing to do with how many people a country has.

Someone posted an article by Bhagwati below...his kaleidoscope of comparative growth theory is much much better than the world if flat mantra espoused by friedman types who think numbers matter.