Best of the Web - August'08-Sept'2009

China's overcapacity: A waste but not a mortal danger
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David Einhorn, Greenlight Capital, “Liquor before Beer… In the Clear”
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Roadside doctors with no degrees thrive in India
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Indian royal splendour on display
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Particle beams injected into LHC
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Hungry to learn across the world: The youngest headmaster in the world
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Shanghai Cooperation Organization
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Russia ready to abandon dollar in oil, gas trade with China
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China's super-rich bounce back from financial crisis
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The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate
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On Cluttered Ballots of India, Families Proliferate
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Rogoff Slams Four Toxic Words, ‘This Time Is Different’: Books
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Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize. For What?
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Will California become America's first failed state?
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Dollar Falls on Report Gulf States May Stop Using Greenback
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China Yearns to Form Its Own Media Empires
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Sixty years on: veterans of Chairman Mao's China remember
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Top 10 most significant events in shaping today’s China Mode
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China’s Mr. Wu Keeps Talking
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Patent Revolution
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Our One-Party Democracy
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Play It Cool, Mr. President
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Why capitalism fails
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ANALYSIS-Can we predict next world crisis?
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China vs United States: A Visual Comparison
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GDP Fetishism.
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U.S. Is Finding Its Role in Business Hard to Unwind
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The Father Of the Green Revolution
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China heaps scorn on U.S. tire duties
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50 million chemicals, and accelerating
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Trust in News Media Falls to New Low in Pew Survey : My respect and trust for NYT however has gone up (whereas most others have followed same trend as in the Pew survey findings).
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French president announces carbon tax collection program : How much does it become /barrel of crude, /mbtu of gas or /ton of coals?
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How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?: Liked the cartoons on the page as well...
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China showcases commercial jet at Asia air show
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China Tightens Grip on Rare Minerals
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It’s High Time to Ruffle a Few Billion Feathers: 'By Roach’s calculations, Americans account for about 4.5 percent of the world’s population and its consumers spent about $10 trillion in 2008. China and India, which account for roughly 40 percent of the world’s population, consumed about $2.5 trillion.'
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Victors in Japan Are Set to Abandon Market Reform
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Chinese learn credit card perils the hard way. And this section: 'According to Professor Wang, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to be private companies, account for 99 percent of the total number of firms in China; 60 percent of the country’s GDP; 70 percent of employment; 65 percent of the patents filed each year; 60 percent of exports and 50 percent of tax revenues. Despite this large contribution to the Chinese economy, SMEs only use 20 percent of China’s financial resources. Per yuan of investment, they are eight to 10 times more efficient than China’s large companies in creating jobs and four to six times more efficient in generating GDP.' is quite interesting as well. I doubt how these SMEs do it.
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ISB Founding dean Pramath Sinha...
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Opening new chapter of China-U.S. dialogue: It's more important now to see how the Chinese view it.
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Pope Criticizes World Economic System, Urges Social Responsibility
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Universities test morals, knowledge: It's a much welcome change, however it must also reduce the 'rote learning' stress that most students in countries like China and (probably more so ) in India face. Therefore it should not necessarily increase the stress, rather make it enjoyable for them to read and learn. During a recent visit to Tanzania, students their said how competitive Indian education system is (in urban middle-class society), and it sort of kills a kid-boy-teenager's early life. At the same time, in-spite of such huge loads, countries like India (or even China) fail to produce globally recognized scholars, nobel laureates. That means somewhere up the value chain, system collapses (it's not alone rote learning or holistic development - facilities in colleges/universitiesand capabilities of faculties are also important).
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Harvard Begins Case Study as Tainted MBAs Reveal Damaged Brand
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The Rise of the Underground
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China to Open Yuan's Role in Trade
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CEOs Give Thanks to Hank This Thanksgiving
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Christian Science Paper to End Daily Print Edition
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TIMELINE: Milestones in the yen's history
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Japan Returns to Pre-Thriller Era as Nikkei Slumps to '82 Level
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Apple Q4 earnings: Analyzing the analysts: Can the same be said about professional journalists and bloggers/citizen journalists?
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China Allows Short Sales, Margin Loans to Help Market : I must say I am quite surprised by part of this decision. That's China for rest of the world! I also sense that China is trying to send a message (snub?) hereby to market economy that where the US has failed, China would succeed. No doubt a bold move, however probably it was better to move more carefully at this particular juncture.
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Japan logs trade deficit as exports slow: That indeed is a news, and most unexpected (since 1082!). I expected the real trade figures (number, for imports and exports in $bns), however that's missing from the article.
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U.S. to lose financial superpower status - Germany & Asia Needs Deal to Prevent Panic Selling of U.S. Debt, Yu Says : Interestingly, 1st one comes from Germany and 2nd one from China. The OPEC voice can send the market in a real turmoil.
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Morgan Stanley's Mack Seeks Protection From You: I didn't expect such a harsh criticism of ongoing policies from Bloomberg...
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Treasury Seeks Authority to Buy Mortgages Unchecked by Courts : I have managed various reverse auctions in my earlier career with e-business service providers, but wonder how RA can be applied in such a case. Every house is unique, so for every house (mortgage), there's only one seller (or mortgage owner). If they club the mortgages in lots and based on quality of mortgage (what's likely), then again no two lots are same. Reverse auctions work when all suppliers are more or less equal in their quality of goods/services; which isn't largely true for this case. Therefore I foresee that the tresury would start buying the lowest quality of mortgages; and now one would like to be seller in the early days, believing that as the RA with $700 billion moves through (and also economy improves/liquidity/home prices improve), they would get a better price either through market (or through subsequent round of RAs). Only the mortgage holders desperate for cash would indulge in some sort of distress sales (what's the value Tresury can buy for every dollar in its 1st lot...asset of 3 dollars? I will rather put it at a less value...anyway let's see as more clarifications emerge).
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GM puts Volt through its paces in Milford
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Wall Street Journal to go into wine retailing
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China paper urges new currency order after "financial tsunami": Watch the timing...
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How to Handle a Market Gone Mad
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Sell the U.S. Dollar into Strength: Last few days I haven't written much/posted much as I am again bit active in market (and stressful with leveraged position...and in wrong foot at times). However I have been following all events closely. Surprisingly, this is the 1st article that talked about intervention as the ongoing phenomena whereas when dollar was weak, there was active talk about it. To me it surely looks like an intervention - then why not the Russians, Chinese, OPEC world shifting their forex in this rally to Euro. Or even buying gold? Something fishy...true, the job of trading in derivatives is more stressful than a bomb-diffuser. Hope I survive this time.
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UAL Story Blame Is Placed on Computer: I didn't know many things in the article...more about the computer-based trading (25% - astonishing!)
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UAL shares walloped by new posting of old news: Sometime back, I talked about Indian media broadcasting/printing news without any quality check (the Goa and Nazi story); however this highlights what's happening in so called western press (many of which I consider to be reputed ones!). Hilarious indeed - only not so hilarious who sold believeing the story.
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CERN fires up new atom smasher to near Big Bang: I briefly touched upon it in my book Wondering Man Money & Go(l)d...interesting developments. And there is a small fear in the mind as well.
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Here is one of the better measure of Indian inflation...and here is the official website. Unfortunately, as one Reuters article suggested even today, the data always leaks out before the scheduled time for market manipulation. And it happened today also.
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Asia leads mobile growth, but lags on Internet.
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Google Offers Web Browser for Download to Challenge Microsoft
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Text of Sen. Barack Obama's speech: Wish India gets a politician with similar idelogies...
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Japan Goes on Buying Spree, Shrugging Off '80s Bubble : It talked about Ranbaxy-Daiichi as well. One particular aspect, in which I never thought about, came out here and that's 'Japanese companies have cash equal to 11 percent of their assets, the second-highest amount after China among the world's 10 biggest equity markets, according to Bloomberg data'. It's good to always have cash - just as Mutual Funds or investors have. More so in boom time...
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Stocks Under 'Short' Order Fell During Protection Period & Did It Help to Curb Short Sales?: Markets are too powerful and its all about confidence...once the genie is out of the bottle, it's difficult to control it.
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India Sounds `Death Knell' for Jobs With Perks: And when one adds the complexity of withdrawing this PF in one's need (e-governance in India: a status report), one understands that this is another poverty tax that govt. employs on the informal sector and unorganized employees. Could anyone in India withdraw his/her PF when one of his/her family member needs some costly treatment at a short notice? I think not. The process takes minimum few months, and probably hell lot of applications and follow ups. Makes a sense for govt. employees, otherwise it simply does not have any relevance.
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China to overtake US as largest manufacturer: The FT subscription models (3-categories) show another interesting online trend. Regarding the article: 'China is set to overtake the US next year as the world’s largest producer of manufactured goods, four years earlier than expected, as a result of the rapidly weakening US economy.' I long felt it so, and I still don't understand how service economy (where Wall Street alone can be nearly 30%) can be more than 80% of a large economy.


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Asian Yahoos Don't Give a Google About Free Web
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Microsoft $20 Billion Buyback Signaled After Slump : It's surprising to see so much buy-back when possibilities are huge...true there's no point in spending the money in the drain either.
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China Wins Financial Olympics as Losses Hit U.S. : Remember Socialist China creates Capitalist records...
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Korea's No. 1 Money Manager Says Genghis Khan Model for Funds : Mirae picked up some stake in LIC Housing Finance, one of the scripts I follow (and occassionally hold, as I am doing now). I believe they entered at > Rs. 300. During the July slump in Indian markets, one day I was shocked to see the volumes in its futures. Normally the counter sees thin trading, at times to sell one contract, one needs to wait for minutes. And when NIFTY was close to 3800 or so level, with LIC Housing Finance at around Rs. 230-level; there were sale orders that numbered 100-s at one time. And there was a flood of sale orders for couple of days. Few days later, I read Mirae did close their India-specific fund, in which they had high realty exposure. There were another FII seller that month (some Mauritus-based funds like TCI or so); whereas Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse picked up the stakes. Markets are indeed as dangerous and as fluid and as volatile as fire and water. Always be careful...

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The Trolls Among Us : We see increasing online collaboration amongst MSMs as Bloomberg directly linked to this. The article is interesting, and in-spite of being a member of pro-internet lobby; makes me think about its healthy future in an absolutely unregulated environment