PROFESSIONALISM

How would we react to say a list culled from visitor's diary of the Chief of RAW or such other investigative / sensitive agencies . I am sure these agencies  would have put in place appropriate safeguards to such or similar information  that can emanate from compulsions of their operating exigencies and methodology.In the case in point, such recorded details need not have been rendered  vulnerable to being  brought to light in the first place. This is to be seen divorced from the age old debate of on how much  politically en-wrapped such agencies have or have not, since come to be.  Agencies dealing with  matters of internal /external security and high crime need to be uncompromisingly professional ,in every way.

OUR MARKETS MUST MATURE BEYOND ITS TEENS

 It reflects poorly on an economy with  strong on going fundamentals  that waits with trepidation  for a regime change  and within days thereafter, chases  every other stock to new  highs !.That swings will be wilder on  say an Israeli- Palestinian flare up or even a substantial  QE taper in the US is understandable but to be inexplicably swayed purely by endemic factors, must ride on reckless hope and perhaps greed. That said,  weak fault lines  continue to exist, be it in the narrow band of retail speculative stock transactions  or the  dated 30 component Sensex and in other sectoral shares as well.  Sensex  seems to be largely reduced to a day to day  ATM for retail  investors , which is fine except that swings then  tend to become hugely separated from the core value  of a stock . Indian stock markets still remain tied to its nascent days of  a command economy wherein speculation and short haul political developments  were content to feed on each other .The mindset  continues to operate and  small investors  keep getting  hurt.It is time that our stock indices get reworked and investors get wiser  to a regimen where  fundamentals start prevailing over raw speculation.

Beware the fatal wake of EU

Nations go through economic cycles. The US economy  re railing itself  after six years of struggle is  forecast to grow 3% in 2014,and  Japan after two full decades ,at 1.8%.  China will touch around 7% in 2014–15,  Brazil, Russia and India, are are in contention with  structural reforms  to regain the lost growth trajectory .All these nations are in command over their own monetary / fiscal policies and over time  will help predicate global growth , But not so the eurozone, that contributes as  high as 25 % to world trade.Shackled at birth, the EU has a single monetary policy and 11 different fiscal policies.That was the genesis of the great euro debt that at $14 trlln  equals the US .Germany may reach  respectable growth this year,  Italy, France and Spain.will remain very weak at around 0.5%.

         When the EU currency was created in 1998  it was suspected that  this could prove a recipe for individual profligacy of euro countries that are able to borrow at lower rates than their ability to repay.   There is little doubt that the  euro economic tale would continue to twist . Germany's reluctance to act as the family head and lift up other members, is already dragging down its own economy.Even Britain , in spite of being a non-EU economy, is suffering no less due to its age old geographic ties with the group.The only hope for the EU nations lies in either a dramatic economic recovery of all others  in  quick time  to enable dissolve / ameliorate  their huge debt burden by sheer sentiment or the Euro  boat  capsizes leaving some to sink and others to swim to shore.The global collective can no longer afford to merely watch as the EU totters from one crisis to another and in the end, its fatal wake pulls down many more