Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category
Field report – Future of India and commodities
In January, I was visiting a few villages in India partly to understand how global markets are affecting them. After spending a week in Europe and a few weeks Indian cities, the villages marked a refreshing contrast. As I walked in the fields, I saw that the villagers were happy, gave me free juicy sugarcanes and they were more upbeat about economy that anybody else. As we will see, if India were to consume as much oil per-capita as a relatively poorer Eastern European nation like Slovenia, it alone needs 30 million barrels/day (mbpd) more (40% of world consumption) apart from another 35 mbpd from China. If they both want to consume as much as US, India needs about 60 million addition barrels apart from 70 mbpd for China (current world production of the order of 85 mbpd).
These villages might never get to the economic level of an average American or European countryside, their per-capita income might never get closer to that of an average American, but the changes going on in these nameless places will have a profound impact on world’s commodity, tech and consumer markets. And this could change the wage-commodity price relationship substantially.
World moving towards Mediocrity?
There is a possibility that Citi might be broken up and other financial firms chewing portions of it. They ran out of options after the Wachovia debacle and world’s one of the most oldest and globalized bank might meet its end. Sad 
. I think this year would mark one of the greatest points in world history. Never before were so many major corporations were close to extinctions in this way. Not during Great Depression. Not during Japanese lost-decade. Not during Asian financial crisis. It is not the end of the world, but depressing and the fact that not many great leaders are arising in the world. Its though we are leading into a vacuum lead by a lambs. In the 30s and 40s there were so many great political leaders – Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, etc who could lead us the vision and hope, when world faced dire situation. Does anybody, in any walk of life command that much respect?
This is an article that I wrote a few years ago and I think it makes sense once again.
