Globonomics!

This was a great program that appeared on television on CNBC America. Very interesting to hear from my guru – Warren Buffett and the legendary Bill Gates – who is Buffett’s favorite Bridge partner, close friend and confidant since 1991. This event was organized at the Columbia Business school which is where Buffett got his degree under the aegis of Ben Graham and Dodd.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/33940689/site/14081545

IIFT EMIB 2004 - 2006 (Source: http://www.iift.edu)

It’s been exactly five long years since I joined for my EMIB (Executive Masters in International business) from the prestigious Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), New Delhi! I joined it on 9th August 2004. Time flies! But can say for sure that this degree has been my best investment made on education till date. With zero opportunity cost (it was held only on weekends – non stop for one and a half years) and the schedule was honestly grueling with no respite and kept us busy on weekdays with assignments, quizzes every weekend, mid-term exams, classes and of course, the end terms. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw the developments of the last week where CITI (NYSE: C) shares really fell to $3 a share and was in danger of going bust as public confidence was eroding sharply. CITI faces a real threat of a collapse.

There were two options open to the board: 1. Fire the CEO, Vikram Pandit as a sacrificial lamb, 2. split the company and sell the parts or whole of the company. Read the rest of this entry »

Simply because, it has a huge impact - no matter where you are in this world!

What happens out there impacts every single country in this world. It impacts you you and you. It impacts the decision making we make on our jobs etc. It impacts our local domestic economy. No matter how much we claim of ourselves being insulated from Wall Street, the truth is its just an eyewash. We will all get affected by the mayhem on Wall Street and the effects take at least 6 months to trickle into economies such as India and China. This is what happened in 2001 and I was a very close observer of what happened then and used to take very conservative decisions that paid off on multiple fronts and hence it is imperative I do the same again. Read the rest of this entry »

http://ecofin.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/the-us-subprime-crisis-increasing-chance-of-a-us-recessionburst-of-the-us-housing-bubble/

If you have read Warren Buffet’s letters to shareholders and his book – The Warren Buffet way (2nd ed.), then you know what a float is. I am not trying to strike a relation or anything to this problem but am just stating that insurance business is supposed to insure others and AIG (American International group) had that obligation to keep but something clearly went astray. Read the rest of this entry »

I was just ruminating on my IIFT roller coaster ride completed over two years ago and was pondering over their associated letter grades that they had assigned over my three trimesters over a span of 1.5 years and another three months for my research project (which was a 6-credit course).

My IIFT EMIB CGPA was 3.63/4 and I was in the top 10% of my class of practicing managers across the country, with an average class work experience of over 10 years. Read the rest of this entry »

I was chancing to look upon my blog’s readership and it has skyrocketed in last few months. To give you an idea of how much the readership for http://www.ecofin.wordpress.com has gone up by, Alexa rating has shown a consistent rise in my webpage ranking (it currently stands at 755139 worldwide and its India ranking is better at 58137. Furthermore, my year old blog stats shows my blog to have averaged 9999 hits way in May 2007. The current count stands at 77791.

Above means nothing if people don’t read posts. Simple page views/hits serve no value absolutely. The most important indicator that indicates the health status of a blog is its post:comment ratio. My blog’s average post:comment ratio is at about 1:2. This means, for every post I put up, I get double the # of comments. This ratio was about 2:1 last year at about the same time and it had not even reached breakeven. So, it is a satisfaction that my blog is a success in terms of these critical metrics.

Thank you, all for making this blog readable! Its only my readers who can turnaround this blog and I hope to keep you as repeat readers so the value of this blog is enhanced further!

Keep visiting back – you know where to look for me: http://www.ecofinglobe.com!

Source: Wiki

http://www.indianrail.gov.in/

http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways

This has been the single biggest turnaround in recent days of the Indian PSU sector! Indian Railways making a cash surplus (before dividend) of Rs. 25000 crore for 2007-2008 with an operating ratio of 76%. Read the rest of this entry »

What are the important factors one needs to consider before one begins to blog:

1. First, get over this obsession of Google adsense. 99/100 bloggers I meet first think of making a quick buck on adsense rather than focus on quality of their blogs and its relevance towards the topic(s) chosen! This is really very disturbing statistics. Read the rest of this entry »

I was first exposed to this concept a long time back when I started becoming a news junkie. This was in school (Bishop Cotton Boys’ school, St. Marks road, Bangalore) where I did my schooling. There were journalists who were visiting us from Times of India to promote this NiE program – if I recollect, it was sometime in 1991/92. Read the rest of this entry »