It’s a GAS

Before we get ahead of ourselves here. Lets do quick fact check -
Politician claiming success (first doubt),  Tis the season of energy and oil (second doubt) and the amount is just too much (which makes me wonder at what cost drilling !).
I will be more than happy to be proven wrong here.
Lot of [...]

35 is the magic number

Thats the magic number to take lot of India based BPO companies down the drain if dollar hits that number against rupee. Currently it stands at ~43.
This will cause new business development alignment to take shape.

The Reserve Bank of India has a relatively easy
job protecting its $125-odd billion forex kitty — it can hold [...]

Skilled Labor out of favor ?

Asked which assets will be most valuable to the company five years from now, 53 percent of respondents said “products/services.” Another 26 percent said “brand/reputation,” while “management” and “intellectual property” each were selected by about 10 percent. None of the respondents chose “skilled labor.”
How did we come to this outcome?

America: the world’s biggest hedge fund

More Buttonwood analysis on the impact of interest rate rise -
The current account essentially comprises two things: the trade balance and overseas investment income. America’s trade deficit is bad and getting worse, even though the dollar has fallen by 23% from its recent high in February 2002. A $46.6 billion trade deficit in March [...]

New economic era begins

NYT on Fed’s meeting this week to revise the interest rates -
The new era of rising rates, with its uncertain implications, begins in two days.

More What-ifs..

Buttonwood’s dreading the worst case
what would happen to the American economy were property prices to tank, at the same time that oil prices soared and the fiscal stimulus ran out. It wouldn’t look pretty, that’s for sure.
Talking about probability, IMHO this dire what-if for triple whammy is highly unlikely.
On the related topic, [...]

Keeping track of the numbers

Paul Krugman dissecting Bush’s hired gun’s projections
And employment is chasing a moving target: it must rise by about 140,000 a month just to keep up with a growing population. In April, the economy added 288,000 jobs. If you do the math, you discover that President Bush needs about four years of job growth at last [...]

Gasoline stealing the gas from recovery

From Rob Black -
Economist Irwin Kellner says there is a rule of thumb that every penny per gallon that gasoline prices rise takes $1 billion out of the economy. Since the end of 2001, gasoline prices have jumped by over 80-cents a gallon, effectively negating more than one quarter of the $316 billion in [...]

What runs in the family isnt success

Socialist Don Conley , also a director of the Center for Advanced Social Science at New York University has come out with some startling findings in his new book - “The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why”.
Findings which will generate more debate and interest (and can also affect family planning) : -
- differences [...]

Productivity Paradox

[Stephen S. Roach is a chief economist for Morgan Stanley ]
Productivity growth is sustainable when driven by creativity, risk-taking, innovation and, yes, new technology. It is fleeting when it is driven simply by downsizing and longer hours. With cost cutting still the credo and workers starting to reach physical limits, America’s so-called productivity renaissance may [...]