Fan of Paulo Coelho? Then surprise for you

I were reading an article in reuter news about paulo coelho recent visit to Frankfurt book fair. During his speech overthere, he mentioned that he started to provide his latest books in his blog as free download.

surprised? but i am. I had read his novel, eleven minute. After reading that i had become his fan. So, I immediately dropped into his blog,


http://paulocoelhoblog.com/


And downloaded his latest books and their details are below,

1. THE WAY OF THE BOW
Through story, he conveys thought on our daily efforts and work, how to overcome difficulties, steadfastness, and courage to take risky decisions.

2. STORIES FOR PARENTS, CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN
Sort of fairy tales a.k.a Once upon a time stories. I love reading these kinds since its quick and short. Moreover don't need to wait until the climax as in novel.

3. WARRIOR OF THE LIGHT
Story on life and imagination of pilgrim writer

You too enjoy...

What a hell happening in Wall Street? - Part 3

As mentioned in the earlier posting, we are going to talk about $800 billion bailout and U.S economy now.

This bailout plan is the first step from FED to recover the Wall Street, ultimately the economy as well. As a part of this plan, they are going to buy the bad mortgage assets from U.S banks. This will inject the liquidity(funds) into wall street and unfreeze the market by improving the current lending situation.

When this bailout bill was put forth in U.S congress on previous monday, it failed with votes of 228(against) to 205(support). Most of the Republicans were against this bill since it's going to be tax payers money to fix the wall street fault but there were no benefits for tax payers included. This resulted in market crash by around 800 pts, highest single day crash after 1983 for Dow Jones Industrial Average(DJIA) and other indices also fallen down. Investors lost around 1 trillion dollars on that day. Moreover investors lost around 4 trillion dollars on september alone and lost around 9 trillion dollars since jan 08.

On adding, sweetners such as raising the ceiling on insurance for bank deposits from $US100,000 to $US250,000, and adding up $US150 billion in tax breaks for middle class families and business in the bill, it was put forth again in U.S congress on previous thrusday and it went through with votes of 263(support) to 171(against) and later approved by White House to enact the bill.

Until now, federal government spent around $1.8 trillion in bailout and their debt increased to $11.3 trillion dollar. Except, $700 billion bailout, others provided will be profitable since they were provided with high interest rates with collateral. But, those mortgage assets which government going to get inturn on providing this $700 billion bailout will be profitable or not? What will be the value of those mortgage asset values in future? Noone knows the answer to this question.

In september, around 159,000 lost their jobs, the deepest in 5-1/2 years, which is more than 59,000 predicted by reuters in their survey. Morover, Labor Department report showed 760,000 jobs lost so far in 2008. This resulted in weak personal income and spending hence further job cuts may happen in manufacturing and factory order and shipments sectors as well.

Where this situation leading to? Everyone says the answer as recession. What is recession? In simple terms, decline in the the growth of economy (i.e) negative GDP growth for two quarter or so.

Does bailout provided will improve this situation? not really. Then what will
make this to improve? Fed Rate cut. What is Fed Rate cut? This is rate at which one lending institution lends money from another(mostly from Federal Reserve). How does layman going to benefit from this? Prime rate is the rate at which consumer and business gets the money from lending institution which may be around to 2-3% more than fed rate. If fed rate decreases, prime rate also decreases. If loans are available cheaper than before for person and business, then the following cycle will get triggered,

money flows -> consumer consumption of manufactured product -> manufacturing sector improves -> other dependent sector grows -> more jobs -> economy grows -> money flows

I hope this might helped you to understand the wall street. Your feedbacks about this series are welcome.

What a hell happening in Wall Street? - Part 2

In the earlier posting, we talked about list of investment banks and how they were affected by subprime mortgage crisis and what happened to them.

Before getting into this further, i am going to explain what is subprime mortgage crisis and about bear stearns, which was missed in the earlier posting and then followed by sequence of events happened after that.

Mortgage backed securities(MBS) are investment instruments available in the financial market through investment banks, which are nothing but bond by owner of the home to repay the home/mortgage loan to the lending institution(commerical bank) along with interest rates. There is no collateral to be submitted by borrower and the home bought buy him going to act as collateral and taken over by the bank in case if he forecloses(not able to pay back) the loan. This kind of securities are classified based on loan defaulting risk of the borrower and available in the stock market. Higher the risk, higher the return.

Sub-prime mortgage investment instruments are the ones with higher risk. During the year 2005-2006, there was a housing bubble in the US (i.e) Value of housing assets were overpriced and the price correction for the same happened latter resulted in fall of the asset value. This made the owner of the asset to default the loan since their asset value is less than loan payback value. So ,commerical banks and investment banks who owns these asset in one form or another(collaterals/securities/infrastructure funds/real estates), ran into deep problem called sub-prime mortgage crisis.

One among the investment banks, 85 years old Bear stearns ("Most Admired" securities firm in fortune's "America's Most Admired Companies" survey)who had high exposure to this crisis, started collapsing during march 2008 and went for filing bankruptcy. It was then bought by JP Morgan chase for $10 per share(initial quote was $2 per share and latter it moved to $10 to save the bear stearns investors)

Next, Fannie Mae and Freedie Mac are the liquidity(funds) providers for the mortgage based lending institution and added to that they were selling MBS to investors. So ultimately they had the exposure to this crisis and they are now under the control of government who took the major portion of the preferred stocks in these company as collateral and provided them $100 billion to each as bailout(funds as loan) to go ahead with their operations.

Next, AIG, one of the biggest insurer in the world who have clients across 130 countries who insured consumers, business, MBS, hollywood movies etc.. also got affected by this mortgage crisis. They got $85 billion as bailout by providing around 80% stake as collateral and they need to pay 12% interest on bailout. If this insurer was not saved as Lehman brothers by FED then lot of business insured by them would had got affected resulted in global economic meltdown.

Next, Washington Mutual(WaMu), 119 years old savings and loan bank closed by the government, the largest bank failure in the US history and its asset were sold to JP Morgan Chase for $1.9 billion on the same day of closure.

Next, Wachovia securities, the bigger one in the U.S east coast with around 3,400 branches. Citi who was ready to take over only securities division for $2.2 billion with guarantee from the government for the $312 billion wachovia mortgage asset. But Wells fargo & co who have huge client base in the U.S west coast comes up with $15 billion bid for the entire wachovia includes brokerage, securities and investment banking division. Citi or Wells fargo?
Lets see what happens..

What about to recently turned bank holding companies such as Goldman sachs, Morgan stanley. Whats happening with them? They are right now busy, looking for national banks with troublesome mortgage assets and taking them at cheaper price. Recently, Goldman took ohio national bank and looking for somemore troublesome assets.

Watchout for more here with respect to $700 billion bailout from government and US economy now.

Waiting for VaRaNaM AaYiRaM...

This is the next tamil movie i am going to watch in theatre after kuselan(Hope, Robo will get us the double satisfaction to compensate this movie). I downloaded the audio songs of this movie yesterday even it got released on 24th sep 08.

There are 7 seven songs and they are ultimate. Things to highlight are lyrics by Thamarai and ofcourse, Harris jeyaraj music (Some says he copies the music from english albums, whatever it is but all songs are great to hear).

These songs tempted me to a look at trailer and came to know there are two roles played by Surya and heriones are 'Kuthu' Ramya, Sameera Reddy, and Simran(ada namma simran thaanga).

Moreover, this is Gautham menon's movie, one of the best director. I felt this on seeing his movies such as minnale, kakka kakka, vettaiyadu vilayadu...

Waiting for the festival of light to come since it is going to released on that day.

Movie Trailer for you...

Plants do have intelligence...

I were reading a friction novel where in one of the chapter, i had come across the conversion between two, one saying plants have intelligence. I didn't believe as other character in the novel did. Then i googled to figure out.

Yes, they do have.

Does this make you marvel as i did? Plants exhibit several intelligences such as love, hatred, scream, communicate, defend. They do love music and some are meat-eaters as we are.

Do you interested to know how they proved these facts? If yes, then go ahead with your reading.

To prove love and hatred, they attached electrode of the polygraph to plant, started whispering nearer to it saying you are so beautiful, then the needle of the polygraph hiked little. When they whispered saying you are so ugly, it hiked more.

Next, how did they screamed? A guy asked to take two plants in hand. First one attached with electrode and the second is made to be killed in front of other(yes, it is murdered). Then asked to pass the guys who were innocent to pass through the witnessed one, the needle of the polygraph is steady. When the guilty one passed by, needle hiked to greater extent.

Do you believe they communicate each other? you need to do and they use chemical substance by name phermones to communicate between them as animals/insects use.

Some plants defend themselves by generating alkaloids to make them unpalatable to insects.

Even they love music. Our indian scientist by name sir jagadish chandra bose who took three flowered plants. One was made to listen to acid rock music and other made to listen to soft sitar music and third without music. What he observed was amazing, the first one was dead and the third one growing normally and the second one beautifully blossomed and growing towards music.

Some of them are meat-eaters(i.e carnivorous plant). They attract insects and trap them, digest and absorb nutrients out of it.

To conclude, plants are also living being as animals with emotions and intelligences. So those guys who intake vegetarian are even non-vegetarian from this perspective.

What do you say?