18.10.2007

• Madonna is on top of music industry
• Pop diva Madonna has entered into a historic record deal worth a reported $120 mn deal for over 10 years.
• This deal is set to revolutionize the music industry, the mavens say.
• With this deal she has become the world’s highest paid female singer ever.
• The XI Plan finalization process
• The Eleventh Plan in the final stages of being finalized. The Planning Commission headed by the Prime Minister will be meeting on November 9 to approve the new plan. After this approval it would have to be cleared by the Cabinet before it is placed for approval by the NDC.
• The India Portal
• While wandering around the web (or should I say wilfing?) I came across The India Portal. It is a must see for all of you. You can’t get a better source of government related info anywhere. It is authentic.
• Man Booker Prize announced
• Anne Enright has won this prize for her novel, an Irish family saga “The Gatherning”. She is an Irish novelist.
• India’s major turmeric trading hubs
• Nizamabad (AP) and Erode (TN) are the two major turmeric trading hubs in the country.
• Why is non-reflection of market prices for crude bad?
• Take a look at three solid reasons given by today’s ET editorial:
• Huge fuel subsidies divert monies that could be allotted to the developmental programs meant for the common man.
• Under-recoveries in fuel prices lead to unscheduled borrowings for the oil marketing companies. This could mean dearer cost of funds and hardening interest rates across the board.
• The price freeze would leave relative prices of petro-goods artificially frozen, putting paid to economizing on pricey oil.
• Good times last longer
• In his essay today, TT Ram Mohan argues that the world economy is undoubtedly in an upswing and that the fears of recession or the spread of the subprime contagion are unfounded. Three of the strong reasons he attributes for the upswing are:
• Volatility in global output has declined progressively since the 1970’s. The rise of China has made a solid contribution to this.
• Emerging markets today account for 40% of world GDP and two thirds of the world GDP growth. This means that there is a diminished dependence on the US as the engine of growth.
• Terrorism, though has not receded, has had little impact on globalization or economic stability.
• The IMF’s World Economic Outlook identifies three factors for this improvement:
• They are better institutional quality, financial deepening and better economic management.
• Institutional quality is “constraints on the political executive”.
• By better economic management what is recognized is that the central banks have become more adept at tackling inflation. They have also learnt to co-ordinate their responses in dealing with financial crises.
• What did SEBI do that had so much impact on the stock markets? The sensex lost 336 points in a single day and had seen lot of volatility.
• It has issued a consultation paper to discuss the imposition of some restrictions on the PNs in order to moderate capital inflows into the country. It had sought to restrict PNs issued by FIIs to 40% of assets under custody in India. The regulator is justified in asking FIIs not to issue fresh overseas derivative instruments (largely PNs) where the underlying instrument is also a derivative. That is pure speculation and serves no broader purpose.
• The notional value of the total outstanding PNs is about rs. 3,53,484 crores as of August 2007. This is 51.6% of the assets under the custody of FIIs.
• In this context it would be very educative to read “All about ODIs and PNs” that appeared in today’s ET in the classroom column.