26.09.2008

• Justice Nanavati report on Godhra riots
• To be submitted in two parts: The first part of the report, dealing with the fire on the ill-fated train was recently handed over to the state government by a fact-finding Commission headed by Justice G T Nanavati. The second part dealing with post-Godhra riots will be submitted in December.
• Giving a clean chit to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the Godhra train carnage report tabled on Thursday in the state assembly, described the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, as a conspiracy.
• The findings of the two-member Commission, presented six years after the incident, go contrary to a probe headed by another former Supreme Court judge U C Banerjee, set up by the Lalu Prasad-headed railway ministry. Banerjee had concluded that the fire on the train, in which 58 kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya were killed, was accidental.
• The report said that 140 litres of petrol was purchased as part of the conspiracy to burn the train’s bogie. It added that the conspiracy was hatched by Moulvi Umarji at the Aman Guest House in Godhra, about 140 km from Ahmedabad, and was meant to spread terror in the area. The report states the train-burning was pre-meditated and there was also heavy stone pelting for 10 to 20 minutes at the S-6 and S-7 coaches, followed by the burning, which prevented people from coming out. It notes that Razak Kurkur and Salim Panwala had purchased 140 litres of petrol on February 26 and carried them in containers. Shaukat Lalu, Imran Sheri, Rafiq, Salim Zarda, Zabeer and Siraj Bala were also involved in burning the train.
• Language lessons: less on the ball
• I was puzzled by this sentence: "Part of the reason is many of our institutional shareholders are quasi-government entities and hence are less on the ball in many cases, while in others they tend to toe the government line."
• Wonder what is meant by less on the ball here?
• "On the ball" means competent, knowledgeable, or alert
• Less on the ball means not so competent, not so knowledgeable in the present context
• Some hard figures coming our way on the US financial turmoil; from an article by Saumitra Chauduri. Very good one. Some excerpts for us:
  
• On Wednesday September 17, 2008, the yield on three month Treasury Bills fell to three (three only) basis points (bps), i.e., 0.03%, the lowest in more than half a century.
• The total of securities issued on the back of subprime and Alt-A home loans are estimated to be $2.1 trillion, while some seven million subprime and over 3.6 million Alt-A loans exist totalling about $2.5 trillion. It appears that the $700 billion Paulson Fund is additive with the $314 billion of commitments made by the US Treasury and Federal Reserve till date, thus making for a total commitment of over $1 trillion. American and other banks and financial institutions have to date taken some $400 billion in write-downs and some troubled assets have accompanied Lehman to bankruptcy court. All of the loans underlying the $2.1 trillion of mortgages cannot go bust and it is hard to see how a cushion well in excess of $1 trillion cannot but substantially ease the pain.
• MANY centuries ago Thomas Gresham pointed out that bad money drives out the good. The subprime-based CDO market and its many creative offshoots have in a sense created bad money that is pushing out the good. The $2 trillion of suspect securities have created havoc for a US credit market of $50 trillion and an equity market of $20 trillion, as well as for the rest of the world.
• The Credit Default Swap (CDS) market has apparently grown to $53 trillion about which SEC chairman Cox said there is no regulator, by which he probably meant that nobody has a clue about it. The financial industry believes that most CDS can be netted out and the problem is tractable. If so, this ought to be carried through over the next few months, and with some urgency, for quite a bit of CDS are attached to subprime constructs and these tentacles reach far and wide.
• Google's phone is called G1
• The Google phone is a 3.5G handset with finger-friendly touch screen navigation, slide-out QWERTY keyboard with a trackball, Wi-Fi enabled and delivers rich internet browsing experience. It also provides one-touch access to Google services like Google search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk and Google Map.
• Priced at $180, it is scheduled to be released shortly in the US markets. By New Year, even India may be seeing this phone in its markets.
• P-Note and FII norms set for review
• India will soon undertake a comprehensive review of the regulatory regime for foreign institutional investors (FIIs). Market regulator Sebi is finalising a detailed approach paper on the proposed framework, which is expected to be taken at its board meeting on October 6.
• PNs are derivative instruments that have Indian securities as the underlying asset and are issued to foreign investors who have no direct access to the local stock market.
• We take pride in our companies joining the billion dollar club.
  
• What we mean by billion dollar club is their turnover.
  
• But look at GE! GE said its profit for the year will be about $20 billion, down 10% from 2007.
• That its profit growth is going down, is causing lot of jitters in the US markets.
  
• You know, a billion dollars means roughly about Rs. 4,500 crores. So a $20 bn profit means about Rs. 95,000 crores!
• Where does our country's budget stand in comparison? Just a couple GEs' profit is all that is required to match up with our country's budget.
• What is the $700 bn bail out package in the US about?
• Look at this graphic. It puts it in very simple terms.