Remember Jérôme Kerviel ? OK, very excusable if you have forgotten who he is. He was the rogue trader who almost brought Société Générale ( a reputed French bank) to its knees. This happened in 2008. Kerviel was a trader who punted like crazy in the casino, that is euphemistically called financial markets - he was making gigantic bets that involved European stock index futures. The whole...
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Bir Hakeim - A Guest Post
Readers of this blog would be familiar with Ravi Rajagopalan. Ravi is a very dear friend, a brilliant guy, with an incredible array of interests and knowledge. His cover drive might not have the silken grace of a David Gower, but that's the worst you can say of him. As you might have gathered from comments...
Sunday, 21 October 2012
The Battle of El Alamein
We should not forget.
We are a generation that, thankfully, has not seen war. But the baser instincts of man are never very far from the surface. Even in our lifetimes we have seen horrors - Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Congo. But thankfully, nothing on the scale of World War II. Mankind should never forget the horrors of war.
This week is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of El...
Sunday, 14 October 2012
Spare a thought for the poor Iranians
There is economic cataclysm going on in Iran. What guns and rhetoric have failed to do might be achieved by grubby old economics - the downfall of the nut cases who have been ruling Iran for sometime.
The Iranian rial has plunged into free fall. It declined by 25% in one week in October against the US dollar. Since the beginning of 2011 it has fallen by 70+%. It was some 10,000 rial to the US...
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Economics Gangnam Style
What ?? You don't know what Gangnam Style is ? It is the K-Pop (Korean Pop) sensation that has taken the world by storm. It is No 2 on the UK and US pop charts, watched on You Tube some 400 million times . Everybody , it seems, wants to prance like a horse . Even the West Indies team, on winning the T20 World Cup, gave an energetic rendition of Gangnam Style (note the absence of the word cricket...
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Stooping to conquer
I am getting tempted to write political posts, despite all my resolutions to stay away from that area. The culprit is my good friend Sriram who continuously tempts me in that direction with incisive writing in his excellent blog. We then debate and counter debate on email !!
So made a guest post there - taking the crazy liberty of writing a letter to the President of the United States...
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