Total disconnect between ‘Wall Street’ and the ‘Main Street’!

Seventy percent of Americans live in a welfare state and the balance 30% enjoy the fruits of a capitalistic state. President Roosevelt created a welfare state following the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1920s. President Reagan undermined this welfare state by his supply-side inclinations. US Congress kept the uneasy balance by throwing the money at the growing fundamental problem. The Western World has no experience in dealing with large populations. Looking after 300 million people with traditional Western standard-of-living is not an easy challenge. The first order of business should be to tell the truth to the American people. And the truth is that you can not have the life-style of the ‘First World’ with a high-school education. The second truth is that agriculture and manufacturing are the industries of the twentieth century and better be left for the developing world. The third and the most painful truth is that you have to go where your skills are required even if it means working in China or India or any third country. Why do you think we all came here leaving our families and cultures behind?

Politicians will tell you what ever you want to hear. They look for your vote and not after your well being. They would ‘tear-up’ if you tell them your sob-story. Once they go back to their offices, they forget you face in a few minutes, unless they need you back for a photo-op. ‘Joe the plumber’ is a case in point. Now that the election is over, John McCain has no use for his best friend ‘Joe’. We the people from the so called ‘Third World’ do not believe a word coming out of a politician’s mouth. We are on-our-own from our birth to our death. We do not expect anything from our governments. We fend for ourselves, even if we have to go and live in some other country and be mimicked for our foreign accents. We take all the shit from anyone and everyone till we make some money and become self-sufficient. Americans need to learn something from us instead of giggling at our expense. We will make it in life, I am not so sure about you all. Can President-elect Barack Obama level with the ‘American People’?

Wall Street on the other hand is having fun! These guys are like ‘Somali Sea Pirates’. They hijacked the US government, stripped them of $700 billion, and now do not know what to do with the loot. They faked a cardiac-arrest and borrowed the money for an emergency operation and then a few days later were seen flying-around in luxury-jets. Where do you think the money for all this came from? If I had $700 billion to play with, I would have created brand new banks and brand new auto companies. It is a lot of money. Only a handful of countries in this world have a total economy worth $700 billion. It amazes me how ‘American Politicians’ can sweet-talk their way out. The question they ask now is what if we had done nothing? My answer would be, “Do you think I care?” Wall Street has some of the dumbest people on the face of this earth but are quick to learn from the crooks. For this rare talent they are paid millions of dollars with no answers when the country needs them! Do you think I am dumb?

McCain-Palin in Republican gutter?

Democracy means we agree to disagree. It certainly does not mean that if you disagree with me, I would destroy your reputation and your character. Unfortunately, that is what McCain-Palin have decided to do. Instead of making their case to the voters, they have decided to stop at nothing and try to destroy their opponent. It does Senator McCain no good what so ever. He failed to persuade the American people that he would make a better President. It does not mean that people are happy to vote for Senator Barack Obama. What it means is that voters are willing to take a chance with a Democrat this time. This has a lot to do with the state of the US economy and the current President’s unpopularity. This is not a McCain year!

Senator Barack Obama is certainly not the best candidate that America could offer but he is the Democratic nominee and this time a Democrat is going to win the White House. It is not just the crisis on the Wall Street that favours a Democrat; it is also the incumbency fatigue that has destroyed the chances of Senator John McCain. For some strange reason McCain supported President George W Bush on everything from an unpopular war to very unpopular tax cuts. The last straw came with his support of the bail-out package. Let us face it, Senator McCain blew it! His choice of Governor Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate pleased his conservative base but disappointed the independents. She would have been a fine candidate if she has gone through an eighteen month primary race. Sarah Palin is bright and attractive but totally unprepared. Her political future is ahead of her.

Wall Street is looking more like a ‘Welfare Street’

Wall Street has scared the American people and therefore the law-makers in Washington DC. Nobody knows exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. People do not trust President George W Bush any more. His Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has no credibility with the ordinary voter and people have stopped listening to the Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke. Who is leading the country, and who is being led? The US Congress looks like gang members rather than law-makers. Both the presidential candidates seem like foreigners rather than potential leaders. This is a very scary time for the United States and the world!

The $700 billion bail-out, repackaged as “The Rescue Plan”, is actually a hand-out to the Wall Street. Put it another way, it is truly a ‘Corporate Welfare’. Can any body give a guarantee to the tax-payers of America that should this ‘Welfare Package’ pass the US Congress, this situation will not re-occur after a few months? Nobody can or would give such a guarantee because very few understand the problem to begin with. My suggestion is that you take your time, discuss the problem at length with qualified economists and only then go for a much watered-down version at this point. It is not fair to the incoming administration. Heavens are not going to fall!

What exactly is the problem? Is it only the credit or is there something else at the root of the problem? Is it the result of the ‘Housing Bust’ or an impending recession? No body has been able to articulate the problem in simple English. I do not pretend to be an economist but I do feel the unease when a former ‘Wall Street Operative’, Henry Paulson, puts a gun to your head and demands unprecedented amount of power and money. I can somehow feel that the problem is much deeper. The housing melt-down is not over by a long shot. The situation is going to get much worse before we feel the bottom. Let us stick to the capitalist principals and ride-out the recession or depression! The proposed socialist solutions are not palatable.

Nationalization of the willing?

If Russia or Venezuela took over a private sector company, it was called nationalization. Now that the entire financial sector is being nationalized in America, it is called a rescue effort. I call it a double-speak! We should have seen this coming a long time back. Americans have been living beyond their means for the last three decades. The saving rate amongst the Blacks and Whites is zero if not in negative. The life-style of the lower-middle-class in United States is higher than upper-middle-class in the developing world. Why? It is arrogance, stupid! When I first visited United States in 1981, I fell in love with this country. So I went back, closed my business and returned back with my wife. Of course the American Consulate would not allow my children to come with us. So we left our children with my mother and came back to this great country to pursue further education and experience the American way of life. By this time the Reagan Administration was in full swing, spreading the divisive policies of the Republicans. We both loved America and the Americans for the next twenty months and decided to return home and bring our children with us. That was 1984. It took us another four years to get the required visas for all of us to come back to this Promised Land.

We returned back as a family to the United States of America in 1988. It was a changed country. President Ronald Reagan was about to leave office in four months. George H W Bush was busy trashing Governor Michael Dukakis to become the next president at any cast. Americans were broke and bitching, but life went on. Japan was the latest ‘piñata’ that everybody loved to bash. Financially, the next four years were hell. 1992 brought back the Democrats to rule over the demoralized nation. Peace and prosperity returned for the next eight years. Republicans made a lot of money, Americans were having fun, including Bill Clinton, in the White House! This was not acceptable to the ‘Working Class Americans’; they wanted a President with whom they could share a ‘Beer’. Well! They got one for the next eight years and now they don’t have money to buy ‘Beer’. What an irony? So, do not blame just the ‘Wall Street’, it is the ‘Main Street’ that is screwed-up. Americans have the government that they deserve. Let us not kid ourselves. Just listen to the Americans on the main street. They want good jobs without going to college. They want all the benefits without paying for them. They blame the immigrants for everything and the rest is China’s fault! All the good-paying jobs are being out-sourced to China and India!

Wall Street is the least of America’s problems. The $700 billion dollar bailout is nothing but a fraud being perpetuated by crooked politicians and an over-ambitious Treasury Secretary. Just watch Henry Paulson on TV, he can barely hide his smile. He is about to pull a fast-one on a dumb US Congress. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, is like a ‘Paanwala’ on the Washington DC ‘Nukkar’, selling fancy stories to his ‘Purabia Saathis’ in US Senate. The man has no concept of a ‘Monetary Policy’ nor does he understand the ‘Economic Policy’. How else would you explain his leadership of the Banking Committee and not having a clue as to what has been happening to the US Financial Markets for the past two years? Another joker is Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. He understands economics but since he is so fond of talking, nobody listens to him anymore. No wonder we are in such a pickle!

‘Dalal Street’ – The Wall Street of India…

‘Dalal Street’ is home to the ‘Bombay Stock Exchange’, the nerve-center of India’s financial market. Kalyan Bose, head of corporate affairs at BSE, says, “When the media reports on the capital market, it is referred to as Dalal Street. The name is synonymous with Indian capital markets. The street witnessed the growth of the Indian capital market. When you write the history of the country’s stock markets, you cannot leave out the words ‘Dalal Street’. Dalal Street is not a foreign name that needs to be changed. It is an Indian name.” Such are the sentiments of people connected with the ‘Wall Street of India’, others are hell-bent in destroying this legacy.

In the mid 1850s, a group of 22 stockbrokers started business under a banyan tree opposite the Town Hall, each investing rupee 1. These stockbrokers called themselves ‘The Native Share and Stockbrokers Association’ which came to be recognized as the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in 1875. It is one of the oldest stock exchanges in Asia. The Bombay Stock Exchange shifted to the ‘Broker’s Hall’ in 1899. It moved again, after the First World War, to an old building near the ‘Town hall’ in Bombay, where Horniman Circle is now situated. The current real-estate was acquired in 1928 and a modern 28 story building was constructed and occupied in 1980. This has become the permanent location of BSE and the building is called the ‘Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers’, built by Larsen & Toubro.

The Bombay Stock Exchange is the largest of 22 exchanges in India, with over 6,000 listed companies. It is also the fifth largest exchange in the world, with market capitalization of $466 billion. The Bombay Stock Exchange uses the BSE Sensex, an index of 30 large, developed BSE stocks. This index gives a measure of the overall performance of the Bombay Stock Exchange and is closely followed around the world. Bombay Stock Exchange is considered to have played a very important role in the development of the country’s capital markets. Perhaps, there would not be any leading corporate company in India which has not sourced BSE’s services in resource mobilization. Reliance Industries limited is a classic example.