Perspectives on the global economic meltdown- (Nov 28 2010)

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 18 Jul 2013 00:00

US Congress biggest obstacle to growth – Bernanke ( RT )

The Federal Reserve’s chairman said Wednesday that Congress is the largest obstacle to faster economic growth. “The economic recovery has continued at a moderate pace in recent quarters despite the strong headwinds created by federal fiscal policy,” Ben Bernanke said in the opening line of his prepared remarks to a Congressional committee. “The risks remain that tight federal fiscal policy will restrain economic growth over the next few quarters by more than we currently expect,” The New York Times quoted him as saying. The debate concerning other fiscal policy issues may also “evolve in a way that could hamper the recovery,” Bernanke continued.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 18 Jul 2013 00:02

Can we expect a drama in August from Republican and Democrat during the Debt Ceiling raising like that took place last time around , Bernanke may be warning US Congress about it.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 18 Jul 2013 04:06

...more plutocrat monkey business......

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan- ... 24539.html

KrishnaK · Post by **KrishnaK** » 19 Jul 2013 01:50

Singha wrote:network cos have enabled public clouds to be feasible, just as they once did for enterprise /campus clouds. more the cloudiness more the data flowing over their gear and more sales.

it started a whole new industry how to provision, manage, secure shared physical infra for servicing multiple clients etc what the amazon elastic cloud or openstack consortium or vmware vcenter does...

Singha, that's actually the wrong way look at this. the industry of provisioning, managing, sharing physical infrastructure itself isn't a big deal. It's what services you offer ON TOP OF THAT infrastructure. That's what makes AWS different from running openstack at home. Nobody gives a rat's ass about networking companies. Very soon their stuff will get commoditized too.

AWS/Google cloud provide an approach to infrastructure that Google does for itself. What will you do with a million CPUs if you can't index your data using hadoop ? How will you index all that data, if you don't have an endless sea of storage service like s3 ? Setup your own little crawl cluster using Nutch and store that data on S3. Run indexing using EMR that will pull in that data off s3 and create a custom index that you can put back on s3. Setup compute instances that can serve that data. Setup an elastic load balancer in front, that will allow you to increase the serving capacity as the load increases. There are lots of little pieces that are all coming together. Free software + infrastructure + services that allows people without the $$ for GOOG class infrastructure to setup very complicated services on top. Like I said in one of my previous posts, you couldn't have done this a decade ago.

Supercomputing Rented by the Hour

The simulation applications for drug discovery created by two other small companies, Schrodinger and Nimbus Discovery, ran on top of Cycle’s cluster-managing software. That software bundle performed a daunting simulation of 21 million chemical compounds to see if they would bind with a protein target. That run ate up the equivalent of 12.5 processor years, but it was completed in less than three hours. The computing cost was less than $4,900 a hour.

“This enables small companies and any researcher that has a grant to do science that they could never do before,” Jason Stowe, chief executive of Cycle Computing, said in an interview.

BRF members could buy a day's worth of supercomputing just out of a small chunk of their savings. That's what is so impressive about this.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 19 Jul 2013 03:17

Stunning Photos Of Google's Massive Data Centers

http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eglg45fi ... he-dalles/

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 19 Jul 2013 11:09

WoW Massive

Looks like the silver pipe goes to NSA

KrishnaK · Post by **KrishnaK** » 19 Jul 2013 23:56

Austin,
That the best left of your boasts and claims ? And yes, those (not just google's) are massive. You'd know if you had ever been in one.

paramu · Post by **paramu** » 20 Jul 2013 00:03

What are these massive data center used for? Google stores all user data (in addition to other search data).

BTW, original point Neshant made was do these data center provide large scale well paid jobs in addition to increasing productivity?

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 20 Jul 2013 00:12

^^
Although not too relevant here
link

A classified PowerPoint presentation leaked by Edward Snowden states that PRISM enables “collection directly from the servers” of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other online companies.

Read it all only. Collection of info about foreigners is authorized only though initial discussion was about security alone.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 20 Jul 2013 03:08

...the most feared cop on wall street....

http://www.businessinsider.com/preet-bh ... pha-2013-7

......is Preet Bharara.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 20 Jul 2013 09:21

KrishnaK wrote:Austin,
That the best left of your boasts and claims ? And yes, those (not just google's) are massive. You'd know if you had ever been in one.

Just stating the obvious

chola · Post by **chola** » 20 Jul 2013 09:22

TSJones wrote:...the most feared cop on wall street....

http://www.businessinsider.com/preet-bh ... pha-2013-7

......is Preet Bharara.

Desis are on both sides of the law on Wall Street

Except for the Jew, we have to be the most prominent ethnic on the Street.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 20 Jul 2013 17:12

A classified PowerPoint presentation leaked by Edward Snowden states that PRISM enables “collection directly from the servers” of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other online companies.

Microsoft ..et.al all have backdoors built into their software for US govt snooping. Yahoo, Google etc also facilitate the handing over of data quite willingly.

Hell, youtube (google) after having come to the realisation that people can remain anonymous yet publish videos now wants people to enter their "REAL NAME".

The banker-corporate-govt mafia is hoping to black list and punish anyone speaking out against their theft. The power of the "mainstream" media they control like CNN is losing viewership and is increasingly distrusted. In future it will be harder to sway election choices to the candidates pre-selected by banking goons if this control is lost.

All this raises the question of how safe is it for India to be using software/services from these companies given they facilitate the handing over of private data to the US govt. If they can do it to their own citizens, they certainly have no problems handing over info on foreign persons.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 20 Jul 2013 17:36

Neshant wrote:Microsoft ..et.al all have backdoors built into their software for US govt snooping. Yahoo, Google etc also facilitate the handing over of data quite willingly.

The Joke for years has been US Government would not allow encryption for companies based out in US unless NSA cannot break it ...so beyond the backdoor even the encryption for US SW is compromised or friendly to their agencies.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 20 Jul 2013 19:01

I wonder if the babus are even aware of how much of the nation's info is being snooped on and pilfered.

A while back some idiot was talking about Goldman Sachs acquisition of 10% of the national stock market as been good because they would introduce "new technology".

The technology undoubtedly will be nothing more than backdoors giving GS the ability to front run trades and loot investors and the nation at large via paper/electronic scams.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 20 Jul 2013 19:04

Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 20 Jul 2013 23:01

TSJones wrote:...the most feared cop on wall street....

http://www.businessinsider.com/preet-bh ... pha-2013-7

......is Preet Bharara.

Wonder how this tussle with Stephen Cohen is going to come out.
Undoubtedly Cohen is a unreformed sleeze bag. If you leave him out there he will keep breaking the law.
But he is also a smart guy and very very good at covering his tracks...

Also apparently the statute of limitations on institutions is 10 years so 2008 is still in play. Good to know.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 20 Jul 2013 23:24

These guys just won't go away. Even if Cohen loses his licence he'll figure a way out to stay in. Remember, Bernie Madoff never even had a licence! They ply their trade on people's natural greed that is in all of us. They are finagler's of the first order. They are natural born salesmen and motivators who will use your own emotions against you in your struggle for financial gain and safety that everybody wants. They need to be put in jail but they're too slick for it. Madoff was put in jail but he was one of the few. There are a few guys out there who are honest, like Bill Gross, etc who practice what they preach but it is hard to discern who is the real deal.

Cramer is also good but he has a lot of detractors.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 20 Jul 2013 23:45

Neshant wrote:I wonder if the babus are even aware of how much of the nation's info is being snooped on and pilfered.

They would be but beyond a point they cant do much else they wont get their Green Card

BTW You can always introduce back door in the system later on via Firmware/BIOS/SW upgrade these are all proprietary binary SW and no one will every know what these upgrades introduce like a back door or kill switch which can be activated with appropriate trigger.

Ofcourse one can always introduce a clean system by monitoring closely what goes in and out and having total control over Software and Source ( may be even sanitise the HW like switches/routers ) but that would be an expensive affair and would need resources even lot of duplication of resources perhaps worth the effort but in the era of COTS and Off the shelf SW very few would take such extreme pain.

shyam · Post by **shyam** » 21 Jul 2013 00:06

Actually, GoI can give such contracts to CDAC who can on their own and by working with other vendors develop useful software. India doesn't need latest and greatest software because we don't need latest developments like HFT.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 21 Jul 2013 02:28

In light of the morons in govt trying to force people to not buy gold and instead engage in paper shuffling on the stock market, are they even aware that Goldman Sachs types front run the market and rip off investors?

Are they aware of the state of technology and how an entire industry of high frequency trading and front running that has sprung up in the US. I bet they don't have a clue.

Companies gaming the stock market have literally set up shop right outside exchanges so they have the advantage of faster data access over the average investor located further away. Faster by a millisecond or less due to shorter fibre optic lines running from the exchange to their building.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 21 Jul 2013 02:54

Neshant wrote:In light of the morons in govt trying to force people to not buy gold and instead engage in paper shuffling on the stock market, are they even aware that Goldman Sachs types front run the market and rip off investors?

Are they aware of the state of technology and how an entire industry of high frequency trading and front running that has sprung up in the US. I bet they don't have a clue.

Companies gaming the stock market have literally set up shop right outside exchanges so they have the advantage of faster data access over the average investor located further away. Faster by a millisecond or less due to shorter fibre optic lines running from the exchange to their building.

Day trading is a fool's trap. Long term investing with dollar cost averaging is the only answer.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 21 Jul 2013 05:03

While at it please note market manipulates/controls the gold market as well. Folks have been taken to the cleaners over the past few years. pump and dump baby, pump and dump....

Yes, dollar cost averaging is the game, if you have time.

One caveat I would add if you have the stomach for it, is to learn to go against the grain with sector rotation.
You should be able to do 10%-12% over the long term, providing you have the stomach for it.
Sector rotation is not for every one.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 21 Jul 2013 07:34

It is largely physical demand for gold that controls its price for the medium & long term.

This on account of its limited availability by nature and a flat rate of production which adds roughly 2% of global supply to the total pool every year. 2% being roughly the average real rate of global growth per annum over long periods of time.

Not so for paper where schemes & scams are abound to relieve people of their hard earned wealth though slick talking, fancy economic gimmickry and other con artistry.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 21 Jul 2013 12:49

Labor productivity

This week Ekspert magazine published about a survey conducted by the Audit and Consultancy Group Finexpertiza (CPA Associates International in English) which calculated the labor productivity in several countries. The calculation is simple. How many people does a country need to produce 1 million dollars of its GDP? It turns out that Russia’s labor productivity is 5 times lower than those of the developed countries, but 3 times higher than that of China and 6 times higher than that of India. To produce 1 million dollar of its GDP Russia needs 57 people. Brazil needs 62 persons, China 152 and India 340. In Germany it takes only 13 people to produce 1 million dollars of its GDP, In the US this number is 11.

Seems like Germany and US are the most productive folks in developed world , while India is least productive in BRICS

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 21 Jul 2013 12:55

Only 47% of Adults Have Full-Time Job

Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday's report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job.

The market's positive reaction to Friday's report is another sign of how far our economic expectations have fallen. If today the same proportion of Americans worked as just a decade ago, there would be almost 9 million more people working. Just in the last year, almost 2 million Americans have left the labor force. With a majority of the population not holding a full-time job, it isn't surprising that economic growth has been so weak.

In June, the number of Americans who wanted to work full-time, but were forced into part-time jobs because of the economy, jumped 352,000 to over 8 million.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 21 Jul 2013 13:00

shyam wrote:Actually, GoI can give such contracts to CDAC who can on their own and by working with other vendors develop useful software. India doesn't need latest and greatest software because we don't need latest developments like HFT.

Even if GOI give contracts to CDAC they have to come up with a tender and then the usual suspects HP , IBM , MS , Oracle etc would win the day and the local partner like HCL , TATA would do the implementation , so pretty much where ever path you take it leads to the same exit door. I think our discussion is very much OT here so no point in pursuing this further.

Neshant · Post by **Neshant** » 21 Jul 2013 16:14

The only thing that would be needed are components (chips) for the hardware, not the whole system lock stock and barrel. Maybe the lower level development tools as well but that's about it.

Everything above the component level can be built.

Anyway its OT.

kish · Post by **kish** » 21 Jul 2013 17:34

Austin wrote:Labor productivity

This week Ekspert magazine published about a survey conducted by the Audit and Consultancy Group Finexpertiza (CPA Associates International in English) which calculated the labor productivity in several countries. The calculation is simple. How many people does a country need to produce 1 million dollars of its GDP? It turns out that Russia’s labor productivity is 5 times lower than those of the developed countries, but 3 times higher than that of China and 6 times higher than that of India. To produce 1 million dollar of its GDP Russia needs 57 people. Brazil needs 62 persons, China 152 and India 340. In Germany it takes only 13 people to produce 1 million dollars of its GDP, In the US this number is 11.

Seems like Germany and US are the most productive folks in developed world , while India is least productive in BRICS

I think it was Theo Ji, who spoke about labor productivity last year. But, is it that bad. Does it really take 152 Chinese and 340 Indians to add 1 million dollars to the GDP.

Even the chinese members here would not agree to these numbers, or may be they do to provoke Indian members.

Several western magazines make snide remarks about Russian dependence of Oil for its economy. Now Oil is a scarce resource, so producing it adds more value to its economy rather than say people who indulge in manufacturing and services. How can these be construed as labor productivity?

I understand there exist some gap between the labor productivity of Western economies and the Eastern ones. But, its atrocious to over-glorify the western labor productivity and ridicule the eastern ones. If we go by Mr. Ratan Tata's comments about the productivity of his british employees in Jaguar plant. It isn't that bad.

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 21 Jul 2013 18:15

Very few people in the US are employed in the agricultural sector, yet US agriculture is highly productive.

The US financial sector is highly productive and it makes gazillions of dollars in profit with not that many employees.

Most US manufacturing is high dollar products. we don't do small manufacturing any more. It was sent overseas.

In American capitalism every employee is quantified and a tally of profitabilty is computed, Layoffs can begin in a heartbeat. Especially in manufacturing.

In America, a job is a sometimes thing.

chola · Post by **chola** » 21 Jul 2013 19:27

TSJones wrote:Very few people in the US are employed in the agricultural sector, yet US agriculture is highly productive.

The US financial sector is highly productive and it makes gazillions of dollars in profit with not that many employees.

Most US manufacturing is high dollar products. we don't do small manufacturing any more. It was sent overseas.

In American capitalism every employee is quantified and a tally of profitabilty is computed, Layoffs can begin in a heartbeat. Especially in manufacturing.

In America, a job is a sometimes thing.

Agriculture is a primary sector. Whether you use a lot of workers or few, it creates real tangible wealth. If you use a lot of farmers in agriculture (like India) then you have a lower surplus of agri-generated wealth but it helps in lowering the need for employment generated in other sectors. If you use very few farmers (like the US), you can take that surplus wealth and create jobs (which are simply ways to re-distribute wealth) in the service sector.

Manufacturing is a secondary sector which means it can create value-added wealth. A car is intrinsically more valuable than a pile of metal, plastic and glass. Again like the primary sectors, if you use a lot of workers it solves your employment problem at the moment of wealth creation. If you employ few then again you need to re-distribute that wealth through the service sector.

Finance is nothing but a tertiary sector with one major difference -- it allows you to spend against future wealth. It creates no real wealth in itself like all the other tertiary sectors. But what finance does do, that other services can't, is allow future wealth to be monetized today. Of course, when that future wealth never materializes and you've already spent against it . . .

Having efficient primary and secondary sectors creating wealth with few workers is beneficial to first world nations like the US and Japan since there is a fairly efficient system to re-distribute that wealth through jobs in the service sectors.

This might or might not be the best solutions for economies like India who are at lower states of economic development. Bad systems of distribution might make it more beneficial to have primary and secondary sectors create lots of jobs and keeping wealth in the hands of more people instead of concentrating that into a surplus which might get siphoned off by by corruption or hoarding instead of being put to work.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 21 Jul 2013 21:00

Austin,

Thanx for that. I have been looking for productivity data on the Indian economy for a long time. Esp. for the Bengluru - Chennai area. Seems to be almost impossible to get any reliable data. What I would really be interested in is the time series that goes with it. That should tell you what is going to happen in the future.
-------------------------------------

Agriculture in India is not yet a primary sector. Sadly it is still subsistence / bare survival. Even recently the majority of grain produced was consumed by the farmer/rural area directly. IMO there will be an economic surge if the agricultural sector can finally be properly fully plugged into the economy. For this the majority of farmers have to be moved off the farm, we can't have more than 5% or 10% of the population on the farm. The recent fight over multi-retail and Reliance Fresh and Nadigram and POSCO and Sardar Sarovar and etc, etc were all over this.

VKumar · Post by **VKumar** » 21 Jul 2013 21:24

For agriculture to fulfill its potential, the food processing industry must be developed.

Government is encouraging this through the Ministry of food processing Industries but is a long, long way off. Much of what cannot be consumed on the farm is wasted. Wastage cannot reduce without cold chain. Diversification of crop - vegetables, fruits, flowers, as also dairy, fishery, poultry, meat i.e. other than cereals and staples must be encouraged.

All of the above are well known and government is making efforts but whenever a major decision is required, it is generally postponed because of populism.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 21 Jul 2013 22:10

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

TSJones · Post by **TSJones** » 22 Jul 2013 01:12

America is careening into a post industrial society where fewer workers are required to marginally produce a higher volume of goods and services. A ot of it is due to automation. Some of it is due to low margin value that corps move overseas forgreater profit. Part time work is a result. How all of this eventually winds up, I have no idea.

Adrija · Post by **Adrija** » 22 Jul 2013 09:20

Apologies if posted already

http://goo.gl/PyhWx

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 22 Jul 2013 11:43

kish wrote:I think it was Theo Ji, who spoke about labor productivity last year. But, is it that bad. Does it really take 152 Chinese and 340 Indians to add 1 million dollars to the GDP.

Even the chinese members here would not agree to these numbers, or may be they do to provoke Indian members.

Several western magazines make snide remarks about Russian dependence of Oil for its economy. Now Oil is a scarce resource, so producing it adds more value to its economy rather than say people who indulge in manufacturing and services. How can these be construed as labor productivity?

I think it would depend on how one wants to take it .... out here at BRF most people are obsessed with China so any data what would show India in a bad light against China may trigger a response

But if the same data is compared with US and Germany and it is found to be many times better then India ( 11/13 versus 340 ) most would just accept it as it is as their birth right or them being far superior on productivity front.

Similarly I am sure there must be other countries worst than India in productivity but that too wont have negative response

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 22 Jul 2013 20:50

G20 financiers agree to keep global economy more predictable

“While our policy actions have contributed to containing downside risks, those still remain elevated,” the statement said. “There has been an increase in financial market volatility and a tightening of conditions.”

Among the issues discussed was the possibility the US Federal Reserve might curb its monetary stimulus and money printing. Emerging markets were especially concerned at the possibility that their fragile economies could be hit by a sudden about-turn in US policy.

The statement however promises that any changes to monetary stimulus packages would be “carefully calibrated and clearly communicated.”

“(Our G20) colleagues have not made the decision to take responsibility to lower deficits and debts by 2016," Russia’s finance minister Anton Siluanov said on the fringes of the meeting in Moscow, adding that “some people thought that first you need to ensure economic growth.”

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 22 Jul 2013 20:52

Recession-proof: Germany to show ‘immense’ 2nd quarter growth
Rock bottom: Russian economy hits low, will pick up in July

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 23 Jul 2013 12:09

Info about a foreclosure property.

link

The chart on the page about price wrt year(2003 onwards) shows downward trend, except two highs and no low troughs. So huge profits in tiny durations but downward prices otherwise. So how would such a pricing behavior:as shown in charts, absorb losses from economic crisis.