G7 at its vaguest best

Well i hardly ever find any of these big organizations coming out with definite concrete statements that can give the commonman hope.But this time in the middle of the financial crisis G7 has come up with the most vague statements of all times.Is this what they call action plan?Read on ...

The G-7 agrees today that the current situation calls for urgent and exceptional action. We commit to continue working together to stabilize financial markets and restore the flow of credit, to support global economic growth. We agree to:

1)Take decisive action and use all available tools to support systemically important financial institutions and prevent their failure.
2)Take all necessary steps to unfreeze credit and money markets and ensure that banks and other financial institutions have broad access to liquidity and funding.
3)Ensure that our banks and other major financial intermediaries, as needed, can raise capital from public as well as private sources, in sufficient amounts to re-establish confidence and permit them to continue lending to households and businesses.
4)Ensure that our respective national deposit insurance and guarantee programs are robust and consistent so that our retail depositors will continue to have confidence in the safety of their deposits.
5)Take action, where appropriate, to restart the secondary markets for mortgages and other securitized assets. Accurate valuation and transparent disclosure of assets and consistent implementation of high quality accounting standards are necessary.


The actions should be taken in ways that protect taxpayers and avoid potentially damaging effects on other countries. We will use macroeconomic policy tools as necessary and appropriate. We strongly support the IMF's critical role in assisting countries affected by this turmoil. We will accelerate full implementation of the Financial Stability Forum recommendations and we are committed to the pressing need for reform of the financial system. We will strengthen further our cooperation and work with others to accomplish this plan.

So this is what they have to dish out at the high table.Or are they too, as clueless as any one of us?

Translating it into laymen terms it looks something like this:

1)We will do something about it.
2)We will also do somehting else about it.
3)We will give banks and other financial institutions money.
4)We will give more money to other guys as well.
5)Keep your fingers crossed and hope for the best.


Hats off to these great men and women...

English

Coleridge said " Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests." I for one can't agree more.
Some time back was going through the answer copy of this cousin of mine (history paper)which brought back all the memories of school days.Now history is one subject that most of us despise.My cousin is no different.I for one did not exactly hate the subject but did not like the way it was taught.A lot of emphasis was put on unnecessary things(when did someone die? give the exact dates,who cares man)A lot of other things like strategy,decision making and its implications,social trends,understanding of human actions never seemed to be on the radar of the history teacher.This irks me a lot just like it did then.

Thus i never studied for the exams atleast for those monthly tests but still came out with flying colours.The secret as Coleridge mentioned was language.I will explain how.Say suppose you had to say one king attacked another and one of them won the battle.A truly classic way of saying that would be something like this:

"The king sent his platoon of trained,legalised human slaughterers across the border.This sudden charge of the killing machines took the state by surprise.Before they could wake up from their sleep they found themselves sent to sleep forever."

No need for the details,if you want to further spice it up add some commentary about the scenic battle ground and all the gory scenes aka 300 style.Now my beloved history teacher never had a good grasp of language and thought i was one of the real intellectual types.So without much ado I landed up getting the highest marks all the time.

I specifically remember Mrs Biswas( my english teacher )who threatened to fail me if i did not stop writing the way i did.I would not say hairstyle,instead i had to say coiffure.I would not say old man or even greying man instead i had to say methuselah(this is one word which even a lot of english teachers are not able to fathom at first glance)

In college too this tool of using the language creatively has helped me infinite number of times.One subject in particular was MIS.Now though i had not bought the book before the first class test i did know something about the subject( thanks to Business world and other magazines that i have been following since i don't know when )That paper was so full of quotes that i was sure of flunking that exam. Instead came out with the highest.( something like 47-48 out of 50 that too when half the class had failed after studying )One quote which i still remember in particular was "Information is like sand in the beach house,it gets in anywhere and everywhere."

So i guess learning language is not all that bad,as made out by some of the quant jocks.Infact it has stood me in good stead in difficult times in exams,debates,one to one interactions and at workplace.

Say you had to say you are a vegetarian,what would you say? i am a veggie.Nah does not sound nice.How about saying i do not eat fish,flesh or fowl.What if you are pissed of with the btm traffic and all the pollution in the world.Simple, i live in a tiny,overpopulate,suburb of the universe called earth.:)


Last but not the least " The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a man six feet high."

Cheers !!!
I speak two languages, Body and English.

Rock ON

Childhood is definitly one of the most precious moments of our lives.We never realize that as children but then as grown up members of the society we sure miss those days.What great time we used to have on holidays!!And now it so happens that definitions of holiday to me means those days when there are few souls in the office and i for one is surely one among them...

Most of us would have seen the movie Rock on by now.If not then i would ask you to do so.It's one hell of a movie.Met Pranji today, and he gave a very succient definition of life.We say move on, don't carry the baggage.From now on don't just move on but rather move on and ROCK ON !!!

Cheers!!!

Random Thoughts ...

"Rain rain come again little johnny wants to play ...", is what we used to sing as children.Now a days i seem to be singing "Rain rain go away,little johnny wants his clothes today (dried and ironed)"As Dilbert says "If something has to go wrong,it will."It won't rain for days and then suddenly one day when the clothes are washed and left out to dry GOD decides to cry...

I was recently reading one of my friend's blog who had dedicated ten posts in a row to her beloved partner since their anniversary was approaching. She wrote of 10 qualities in the guy which makes him so special to her in those posts. Nice,touchy and lovely use all the adjectives one wants to use.I guess she is head over heels in love with this fellow.Good for both of them and i wish them all the luck.But just then it got my grey cells buzzing with activity.What exactly is love,have had my fair share of smiles and sweet kisses,trials and tirades of this thing called love.But yet i somehow fail to understand all this.Have seen to many valentine day couples not even greeting one another after a year and behaving as total strangers when they encounter one another at a common friend's party.Do we learn from our mistakes or is life and relationships in today's age where hymen and not hearts are broken to ephemeral to ponder over these.I guess i would try writing a dedicated post on how and why relationships don't work ( sounds very mechanical ) but something of that sort.

Now this one is a killer,have this new juno in office,lets call him X.X had to schedule a meeting with participants coming from various timezones.So i happened to ask him at what time he would schedule it so that it's convenient for everyone.In the process i discovered he is completely unaware about this worldy wisdom on time and timezones.After all he has had all the time in the world all these years.So i decided to educate him.Here is a piece of the conversation:

Me:How much time does earth take to revolve around the sun?

X:How can we know that !!!

Me(Astonished): What???Dude what is the difference between rotation and revolution?

X is speechless,wondering from where on earth have i come and why am i talking greek and latin.
Me:So why do you think it's day here when it's night in US? Why are there these different timezones?
Now the answers that i got were complete killers.Here it goes

X:God decided that (Pause) hmmm... NO USA decided to keep it like this.A long pause
Don't ask me these social science questions it was not there in my syllabus.

Shocked and aghast, another colleague and me introduced him to this thingz called Google, asked him to draw from our collective wisdom as a society form Wiki and had the best laugh of our lives.

Cheers !!!

Must Watch Documentaries

Hi,

Check out the following documentaries.They are on varied subjects and provide an interesting insight into things.

1)Slow Poisoning of India
2)The fog of War
3)Enron-The smartest guys in the room
4)Super Size Me
5)The Corporation
6)The journey of Man

Enjoy !!!