JUST FOR THE HACK OF IT

                 Do you know--------------

*Glabella* - The space between your eyebrows is called a glabella.
*Petrichor* - The smell of the earth after the rain is called petrichor.
*Aglet* - The plastic or metallic coating at the end of your shoelaces is called an aglet.
*Wamble* - The rumbling of stomach is actually called a wamble.
*Tines* - The prongs on a fork are called tines.
*Phosphenes* - The sheen or light that you see when you close your eyes and press your hands on them are called phosphenes.
*Box Tent* - The tiny plastic table placed in the middle of a pizza box is called a box tent.
*Overmorrow* - The day after tomorrow is called overmorrow.
*Minimus* - Your tiny toe or finger is called minimus.
*Agraffe* - The wired cage that holds the cork in a bottle of champagne is called an agraffe.
*Vocables* - The 'na na na' and 'la la la', which don't really have any meaning in the lyrics of any song, are called vocables.
*Interrobang* - When you combine an exclamation mark with a question mark (like this ?!), it is referred to as an interrobang.
*Columella Nasi* - The space between your nostrils is called columella nasi.
*Armscye* - The armhole in clothes, where the sleeves are sewn, is called armscye.
*Dysania* - The condition of finding it difficult to get out of the bed in the morning is called dysania.
*Griffonage* - Unreadable hand-writing is called griffonage (Are you reading this dear doctors?)
*Tittle* - The dot over an “i” or a “j” is called tittle.
*Crapulence* - That utterly sick feeling you get after eating or drinking too much is called crapulence.
*Brannock Device* - The metallic device used to measure your feet at the shoe store is called Brannock device.

THE GOLDEN WISDOM

                

•I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day, tomorrow is not looking good either.

•I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as go flying by.

•Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you to get along without it.

•Accept that some days you are the pigeon some days the statue.

•Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If he isn't there the first time, chances are you won't need him again.

•I don't have an attitude problem, you have a perception problem.

•Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thought to myself, "where the heck is the ceiling?"

•On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.

•I don't suffer from stress. I am a carrier.

•Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, you are crunchy and good with ketchup.

•Never argue with idiots. They drag you down their level, then beat you with experience.

•A pat on the back is only a few inches from a kick in the ***.

•Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.

•After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.

•The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.

•You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.

•If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

•When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

•Only the mediocre are at their best all the time.

•Life is a waste of time; time is a waste of life, so get wasted all of the time and have the time of your life.

HAPPINESS IS WITHIN

      

                    "You can have flaws, be anxious, and ever angry, but do not forget that your life is the greatest enterprise in the world. Only you can stop it from going bust. Many appreciate you, admire you .. Remember that to be happy is not to have a sky without a storm, a road without accidents, work without fatigue, relationships without disappointments.To be happy is to find strength in forgiveness, hope in battles, security in the stage of fear, love in discord. It is not only to enjoy the smile, but also to reflect on the sadness.It is not only to celebrate the successes, but to learn lessons from the failures.It is not only to feel happy with the applause, but to be happy in anonymity. Being happy is not a fatality of destiny, but an achievement for those who can travel within themselves. To be happy is to stop feeling like a victim and become your destiny's author. It is to cross deserts, yet to be able to find an oasis in the depths of our soul. Being happy is not being afraid of your own feelings. It's to be able to talk about you. It is having the courage to hear a "no". It is confidence in the face of criticism, even when unjustified. It is to kiss your children, pamper your parents, to live poetic moments with friends, even when they hurt us. To be happy is to let live the creature that lives in each of us, free, joyful and simple. It is to have maturity to be able to say: "I made mistakes". It is to have the courage to say "I am sorry".. May your life become a garden of opportunities for happiness ... That in spring may it be a lover of joy. In winter a lover of wisdom. And when you make a mistake, start all over again. For only then will you be in love with life. You will find that to be happy is not to have a perfect life. But use the tears to irrigate tolerance. Use your losses to train patience. Use your mistakes to sculptor serenity. Use pain to plaster pleasure. Use obstacles to open windows of intelligence. Never give up .... Never give up on happiness, for life is an incredible show. "

MORAL COURAGE

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, as quoted from his own speech to the Officers of DSSC, Wellington, on 11th November 1998, regarding the real meaning of 'Moral Courage':-
" Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not know which of these is more important. When I am talking to young officers and young soldiers, I should place emphasis on physical courage. But since I am talking to this gathering, I will lay emphasis on Moral Courage.
What is moral courage? Moral courage is the ability to distinguish right from wrong and having done so, say so when asked, irrespective of what your superiors might think or what your colleagues or your subordinates might want. A ‘yes man’ is a dangerous man. He may rise very high, he might even become the Managing Director of a company. He may do anything but he can never make a leader because he will be used by his superiors, disliked by his colleagues and despised by his subordinates. So shallow– the ‘yes man’.
I am going to illustrate from my own life an example of moral courage.
In 1971, when Pakistan clamped down on its province, East Pakistan, hundreds and thousands of refugees started pouring into India. The Prime Minister, Mrs. Gandhi had a cabinet meeting at ten o’clock in the morning. The following attended: the Foreign Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh, the Defence Minister, Mr. Jagjivan Ram, the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Rao, and I was also ordered to be present.
Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a very thin line between becoming a Field Marshal and being dismissed. A very angry Prime Minister read out messages from Chief Ministers of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. All of them saying that hundreds of thousands of refugees had poured into their states and they did not know what to do. So the Prime Minister turned round to me and said: “I want you to do something”.
I said, “What do you want me to do?”
She said, “I want you to enter East Pakistan”.
I said, “Do you know that that means War?”
She said, “I do not mind if it is war”.
I, in my usual stupid way said, “Prime Minister, have you read the Bible?”And the Foreign Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh (a Punjabi Sikh), in his Punjabi accent said, “What has Bible got to do with this?”, and I said, “the first book, the first chapter, the first paragraph, the first sentence, God said, ‘let there be light’’ and there was light.
You turn this round and say ‘let there be war’ and there will be war. What do you think? Are you ready for a war? Let me tell you –“it’s 28th April, the Himalayan passes are opening now, and if the Chinese gave us an ultimatum, I will have to fight on two fronts”.
Again Sardar Swaran Singh turned round and in his Punjabi English said, “Will China give ultimatum?”
I said, “You are the Foreign Minister. You tell me”.
Then I turned to the Prime Minister and said, “Prime Minister, last year you wanted elections in West Bengal and you did not want the communists to win, so you asked me to deploy my soldiers in penny pockets in every village, in every little township in West Bengal. I have two divisions thus deployed in sections and platoons without their heavy weapons. It will take me at least a month to get them back to their units and to their formations. Further, I have a division in the Assam area, another division in Andhra Pradesh and the Armoured Division in the Jhansi-Babina area. It will take me at least a month to get them back and put them in their correct positions. I will require every road, every railway train, every truck, every wagon to move them. We are harvesting in the Punjab, and we are harvesting in Haryana; we are also harvesting in Uttar Pradesh. And you will not be able to move your harvest.
I turned to the Agriculture Minister, Mr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, “If there is a famine in the country afterwards, it will be you to blame, not me.” Then I said, “My Armoured Division has only got thirteen tanks which are functioning.”
The Finance Minister, Mr. Chawan, a friend of mine, said, “Sam, why only thirteen?”
“Because you are the Finance Minister. I have been asking for money for the last year and a half, and you keep saying there is no money. That is why.” Then I turned to the Prime Minister and said, “Prime Minister, it is the end of April. By the time I am ready to operate, the monsoon will have broken in that East Pakistan area. When it rains, it does not just rain, it pours. Rivers become like oceans. If you stand on one bank, you cannot see the other and the whole countryside is flooded. My movement will be confined to roads, the Air Force will not be able to support me, and, if you wish me to enter East Pakistan, I guarantee you a hundred percent defeat.”
“You are the Government”, I said turning to the Prime Minister, “Now will you give me your orders?”
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have seldom seen a woman so angry, and I am including my wife in that. She was red in the face and I said, “Let us see what happens”. She turned round and said, “The cabinet will meet four o’clock in the evening”.
Everyone walked out. I being the junior most man was the last to leave. As I was leaving, she said, “Chief, please will you stay behind?” I looked at her. I said, “Prime Minister, before you open your mouth, would you like me to send in my resignation on grounds of health, mental or physical?”
“No, sit down, Sam. Was everything you told me the truth?”
“Yes, it is my job to tell you the truth. It is my job to fight and win, not to lose.”
She smiled at me and said, “All right, Sam. You know what I want. When will you be ready?”
“I cannot tell you now, Prime Minister”, I said, but let me guarantee you this that if you leave me alone, allow me to plan, make my arrangements, and fix a date, I guarantee you a hundred percent victory”.
That made history.
*We also need to learn some things from this story... A "yes man" is dangerous and shallow.... Don't become a "Yes man".... Have the moral courage to speak out the harsh truths...

UNDERSTANDING COMMERCE AND ECONOMICS

Commerce is the exchange of goods or services between two economic agents. It is an activity. Economics is the science that studies the behavior of economic agents. It is a study discipline !!!!

Derivative?????????

A derivative is a contract through which the contracting parties trade in risk. The idea of a contract through which risk is traded is not a new one; indeed it is familiar to us all. The obvious example of such a contract is the one we enter into with insurance companies, for getting health insurance cover or motor vehicle insurance cover or crop insurance cover. Derivatives are very similar things, though insurance contracts are normally not included among derivatives.

The risk that is traded through these contracts is usually associated with the value of an asset. Since the trade in this case is not in the asset itself but in the risk associated with its value, ie, is derived from its value, the contract is called a “derivative”. A very simple example of a derivative is when a farmer enters into a contract with a trader that he would give the latter a specified amount of a crop at a specified price at a specified future date. The actual price prevailing at that specified date may be more or less than the specified price. If more, then the farmer has made a loss compared to what he could have got; if less, then the farmer has made a gain. But by entering into a contract at the time he does, the farmer opts for certainty rather than the risk of more or less. And exactly the same is true of the trader. The farmer and the trader have traded risk through this “derivative” contract.

Why, it may be asked, should trade of this sort be at all possible? There are several reasons why it is. First, the expectations about the future price of the asset may differ among the contracting parties, in which case both may think that they would gain from the contract and hence enter into the contract. The farmer in the above example may believe that the specified price in the forward contract he has got into, is above what he expects to prevail on that particular future date, and hence consider himself a gainer from the contract. The trader on the other hand may think the price to be lower than he expects to prevail and hence he too considers himself a gainer. Both therefore enter into the contract thinking they are going to gain.
Secondly, even if all contracting parties have the same expectations about the future price of the asset, they may have different attitudes towards risk, some being more risk-averse than others. Some for instance may be more cautious by nature, while others may be less cautious, or may even love gambling, in which case there is scope for them to enter into such a contract.

Thirdly, even if all parties to the contract have the same expectations about the future price of the asset and also the same attitude towards risk, they may have very different capacities for bearing risk. (This is true in the insurance case, since the insurance company, through the sheer scale of its operations, can bear risk to a far greater extent that the individual, which is why both can enter into a contract with which each is satisfied).
Fourthly, even if the contracting parties have the same expectations, the same attitude towards risk, and even the same capacity for bearing risk, they may nonetheless have different attitudes towards the future, some being more concerned with the immediate future while others are more long-sighted, in which case again there is scope for them to enter into a contract.

The fifth case is when there is an element of swindle or coercion associated with the contract, in which case of course one of the parties enters into the contract either unwillingly or unknowingly. (This was the case with the Bengal peasants under colonial rule who took loans from traders to pay their land tax, by entering into dadan contracts that made them agree to sell a certain amount of a specified crop at a certain time at a specified price to the traders).

While the existence of derivatives has been traced back to the times of ancient Greece, and can be seen in pre-independence India as well, the real explosion in these instruments occurred only recently, with the growth of the financial sector. Derivatives in commodity markets, credit markets, foreign exchange markets, and financial markets are now a common phenomenon. Some of the common forms of derivative contracts are: forward contracts (of which the case of the contract between the farmer and the trader discussed above is an example), and futures contracts, which are very much like forward contracts except that they are standardised contracts drawn up by clearing houses rather than by the parties themselves, and can be traded by these clearing houses.

In addition there are options, where the contracting parties have the right but not an obligation to buy (or sell) an asset at a pre-specified price at a pre-specified date; and swaps which are contracts for exchanging assets that result in the substitution of one stream of cash-flows for another stream of cash flows over a certain time-span. A common form of swap agreement that has been much in vogue in recent years is the Credit Default Swap, which can be understood as follows.

Suppose I hold a claim (a loan) on somebody. I can sell this loan to a third party which makes me a series of payments, but in return I pay the buyer the full value of the loan in case there is a default on the loan, and take possession of the loan myself. The buyer in this case in other words is willing to make a series of payments to insure himself or herself against any risk of default on the loan that he or she holds.
Likewise there can be interest rate swaps, where, say, one stream of cash flows on an asset on which there is a variable interest rate is exchanged against another stream of cash flows on an asset on which the interest rate is fixed. Similarly there can be currency swaps where assets may be exchanged in order to hedge against risks of exchange rate fluctuations.

It is clear that an infinite array of possibilities exists with regard to derivative contracts, and these in turn can be marketed. In the process even newer forms of contracts may emerge, and so on. The question that arises is: what is the effect of these derivatives, and trade in derivatives, upon the real economy?

The usual argument that used to be advanced is that derivatives, by introducing a whole range of new instruments, serve to improve financial markets; they serve to transfer risks from those who are unwilling to bear risks to those who are willing, and as a result the overall burden of risk in the economy comes down. Put differently, since economic agents want to be compensated for bearing risk by an amount which is called the risk premium, the reduction of risk in the economy as a whole entails a reduction, other things being equal, in the risk premium demanded in the economy. This is exactly analogous in its economic effect to a reduction in the interest rate, and therefore increases investment and thereby the capital stock, output and growth-rate in the economy. The proliferation of derivatives in short, by improving the quality of financial markets, has, according to this view, the effect of improving the performance of the real economy.
This view however is wrong. It is based on a conception of capitalism where the system reaches full employment in every period and has a long-run rate of growth equal to the sum of the rate of growth of labour force and the rate of growth of labour productivity. In other words, it sees capitalism as a system that is always in equilibrium, with no demand constraints, no slumps, no crises or fluctuations. In such a world some fine tuning in the financial markets can only make for a better equilibrium, and nothing else. This means that derivatives can only improve the performance of the real economy, which is pretty good to start with anyway.

But once we look at the actual capitalist system we get a very different picture. This is a system where under neo-liberal policies, growth occurs only through the formation of bubbles, and the collapse of bubbles brings crises. Now, the introduction of derivatives on a large scale implies, in this scenario, a camouflaging of risk. Nobody quite knows how much risk any enterprise or financial unit is exposed to by virtue of holding the portfolio that it does.

During the boom therefore when the bubble is expanding, there is a tendency on the part of the banks and other financial institutions to underestimate the risk for this additional reason, namely that the actual risk situation of any production or financial unit is shrouded in mystery, and therefore keep expanding credit. This keeps the bubble going, as happened during the housing bubble in the USA when a good deal of what came to be called “sub-prime lending” occurred. By the same token however when the bubble bursts, as it inevitably does like all bubbles, the crash is all the more severe, posing in particular an acute threat to the viability of the entire financial system.

It follows therefore that the introduction of financial instruments like derivatives, which are claimed to improve the performance of the real economy, actually exaggerates the slump and makes the financial system extremely vulnerable. Many factors no doubt went into the 2007-8 crisis which still continues, and in the wake of which the Obama administration had to pledge $13 trillion of State funds to shore up the financial system; but one factor that no doubt contributed to this dire situation was the camouflaging of risk which the introduction of derivatives has made possible !!!!!!!!