If you have followed news papers or news channels over the past few months, then headlines such as “US major automobile company to cut its headcount by 14000” or “The world’s fourth largest investment bank in deep crisis” would have been a daily news. You probably would have even read articles about the slowdown in US economy was because to the “Subprime” crisis! (A term which hardly people knew about 12 months ago) But on the other hand, have you observed that the dollar as a currency has grown stronger. Its value has raised against most of the currencies, such as the pound, euro, yen, rupee etc. “So, in spite of the recession, why the dollar value is increasing?” would be an obvious question. Here are some of the points that might be of interest, if you have the same question in mind!
As the US economy tumbled, most of the countries and their major financial institutions expected the US GDP to fall drastically. Because of this the expected GDP of US around the world was around 1.5 to 2%. But to everyone’s surprise, the US’s GDP stood at 3.3 beating everyone’s expectation. On the other hand, Japan’s GDP grew at the rate of -0.2%, while the GDP’s of EU (European Union) and UK (United Kingdom) performed slightly below their respective expectations. This prompted the financial institutions from Japan, EU and UK to invest more in US markets, thereby increasing the demand for dollar. Common sense tells us that when demand is more and supply is less, the rate goes up!
In case of India, the tale is a bit different. Indian economy is heavily dependent of the US economy. Indian stock markets tumbled the moment grey clouds surrounded the US economy. This led the FIIs (Foreign Institutional Investors) to draw their money from the Indian markets and invest in gold bonds (which is considered as the best investment currently). This increased the demand for dollar against rupee. It is neither the case of a strong dollar or a weak rupee. It is just the fundamental demand-supply economics.
Another factor that added to the demand to US dollar was the oil sector. All the countries need to convert their currencies to dollar (which is considered as a global currency for oil trade) to buy oil from the oil producing companies. The soaring oil prices did some help while the low oil prices helped the dollar increase its value against the currencies of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc.
Most of the people who read the above paragraphs get more curious to know the impact of high dollar rate on India is a good or a bad one. To classify the impact as good or bad, you need to know on which side of curve you stand. High dollar rate would definitely be good news, for the export sector of India which includes fisheries, software, textiles to name a few. And for import sectors such as Oil, technology etc, this is a bad news.
Temporarily, high dollar price may be considered as boon to India, as the Indian economy is more of an export oriented economy. In this process the common man may suffer as this will certainly give further rise to inflation. However in the long run, it will be good for India if the dollar weakens. It would force the manufacturing and technology sector, to target the domestic market to boost sales. This would bring in more competition, more variety and competitive prices to the Indian market. This perhaps would also curtail the inflation, because of which India is suffering from past several months.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Myths about USA
United States of America, just the name of this country would put a grin on the faces of many Indians. I was exactly one of those kinds. I wanted to go to US, god knows for what reason. Or maybe it is a very common practice in my community and I picked up this liking towards US genetically. All this was a dream and at one point in time, I wanted to make this dream come true. So, I worked very hard, planned a lot and made a lot of sacrifice to achieve this. All my efforts and prayers paid off, when I was granted my US visa.
There were a lot of things I didn’t like about India. I was sure that those things would be ideal there and this very thought made happy. Also, in our society, if you are going to US, you get that special respect, from known and unknown people. Finally there came the day and I was on board in a flight that would take me to my dream country. Once I landed here, some things really needed me to give a second thought.
The first myth that we tend to develop is that our Airports are not of international standards and obviously in the United States any airport would beat the standard of the state-of-art new airports. If you believe so… you are wrong. Yes, the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is much larger than the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) and offers more facilities, but all this comes at a price. For example: For getting a luggage cart at the BIA, a passenger pays Rs 0, while at the LAX each passenger pays a considerable sum of $3. Though it is not fair to convert $3 to its rupee equivalent, I would say, it is not a very small amount. Would an Indian passenger pay Rs. 75 for a luggage cart at our Airport? I am sure, no. So, is it fair to expect same services for no money? If at all the Airport authority decides to charge some amount for a service, our public would first criticize the authority for not being common-man friendly and would be more than happy to conclude that all the money that is being collected is being divided amongst the authorities. As you know that a common man in India would not use airport so often, is it unfair to charge an amount for a service. But, when the same is done in US, that is for the development of their nation, would be an obvious conclusion. May be the mistake lies within ourselves. May be we tend to give an over-positive thought towards the US and an over-negative thought towards our own country.
When people say, the roads in US are so clean and you will find no garbage in the community and look at our country, garbage everywhere, I have some questions for such people. From where does garbage come to our streets? It is only people like you and me must be cleaning our homes and disposing the garbage elsewhere so that it does not affect our homes, but we don’t care about our society. To this, people might raise a question, then how come people in US do not have this tendency? There is one simple reason to this… A fine of $100 to $600 is charged in the state of Georgia (where I live) for inappropriately disposing the garbage. People are bound to do their duties properly. And this is a habit which is developed right from the young age which carries on. But, if in our country we start charging a fine of Rs. 1000 to 5000 for inappropriately disposing garbage, how successful would it be. No government would try to implement this, as this would probably cost them their position and power. Again the question is who elects them? And how many people actually cast their vote? Here, one needs to mark his/her absentee for not casting their vote.
Here, it’s the election year and all the people are very keenly interested in it. Each citizen votes based on the debate that the two presidential candidates have. If you believed the previous two statements, you are wrong. More than half the people whom I have interacted with have little or no clue about their own political system (and people whom I have interacted with are all University students and can be considered as educated). They were surprised to know that President Bush is an alma mater of both Harvard and Yale University. So, there are ignorant people everywhere. Here people vote based on the skin-color while back home people vote based on the caste. Here color distinguishes while back home it’s the caste (most of us have same skin color)
American system is more efficient than ours. If you feel that processes are not cumbersome here, you probably are right. But US is a country, which is blessed with natural resources, has been a economic and social super power for over 6 decades now and has been independent since July 4th 1776. Look at us; we are independent country barely for 6 decades. The United States was developed during the colonial period while India was looted during the same British raj. If you want to compare Indians with people living here, compare them with the African-American community. Still I see that a lot of lower end jobs are done by them, while the whites still tend to lead a better life, barring few exceptions. This also goes on to show that there exists a lot of unequal distribution of wealth, which is very much the same with our country.
Finally let me quote some fact and figures which would give a better idea of my points. The total area of US is: 9,826,630 SQ KM while that India is: 3,287,590 SQ KM. It is clear that US is 3 times larger than us in terms of area. Our population is 105 crores while that of US is 35 crores. So, the US has 3 times less population compared to that of India. It means to say, less people and more land, which makes the administration and governing lot easier.
Let us remember that even our country is quite capable in many ways. It is just a matter of time, before we would stand out as the best country in the world!
There were a lot of things I didn’t like about India. I was sure that those things would be ideal there and this very thought made happy. Also, in our society, if you are going to US, you get that special respect, from known and unknown people. Finally there came the day and I was on board in a flight that would take me to my dream country. Once I landed here, some things really needed me to give a second thought.
The first myth that we tend to develop is that our Airports are not of international standards and obviously in the United States any airport would beat the standard of the state-of-art new airports. If you believe so… you are wrong. Yes, the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is much larger than the Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) and offers more facilities, but all this comes at a price. For example: For getting a luggage cart at the BIA, a passenger pays Rs 0, while at the LAX each passenger pays a considerable sum of $3. Though it is not fair to convert $3 to its rupee equivalent, I would say, it is not a very small amount. Would an Indian passenger pay Rs. 75 for a luggage cart at our Airport? I am sure, no. So, is it fair to expect same services for no money? If at all the Airport authority decides to charge some amount for a service, our public would first criticize the authority for not being common-man friendly and would be more than happy to conclude that all the money that is being collected is being divided amongst the authorities. As you know that a common man in India would not use airport so often, is it unfair to charge an amount for a service. But, when the same is done in US, that is for the development of their nation, would be an obvious conclusion. May be the mistake lies within ourselves. May be we tend to give an over-positive thought towards the US and an over-negative thought towards our own country.
When people say, the roads in US are so clean and you will find no garbage in the community and look at our country, garbage everywhere, I have some questions for such people. From where does garbage come to our streets? It is only people like you and me must be cleaning our homes and disposing the garbage elsewhere so that it does not affect our homes, but we don’t care about our society. To this, people might raise a question, then how come people in US do not have this tendency? There is one simple reason to this… A fine of $100 to $600 is charged in the state of Georgia (where I live) for inappropriately disposing the garbage. People are bound to do their duties properly. And this is a habit which is developed right from the young age which carries on. But, if in our country we start charging a fine of Rs. 1000 to 5000 for inappropriately disposing garbage, how successful would it be. No government would try to implement this, as this would probably cost them their position and power. Again the question is who elects them? And how many people actually cast their vote? Here, one needs to mark his/her absentee for not casting their vote.
Here, it’s the election year and all the people are very keenly interested in it. Each citizen votes based on the debate that the two presidential candidates have. If you believed the previous two statements, you are wrong. More than half the people whom I have interacted with have little or no clue about their own political system (and people whom I have interacted with are all University students and can be considered as educated). They were surprised to know that President Bush is an alma mater of both Harvard and Yale University. So, there are ignorant people everywhere. Here people vote based on the skin-color while back home people vote based on the caste. Here color distinguishes while back home it’s the caste (most of us have same skin color)
American system is more efficient than ours. If you feel that processes are not cumbersome here, you probably are right. But US is a country, which is blessed with natural resources, has been a economic and social super power for over 6 decades now and has been independent since July 4th 1776. Look at us; we are independent country barely for 6 decades. The United States was developed during the colonial period while India was looted during the same British raj. If you want to compare Indians with people living here, compare them with the African-American community. Still I see that a lot of lower end jobs are done by them, while the whites still tend to lead a better life, barring few exceptions. This also goes on to show that there exists a lot of unequal distribution of wealth, which is very much the same with our country.
Finally let me quote some fact and figures which would give a better idea of my points. The total area of US is: 9,826,630 SQ KM while that India is: 3,287,590 SQ KM. It is clear that US is 3 times larger than us in terms of area. Our population is 105 crores while that of US is 35 crores. So, the US has 3 times less population compared to that of India. It means to say, less people and more land, which makes the administration and governing lot easier.
Let us remember that even our country is quite capable in many ways. It is just a matter of time, before we would stand out as the best country in the world!
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