Shadow remains

Violin flowing robes
Melancholy haunting lilting tunes
floating on the waves
"Life is nothing but series of interludes"

its a song
its the young yawn
riding on the wave
Seashore open sore
red white Baloons
white sand
Barren land

Mind walk backwards
lost in hallways of time
why don't i see you?
gives pain
so much grace
Your embrace!

Steal some life
grinding of time
born existed died
Sand in hand
love in life
"Hold tight or they fly"

Hoarded you are
somewhere within me
hidden from the world
in my smiles
in my sighs
"Bound we are by pain"

World in unison
sand slips time flies
youth goes heart cries
Sun burns dreams blur
words falter God dies
Shadow remains

Long lost

why this amazement
why this naivete?
The first pat of love
resembled that dream
impossible, rare, exquisite!
tender as heart,
light as thought you seemed

The pride it gave,
warrior at the feet,
pleading for a glance,a feint smile,
world forgotten, lowered bow
lovelorn, unsure,
homologating his feelings
blood writ letters and tears

This was the time
You could ask him for Sun
The air, the moon
life,death or any clime

Alas! folly of love
forgot to see
Life in every death
in every surrender
we are all dying like this blossom
without sun in a luxurious room
Love dies too

When she rose
in love, in acceptance
wanton desires of body
saw him walk away
load of dead on his shoulders

waiting in decorated garden of hope
someday blossom may pass this way.
Breathing,alone is not life O lord
Neither does heart ache
nor do the sleeves get wet anymore

Splinters of glass dreams, waking eyes,
Pain, tears, fear of abandonment
flowing waters, dissolving banks
I am living, I am no more

I will join them, the souls

Before I slip into unconsciousness
Give me one more chance at bliss
I will be soft & gentle
Let the pain give me one more kiss

This endless vigil
of the pathway, the door
against sea and the window grime
hoping to see your face
One more time

Eyes are tiring over
will they win? perhaps.
They still wonder, wander,
feeling the souls of dead,
floating in hospital room,
keeping an eye on the living,
death is not what I dread

crawling on all fours
to sip that elixir of life,
reminiscing when i used to be strong
Heart, eyes & the vigil
humming that old song.

soon enough
I will join them, the souls.
soon enough I shall walk
the alleys of time
"We shall miss nothing
except each other".

This endless vigil
of the pathway, the door
Voices from distant
some other life, perhaps.
"Chand chura ke laya hoon
Chal baithen church ke peeche"

Time for alternate currencies

"The paper system being founded on public confidence and having of itself no intrinsic value, it is liable to great and sudden fluctuations, thereby rendering property insecure and the wages of labor unsteady and uncertain.

The corporations which create the paper money can not be relied upon to keep the circulating medium uniform in amount. In times of prosperity, when confidence is high, they are tempted by the prospect of gain or by the influence of those who hope to profit by it to extend their issues of paper beyond the bounds of discretion and the reasonable demands of business; and when these issues have been pushed on from day to day, until public confidence is at length shaken, then a reaction takes place, and they immediately withdraw the credits they have given, suddenly curtail their issues, and produce an unexpected and ruinous contraction of the circulating medium, which is felt by the whole community.

The banks by this means save themselves, and the mischievous consequences of their imprudence or cupidity are visited upon the public. Nor does the evil stop here. These ebbs and flows in the currency and these indiscreet extensions of credit naturally engender a spirit of speculation injurious to the habits and character of the people. We have already seen its effects in the wild spirit of speculation in the public lands and various kinds of stock which within the last year or two seized upon such a multitude of our citizens and threatened to pervade all classes of society and to withdraw their attention from the sober pursuits of honest industry. (its where a career in banking inevitably leads)

It is not by encouraging this spirit that we shall best preserve public virtue and promote the true interests of our country; but if your currency continues as exclusively paper as it now is, it will foster this eager desire to amass wealth without labor; it will multiply the number of dependents on bank accommodations and bank favors; the temptation to obtain money at any sacrifice will become stronger and stronger, and inevitably lead to corruption, which will find its way into your public councils and destroy at no distant day the purity of your Government."

How prophetic these words sound today even after some 100's of years.
American president Andrew Jackson


For a change I wanted to start with something said more than 100 year back and how relevant it has become today. This 'Quantitative easing' , "Toilet economics' as far as i would like to describe it will lead to balance sheet recession. In that scenario corporates would look to retire debt rather than have focus on profits even if the interest rate continues to hover around 0%. They will not borrow money for expansion but use the cash flow for retiring debt and make the balance sheet healthy. Such is the nature of beast leading to the slowdown in economic activity (that is happening in West).

For months the Fed purchased hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury debt, enabling the US government to fund its profligate deficit spending, push the national debt to its limit, and further devalue the dollar. Confidence in the dollar is plummeting, confidence in the euro has been shattered by the European bond crisis, and beleaguered consumers and investors are slowly but surely awakening to the fact that government-issued currencies do not hold their value.

Currency is sound only when it is recognized and accepted as such by individuals, through the actions of the market, without coercion. Throughout history, gold and silver have been the two commodities that have most fully satisfied the requirements of sound money. This is why people around the world are flocking once again to gold and silver as a store of value to replace their rapidly depreciating paper currencies. Even central banks have come to their senses and have begun to stock up on gold once again.

With a burning inflation of 10% + in India, we are already shafted. I refuse to believe this CONgress theory of supply side issues. It is largely driven by the failure of Indian government to control profiteering and breakdown of governance. The government monopoly on the issuance of money is purely a method of central control over the economy. If you can be forced to accept the government's increasingly devalued rupee, there is no limit to how far the government will go to debauch the currency. Anyone who attempts to create a market based currency – meaning a currency with real value as determined by markets – threatens to embarrass the federal government and expose the folly of our fiat monetary system. So the government will destroy competition through its usual tools of arrest, confiscation, and incarceration but the time has to come to create local currnecies - Village, Town level.

At the end the currency works on the principal of trust and without coercion

"Sisters & Brother"

It's been 118 years that the great man descended on American consciousness with these famous opening words at the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Chicago in 1893. He addressed his audience as “Sisters and Brothers of America” and proceeded to introduce them to the dharma — the Sanatana Dharma which is also known as Hinduism.

Unfortunately, in today's western events dominated history, in addition to the criminal apathy,sorry hatred of the ruling establishment towards Sanatan thought, we simply remember this day as anniversary of WTC attacks. We must remember this day for the simplicity and great confidence with which Vivekanand opened the world's eyes towards the inherent wisdom and philosophical thought of Bharat.

Here’s bit from that speech.

"I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal..."

Our revered Manmohan singh off-course has different ideas. He wants to introduce 'Communal Violence bill' on this day to demonise the Sanatanis as perpetrators of violence.

Who runs the nations

The advantage of having a corporation over being an individual investing in trade voyages etc, is that an individual’s debts could be inherited by descendants (and hence, one could be jailed for debts of other family members, for example). A corporate charter however, was and is limited in its risks, to just the amount that was invested. A right not accorded to individuals.

As corporations did manage to increase their wealth and therefore political power, laws that initially tried to manage them were further relaxed. As we have seen in the name of East India company, corporations would benefit from the State’s war-making activities, further increasing their wealth and influence.

Yet, it was claiming of a corporation to be an individual in the United States in the 1800s, and claiming the same rights as a person that helped to provide for large expansion of corporate capitalism.

United states of America Supreme Court ruling in 1886 ... arguably set the stage for the full-scale development of the culture of capitalism, by handing to corporations the right to use their economic power in a way they never had before. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1868 to protect the rights of freed slaves, the Court ruled that a private corporation is a natural person under the U.S. Constitution, and consequently has the same rights and protection extended to persons by the Bill of Rights, including the right to free speech. Thus corporations were given the same “rights” to influence the government in their own interests as were extended to individual citizens, paving the way for corporations to use their wealth to dominate public thought and discourse.

But since then, either way, the influence and power of large corporations has increased and is an undeniable facet of the 'global village' and corporate globalization. Of course, the influence of various groups and entities is nothing new. But today, the increasing size and wealth of corporations point to more concentration of wealth and of political and economic power and influence than before. Indeed, today, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs).

We , In India have been witness to a Unique phenomenon in the recorded world history when a Multinational corporation slaved an entire country, That is India. Who were these people who created these corporations and who have inherited them now? Well, let me explore the history and the related controversies through the example of East India Company. Trust me only the modus operandi has changed. MNC's still own countries and the only reason populations exist is to serve the interests of corporations. It's time that Indian corporates must rise and Government of India must build up muscle to safeguard the wealth of corporations make outside India.


East India Companies (EICs)
What we Know

East India Company, a group of British Merchants or British Government joined together and formed a company and British Dutch French Belgium Kings Gave unbridled charter rights to Trade over vast India China, Far East Asia and Africa. All believe that the same structure identically followed when Bank of England was Chartered a year later. Same thing continued with Lloyds which was chartered a year later. It was also told that this EIC was dissolved in 1857 and British Queen took over the India.

Commodities of EICs

EICs bought tea, spices from South East Asia. But what did they sell. What ever they sold gave them incredible profits and with this they maintained huge private army, traveled thousands of miles to do business conquering all nations in South East Asia. We know that they sold cotton and clothes to India. The other magical commodity which they sold is to Chinese was grown in India, after EICs forced poor Indian farmers at point to abandon all other agricultural production, the name of which if Indians hear probably they first laugh and then faint, it is the most addictive drug Opium.

Another exciting product that was dealt on large scale by EICs (all) was selling slaves from all places to South America to work in sugar, tea plantations and ranches. From India they called them coolies, from china they are called pigs and from Africa proper they are called slaves. British EIC sold close to million slaves (these products are terrific as the cost production is zero and what ever the sale price is it is pure profit) till the beginning of 20th century.

The East India Company (the “Company”) was one of the institutions created as a product of the Venetian Merchants takeover of England’s commerce. In England it was called British East India Company. The Levant Company, set up to trade with the East, had been formed in 1592 as a fusion of the Turkey Company (with predominant partnership by house of Sassoon, fathers-in-law of Rothschild) and the Venice Company (probably the House of Rothschild). In 1600. The East India Company was formed as a spin-off (subsidiary of) of the Levant Company. It received a perpetual charter from the British Monarchy for a monopoly on trade with the East Indies. This east india company had many partners under various names belonging to various nations, Dutch, British, Belgium and French East India Companies and Dutch, British and French East African Companies and received same perpetual charters from all these countries.

Most importantly The Levant Company or Turkey Company or The Venice Company and East India Companies are all partnerships. Meaning they need not declare their profits, nor assets nor the partner names or addresses. An appointed representative of the company will file returns and act as liaison of the principal owners. Worst with East india company was, it was a subsidiary of The Levant Company. As we see with many Multi National Companies (MNCs) that are forming partnership in India are also Subsidiaries of some other holding companies, and these holding companies in turn are subsidiaries of another set of numbered companies and these numbered companies in turn are held in trusts and these trusts are held in partnership, and the partnership address is a P.O. Box number some where in Central London or in New York. We see only the officers and lawyers of these MNCs not the real owners. It is the identification of the ownership of these MNCs and EICs will solve the puzzle of dis appeared EICs, a puzzle probably except Japan none in Asia ever understood, Indians never thought of it so never worried about it and do not care about it.

This company had 40 owners. They elected a governor, a deputy governor and a board consisting of 24 directors. The same structure identically followed when Bank of England was Chartered. Who are these 40 share holders/owners of this company. But in reality East India Companies-British East India Company, French East India Company and Dutch East India Company-in their noble cause of civilizing mankind looted close to $ 1.6 trillion worth of wealth from the countries they traded with. Ruthlessly exploited more than dozen countries by selling their subjects as slaves. Killed more than 100 million people in order to maximize their profit and minimize their cost, encouraged wholesale addiction of opium among 30 million people, created more than 30 famines all across the nations. These gigantic behemouth East India Companies were the true Multinationals of their time. They dis appeared from the face of earth-we should believe so-and reappeared as Multi National Corporations controlled by the same owners their heirs successors. This part examines the origin of these industrial houses that owned EICs and the other industrial houses that were involved with these East India Companies.


Who are these 40 persons who owned this company? Why did British government pledged its soldiers for this company for next 400 years conquering every land this company touched? Where did the money they made in the company went? To British government or to the owners? How much money they made? What are the commodities these traders traded?
Why after 275 years after its inception when this British East India company was dissolved, all properties were absorbed by Lloyds-a behemoth of Shipping Insurance under writing and investment Bank- which is a subsidiary of N.M. Rothschild & Co. Though after Mrs. Victoria proclaimed India as part of British Empire why the Indian affairs were run by Privy Council with Managing partnership of EIC, and Chancellor Exchequer of British Treasury who happened to be all the time the Chairman of Bank of England, another Family bank of House of Rothschild.

These families constitute a financier oligarchy; they are the power behind the Windsor throne. They view themselves as the heirs to the Venetian oligarchy, which infiltrated and subverted England from the period 1509-1715, and established a new, more virulent, Anglo-Dutch-Swiss strain of the oligarchic system of imperial Babylon, Persia, Rome, and Byzantium....
The City of London dominates the world's speculative markets. A tightly interlocking group of corporations, involved in raw materials extraction, finance, insurance, transportation, and food production, controls the lion's share of the world market, and exerts virtual "choke point'' control over world industry." http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/largest.htm
Steinberg belongs to a group of historians associated with economist Lyndon Larouche. They have traced this scourge to the migration of the Venetian mercantile oligarchy to England more than 300 years ago. http://members.tripod.com/~american_alm ... nlowry.htm

Although the Larouche historians do not say so, it appears that many members of this oligarchy were Jews. Cecil Roth writes: "The trade of Venice was overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of the Jews, the wealthiest of the mercantile class." (/The History of the Jews in Venice, 1930) /
The Jewish banking families made it a practice to marry their female offspring to spendthrift European aristocrats. In Jewish law, the mixed offspring of a Jewish mother is Jewish. (The male heirs always marry Jews.) The daughter of Jewish banker Ernest Cassel married Lord Louis Montbatten, who was related to Queen Victoria and Prince Philip.

The British East India Company who snuck into India under the guise of traders first initiated colonisation. You can read about their Illuminati links at this page http://user.pa.net/~drivera/fw5.htm which says that "They were closely related to the Levant Company, and the Anglo-Muscovy Company, and spawned the London Company, which was chartered in 1606 by King James I, to establish the Virginia Plantation on a communistic basis, and the Plymouth Colony in 1621." And again "Every year, 24 Directors were elected by the Court of Proprietors (or shareholders, a majority of which were English Masons)."
The British traders were not allowed to own property in India but one of them managed to gain the favors of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb by curing his ill wife. In return, he asked for land. This piece of land became the Madras Headquarters of the East India Company.

EIC 1815 Rothschilds MNC 1975 Lib & Pvt
Free Trade in Action
EIC and Indian Gold for British paychecks
On the orders of Nathan Rothschild then Chairman Bank of England, Eight hundred thousand pounds of gold (close to 350 tons) was shipped out of India from East India Company to his brother James Rothschild in Paris to be sent to Admiral Nelson to pay salaries of British/Spanish soldiers fighting with Napoleon. Nathan was billed $ 2 per kilogram of Gold by East India Company. Historians believe that this $ 2 dollars is nothing but the shipping charges that were paid to the shipping company, Lloyds (at $ 2 per kilogram of gold), to carry the gold to James in Paris.
Essentially East India Company shipped the Indian gold Free obtained from Indian Free Trade to Nathan to be paid for British soldiers’ salaries who were fighting a European battle for British supremacy.


In the year 1600 East India Company was formed and given exclusive right to trade with India and south east Asia by British Monarchy under the concept of Free Trade and Globalization. The Charter was renewed in 1690. It was also given the right to civilize India. In the year 1965 club of Rome (top industrial houses- real owners of EICs or MNCs) divided the world in 10 economic segments and gave unbridled authority to ruthlessly exploit Segment 9 (India belongs to this segment 9) a group of mineral (diamond, gold, uranium, life saving medicinal plants, organic food and drinking water) oil natural gas rich south east Asian nations consisting one third of population of world- under liberalization (liberalize domestic economy to globalize its owners) and privatization (privatize so that Free Trade can further control domestic economy via global owners) to a group of MNCs.

Well One of the early venetian to land in England was the John Churchill the 1st duke of marlborough and he is ancestor to a famous English politician who created 'The great Bengal Famine' and killed 7 million Indians during WWII, Winston Churchill.

By 1701, the lunatics of the late-model incarnation of the Venetian Party had typically inbred a set of oligarchical families, mixing and matching Spencers, and Godolphins, and Churchills--the last headed by John Churchill, soon to become duke of Marlborough.Churchill had begun as a page boy to Charles II in 1665, behind the skirts of his sister Arabella, the mistress of the king's brother James. Then, for similar services rendered, Churchill received £10,000 from Charles II's favorite mistress.

On Churchill family whatever you read from English press (eulogizing) is pure bull crap. May be some other day when I finish reading the book I am reading on American independence and influences on Banjamin franklin.

we must save our freedom, democracy and way of life by creating our own MNC's and acquiring wealth and lands wherever it is possible. With a growing population of 120 cr and growing, there is no choice but limiting the charter of corporation by making them do public good as part of the business in India. There is no second place in the fight to survive.

No More

Untrampled footsteps
Borderline dreams
Occasions for sinners
Alive if it seems
Given to wander
Alone at the shore
Wanton to whisper
I am no more

Plus ça change plus ça reste la même

Yellow Mustard flowers
Under the azure blue sky
the breeze was gentle red
and the winter was pink
was the day my poetry died

Pain drenched sky,
shedding tears,
drenching my soul.
Aloneness,u made nest in heart,
need not fly.
U introduced me to myself.

Roadside cafes, food stalls
Lovers roam, night crawls.
Dark lane, sharp pain,
Saints march, dim flame.

Secluded park, anxious heart,
Chafed lips, tear sips
Poet lives, love dies,
Turn of fate, roll of dice.
Sesame seeds, Palm beach,

Red glow, dark cave,
Father in heaven,
why do I crave?
Undefiled dreams,
mountain streams, road is dark
Amy departs, choices stark
Life stalls, night crawls

More it changes, More it remains the same

Mouthful of sky

Remember the best times,
The laughter, the song.
The good life I lived while I was strong.
I could run to the end of rainbow,
Collect the colors in my palm.
fragrance in pockets, stars in the eyes
Earth in hair & mouthful of sky

The world looks different
from the hospital bed
bleached clouds
like the ghosts of icebergs.
Sky colored sky,
the sun dropped in blood
streaked splendour like a public execution.
The kid is itching,
fragrance in pockets, stars in the eyes
Earth in hair & mouthful of sky.

My mind is at ease,
my soul is at rest.
The loss of a limb
Wouldn't feel the same
The phantom pains
With none to blame.
visitors, like fish,
stink after three days.
love, loss, Rain,
aloneness, fear, pain,
desires, needs & separate ways.

incessant rains, Windows sill
White sheets, distant green hills.
Dead dreams dropping off the heart
like leaves in a dry season,
rotting around the feet.
past is the only dead thing
that smells sweet.
fragrance in pockets, stars in the eyes
Earth in hair & mouthful of sky.

Soliloquy

Shovel leaning on his waist,
Pulled out a matchbox hesitatingly,
Burnt them, the leaves.
The street is filled with smoke,fragrance,
passerby run for cover,
He pauses and heeds the smell,
which will turn nostalgia in few years

What did you burn poet?
Memories, life i lived, love, lies,
I can make the sun stop,
Earth sing and moon cry.
I can make sun go around the moon,
I can be gigantic, reach for the stars,
I can be small, get into a hole,
Dig deep for my soul.

Can't get rid of memories,
Pitter Patter, school Gate,
Cycle trails, Doon Valley & Mumbai rains.
Those lean desperate long hours,
Anger, love, desperation.
Time searched the hallways of mind.
Hands kept time.
The climate altered like a
visible dance.
So did her mood.

Dull lights, broken street,
Abodes reeking stench,
trampled grass, Warm sun,
thirsty throat, wretched sheet.
Tiny soul, million woes,
Zestful eyes, restful pose,
Seeking fortune or hiding in Disdain?
I seek nothing! can't i take with me?

Poet, Why do you brood?
See how memories have changed you,
How slowly they estranged you
Solely arranged you
Bright lights, washed streets,
green grass,gentle noon.

What you gave in experiences and accidents,
I am returning all.
Dull lights, broken street,
Abodes reeking stench,
trampled grass, Warm sun,
thirsty throat, wretched sheet.

Times they are a changing

With the ongoing economic crisis (Yes, the crisis is ongoing and only become deeper), It's time to renew focus on Democracy and it's future. There are lot of questions that need answers. To begin with,

1. Do we really have a democracy prevailing in the any country?

2. Are we the masters of our destiny and not being led to believe things to be true or false

3. In case we are made to believe things, who is guiding us?

4. Does the so called democratic government has the will or authority to enforce it's will and act in order to fulfill the obligations under social contract?

5. What is forcing this unparalleled creation of money and why it is interfering in the governance?

6. The most important question that needed asked a long time back, Does the Voter Matter?

Let me start with the first one. No we don't have any democracy prevailing in any of the countries anymore. If the writers of Indian constitution were alive and came up with things like fundamental rights, they would have been jailed. There is a blatant contradiction that is so obvious in the way government is functioning in India. I grew up believing and reading that all people have rights that are endowed by constitutional fathers after long debates and centuries of accumulated wisdom behind them. I also believed that government can secure and protect rights but is incapable of bestowing them (since it didn't have them in the first place), and that government has mere privileges granted by the people - and that the people have the right to revoke those privileges through debates or through election process. However what happens in between the election process that comes in 5 years? Damage is already been done.


The answer to the second question regarding being masters of our own destiny. Well we are not! This 'Government of the people, by the people, and for the people' never involves people in things that impact their destinies, our destinies. Democratic governments (all parties) believe that fiscal policy (that is to say almost all government endeavours involved in spending money that touch most citizens apart from home affairs and foreign policy) is "too important" for voters to have a say over, that would be better be agreed, again, in my words, in "dark, secret debates." When everything is done in the name of people of India, why there are no informed debated with the citizenry is beyond comprehension?

The answer to the third point is muddled. Lot of Conspiracy theorists, Jholowalas would like to make you believe that they have figured it out, "It's the government,silly". This is only partially true. The Government across the world over are subservient not to the people but to 'Business interests' or the invisible hands. it's those invisible Multinationals and Indian conglomerates in addition to the banks and financial institutions. They rule from a moveable, intangible palace: Sometimes the orders seem to come from Brussels, sometimes from New york or Berlin, sometimes from a Luxembourg castle or maybe just via a dinner-time teleconference over a dodgy line and lukewarm coffee from Mumbai.

And in seeing how easy it is to intimidate democracy, they have have now gone so far, it appears, as to be on the verge of morally bankrupting the government who is so neck deep in corruption and probably lost the mandate of the people. Alas! we have no concept of 'Seppuku'

On fourth, Government has no will or authority to enforce it's part of 'Social contract'


Since the topic is more of democracy and Economics. let's stick to

This has not happened by putsch or coup d'etat, at least not one involving any guns or tanks. There are no colonels or partisans who have captured the garrisons and seized the telephone exchange. Yet a junta has installed itself nonetheless, a junta of ‘experts', technocrats, those educated in the knowledge of What Needs To Be Done. Wherever these masters of the Economic universe happen to be hovering at any one moment, the refrain in effect is the same: ‘Of course, there is no question that you are still allowed to vote however you like. Nevertheless, the policies absolutely cannot change even if the government does. Take the case of Portugal where the banks forced the parties to sign agreements even before the elections to agree to certain policies or no debt. It is therefore worrying that the dangers to democratic governance today, coming through the back door of financial priority, are not receiving the attention they should. There are profound issues to be faced about how democratic governance could be undermined by the hugely heightened role of financial institutions and rating agencies, which now lord it freely over parts of Global political terrain.

The day is not far of when the UPA profligacy will lead us to a similar situation. With the combination of 'Sarkari Jholawalas' in Sonia led NAC (national advisory council) and a 78 year old 'Sarkari Clerk' in PMO we are heading towards the same way. With a ballooning debt at almost 75% of GDP (so what if most of it is in INR) our capacity to pay it back will depend on the earnings of future generations, who are increasingly unemployable due to poor education, we are hell bent on implementing inane, stupid and inflationary ideas such as NREGA/Food security bill. what happened to the old fashioned way of hardwork and earning one's bread through the sweat of of brow?

The formal trappings of clean elections - in which political parties with competing manifestoes contest a ballot free of voter intimidation - are all still there, but someone else is deciding in advance what the result will be. Political parties will be in no position to resist these financial institutions if we continue to collect debts for these hazardous, poisonous schemes. we are surrendering our capacity to maneuver and implement the will of the people. Today it's Europe, tomorrow it could be India. What is happeneing in Portugal, Ireland and Greece is erosion of democracy.

Money creation is nothing but debt creation, my professor taught me. While we are creating money we must balance it with Goods and services of equivalent value to offset the inflation. With 15% inflation raging on our heads in india, we are headed for more disaster with Food security or any other bill of that nature. Once you promise to give certain things free, you can not take them back or get ready for violence (think free TV, washing machine, laptops in TN) .

According to a poll conducted by Greece's Kappa Institute two weeks ago, 30 percent of Greek respondents actually want the country to be led by "a group of experts and technocrats."

A plurality of Greeks have now become so disillusioned with sovereignty and democracy that they think at least the experts could deliver something better than the seemingly insurmountable unemployment, corruption and economic collapse they see around them.

The same survey said that less than a quarter believed that a democratically-elected government will be able to overcome the ordeal they are going through.

But if the experts, the technocrats who are sidelining democracy in their subtle way, feel heartened by such polls, they should pause when they read the rest of this census.

A full 22.7 percent want "a strongman" to resolve the ongoing crisis.

We have seen a Greece, get ready for India in 10 years. The Anna, Ramdev campaigns under the garb of 'Civil society' are nothing but capturing the moral space vacated by the government. A handful of zealots, partisans are holding the government, who should have reflecting the will of the people, by their throat. This blatant undermining of constitution, parliament and cabinet has been made possible by the acceptance of NAC as super advisory body by Manmohan government.

The state and the rule of law are being ridiculed on a daily basis. May god bless Bharatvarsha!

Jai Ho! jai Ho!

Philosophy ! Who needs it

Well pardon me for the borrowed title from the famous Ayn Rand but i could not find any other title worth the meaning. This piece is a tribute to the bizzare and the bazar. This is in continuation of my search for an answer, to be very honest many of them. To seek answers, let me begin with the questions.

Are we living on two planets?
I am serious. There must be two of them. One, on which I live and the other, We are convinced that we live. More deterministic and full of certitude. Past events are always explained as if they understood them completely, worse is that they assume to know their reasons and backfit some stupid logic also, concocted, ex posted by their deluded minds. This is something called 'Hindsight bias'. Where in I am always struggling with my intellectual insecurity. I am always calming down my skeptical mind , always questioning but people talk with certainity of their ideas and knowledge , it makes me feel a beast out of mars.
I am convinced we are living on two planets.

What about the results?
Well what about them? Reality is far more vicious than any game you have played. Its thousand barrel gun hits you hits you too infrequently. You tend to watch it for 10/20 shots may be and then you just forget that it can hit you too, That there is a bullet lying somewhere in the chamber. This is the 'Black swan' Taleb is talking about I guess. So that's why there is this chance of Luck sneaking in. Tough luck my friend.
Quality of decision can not rather should not be judged solely by the result at the end. It should be judged by the alternative cost principle. I mean, what else i could have been. Normally the people would say that I made the best decision and that's why i am successful. generally these are sentences associated with loosers, (You can hear the politicians say that).
In the end I would just say that you can always choose a different past too the way you choose a future.
and yes results are no guarantee of someone being intelligent , it's just Russian roulette being played out with life holding the 1 million barrel gun.

गब्बर सिंह का चरित्र चित्रण

1. सादा जीवन, उच्च विचार: उसके जीने का ढंग बड़ा सरल था. पुराने और मैले कपड़े, बढ़ी हुई दाढ़ी, महीनों से जंग खाते दांत और पहाड़ों पर खानाबदोश जीवन. जैसे मध्यकालीन भारत का फकीर हो. जीवन में अपने लक्ष्य की ओर इतना समर्पित कि ऐशो-आराम और विलासिता के लिए एक पल की भी फुर्सत नहीं. और विचारों में उत्कृष्टता के क्या कहने! 'जो डर गया, सो मर गया' जैसे संवादों से उसने जीवन की क्षणभंगुरता पर प्रकाश डाला था.

२. दयालु प्रवृत्ति: ठाकुर ने उसे अपने हाथों से पकड़ा था. इसलिए उसने ठाकुर के सिर्फ हाथों को सज़ा दी. अगर वो चाहता तो गर्दन भी काट सकता था. पर उसके ममतापूर्ण और करुणामय ह्रदय ने उसे ऐसा करने से रोक दिया.


3. नृत्य-संगीत का शौकीन: 'महबूबा ओये महबूबा' गीत के समय उसके कलाकार ह्रदय का परिचय मिलता है. अन्य डाकुओं की तरह उसका ह्रदय शुष्क नहीं था. वह जीवन में नृत्य-संगीत एवंकला के महत्त्व को समझता था. बसन्ती को पकड़ने के बाद उसके मन का नृत्यप्रेमी फिर से जाग उठा था. उसने बसन्ती के अन्दर छुपी नर्तकी को एक पल में पहचान लिया था. गौरतलब यह कि कला के प्रति अपने प्रेम को अभिव्यक्त करने का वह कोई अवसर नहीं छोड़ता था.


4. अनुशासनप्रिय नायक: जब कालिया और उसके दोस्त अपने प्रोजेक्ट से नाकाम होकर लौटे तो उसने कतई ढीलाई नहीं बरती. अनुशासन के प्रति अपने अगाध समर्पण को दर्शाते हुए उसने उन्हें तुरंत सज़ा दी.

5. हास्य-रस का प्रेमी: उसमें गज़ब का सेन्स ऑफ ह्यूमर था. कालिया और उसके दो दोस्तों को मारने से पहले उसने उन तीनों को खूब हंसाया था. ताकि वो हंसते-हंसते दुनिया को अलविदा कह सकें. वह आधुनिक यु का 'लाफिंग बुद्धा' था.


6. नारी के प्रति सम्मान: बसन्ती जैसी सुन्दर नारी का अपहरण करने के बाद उसने उससे एक नृत्य का निवेदन किया. आज-कल का खलनायक होता तो शायद कुछ और करता.


7. भिक्षुक जीवन: उसने हिन्दू धर्म और महात्मा बुद्ध द्वारा दिखाए गए भिक्षुक जीवन के रास्ते को अपनाया था. रामपुर और अन्य गाँवों से उसे जो भी सूखा-कच्चा अनाज मिलता था, वो उसी से अपनी गुजर-बसर करता था. सोना, चांदी, बिरयानी या चिकन मलाई टिक्का की उसने कभी इच्छा ज़ाहिर नहीं की.


8. सामाजिक कार्य: डकैती के पेशे के अलावा वो छोटे बच्चों को सुलाने का भी काम करता था. सैकड़ों माताएं उसका नाम लेती थीं ताकि बच्चे बिना कलह किए सो जाएं. सरकार ने उसपर 50,000 रुपयों का इनाम घोषित कर रखा था. उस युग में 'कौन बनेगा करोड़पति' ना होने के बावजूद लोगों को रातों-रात अमीर बनाने का गब्बर का यह सच्चा प्रयास था.


9. महानायकों का निर्माता: अगर गब्बर नहीं होता तो जय और व??रू जैसे लुच्चे-लफंगे छोटी-मोटी चोरियां करते हुए स्वर्ग सिधार जाते. पर यह गब्बर के व्यक्तित्व का प्रताप था कि उन लफंगों में भी महानायक बनने की क्षमता जागी.

New war- New tools

O Lord, Cry me a river, for we seem to learn nothing out of our follies and I am making no distinction between Private and Public behavior. Who is to blame for this exhibitionism? What is driving men (not in Gender terms) to this increasing wearing of emotions on sleeve. What happened to the good old adage, "what goes around the house, stays in the house" ? Now , i see many of you shaking your head in denial and sheer absurdity of writing this kind of article.

We are all leaving digital footprints everywhere we go, You are not Google's customer. You are Google's product, which they sell to their [advertising] customers. I cant help but expressing continued concern at Google's use of privileged personal data from users of Gmail, its e-mail service, as the foundation of Google's new social networking site, Buzz. Staff postings to social networking sites pose a new data leakage risk. This kind of risk poses a huge threat to companies involved with deals or projects that are at a sensitive stage . people constantly updating their location on Linked-in or facebook present a corporate risk in case you are working in mergers and acquisitions of new product development or even marketing. 3 trips down to a particular market in a space of 1 month can alarm any competitor of impending product launch by the Brand director/ Category head.

Mobile phones that store personal contacts, music and photographs also often contain highly sensitive work data. Devices such as BlackBerry smartphones, originally intended for business use, are now being increasingly marketed to consumers, while the Apple iPhone, essentially a consumer device, is being targeted at professionals. It is feared that new technologies such as cloud computing, where an organisation's data and software are stored on remote servers controlled by a third party, also pose a huge potential security challenge.

Apart from the obvious risks for the corporates , there are enormous risks in Private space too. Facebook updates are nothing but a cry for attention. It looks like a desperate plea to get noticed. We are simply trivializing the value of old fashioned relationships which were built on time spent , standing by someone through thick and thin. Sharing, caring and lot of times showing patience. This Facebook behavior is teaching new meanings in relationships. We 'Friend' and 'Unfriend' so easily. People are just taking this behavior to family life.

Would you rather spend hours on-end tending to a fictional farm or gangstering around Facebook than being physically intimate with a spouse? While on a date are you more focused on this great Tweet you're think of than the pleasant conversation? Do you consider things that happen IRL to be "quaint"? If you answered Yes, Maybe or even No to any of these questions, you may be a social media addict. Social media addiction is a real thing and no laughing matter. It affects, probably, thousands of people. And it may be wrecking your relationships and the ability to connect with people while logged off of the world wide web.The old fashioned way of taking and thrashing out differences is almost non-existent.


Alas, we need new tools in this new warfare agains the onslaught of social media and merging of both spaces.

We the uncouth

"We lost ourselves the day we were born

Since then the search began

To find those of our family



We were confused

For we were given a family of birth

We had friends from our situation

In this funny place called “society”

We travelled

And felt the semblance of the primeval sensation of life

We wondered why we felt at home on the road

We were made to believe we were a little strange

For how many stay away from “home” for so long?

How many become the rebels we did?



We wandered on empty streets in the night

Feeling the wind of the sea, the river, the mountains of wherever we lived…

We had so many questions and no answers we found

We searches, always searched

We searched even for ourselves…



We delved in unfathomable depths of the being

We rowed for months in strange alien seas

We searched for friends of the soul

Somehow no friends we had, ever

Seemed like friends enough…

How could we explain what “friends” meant to us?

Friends were beings so akin to us

They could read our minds

Walk in step with us on those roads of life

Friends were those who travelled with us

Climbed mountains, forged rivers, conquered seas…

Friends were one life breath, strangely

Such few “friends” we ever found in this world



We stayed aloof…from so much

The norms, the religions, thought processes of the world

We risked our lives, our positions, our family relations for our beliefs



We did the things we believed in

Worked for none but ourselves

We were called selfish for we cared

About our own well being…



We fought, we battled,

We ran like mad from so many, so much

We hid, we absconded, we hibernated



Some of us found our soulmates

Some of us didn’t

Some of us had homes, children, love

Some of us lived lonely in far away homes

Some of us were fulfilled having found the love

The understanding we seeked, the minds akin to ours

Some of us…after a long time stopped searching having understood that in some lifetimes we were meant to be alone

Our soulmates parted from us, living another life…

May be in another world, probably another time zone…



We, the seekers, the thinkers, the rebels

We ache to get together for nowhere seems like home

We long for company of similar minds, sensibilities

We hurt, we bleed, we pain, we lie, we die…

But we live completely, every moment of our lives

Live the good and bad as same

Give all of ourselves to the world…

To nature… to art…

For there is no other way to live we know

We seek answers all the time

We question all the time



We are probably the only ones who know how deep pain carves its being into us

And how full happiness makes us feel…

We are comfortable with extremes

We are comfortable with tears, with abandonment, with aloneness…



We, the unknown ones

We, the misfits

We, the seekers, the thinkers, the rebels…"


Attributed to the anonymous rebels and by an anonymous rebel

other side of morning

Rustle of leaves,
Wind tiptoeing through,
What’s that noise?
I was sleeping
Silver drapes flowing, O It’s raining,
I am getting drenched,
Who let loose the Tap?
I am sleeping
If the rain does not stop,
Dam is going to break,
House will be flooded,
Some people on the road,
Carry everything they own on their head,
Stop this coming and going,
I am sleeping
Where are you going? I am already up.
“Other side of morning,
Wake up and stop dreaming.”
Impossible concentration!
Squirrels, Puppies running around,
Heavens! it’s 10’o’clock
Watch, clothes, shoes and shower,
The sound of wheat grains in fist,
Gold on Earth, Smell of first drop on parched land,
Cut a piece of earth, toppings of green shoots,
Want to eat with break fast, It’s healthy,
Where was I? "I guess sleeping."

Crisis of Civilisation

Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.
Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.
Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush up this embarrassing fact as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million-plus dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!
So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.
This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.
I think we all sense that we are nearing the end of an era. On the most superficial level, it is the era of unregulated casino-style financial manipulation that is ending. But the current efforts of the political elites to fix the crisis at this level will only reveal its deeper dimensions. In fact, the crisis goes "all the way to the bottom." It arises from the very nature of money and property in the world today, and it will persist and continue to intensify until money itself is transformed. A process centuries in the making is in its final stages of unfoldment.
Money as we know it today has crisis and collapse built into its basic design. That is because money seeks interest, bears interest, and indeed is born of interest. To see how this works, lets go back to some finance basics. Money is created when somebody takes out a loan from a bank (or more recently, a disguised loan from some other kind of institution). A debt is a promise to pay money in the future in order to buy something today; in other words, borrowing money is a form of delayed trading. I receive something now (bought with the money I borrowed) and agree to give something in the future (a good or service which I will sell for the money to pay back the debt). A bank or any other lender will ordinarily only agree to lend you money if there is a reasonable expectation you will pay it back; in other words, if there is a reasonable expectation you will produce goods or services of equivalent value. This "reasonable expectation" can be guaranteed in the form of collateral, or it can be encoded in one's credit rating.
Any time you use money, you are essentially guaranteeing "I have performed a service or provided a good of equivalent value to the one I am buying." If the money is borrowed money, you are saying that you will provide an equivalent good/service in the future.
Now enter interest. What motivates a bank to lend anyone money in the first place? It is interest. Interest drives the creation of money today. Any time money is created through debt, a need to create even more money in the future is also created. The amount of money must grow over time, which means that the volume of goods and services must grow over time as well.
If the volume of money grows faster than the volume of goods and services, the result is inflation. If it grows more slowly -- for example through a slowdown in lending -- the result is bankruptcies, recession, or deflation. The government can increase or decrease the supply of money in several ways. First, it can create money by borrowing it from the central bank, or in America, from the Federal Reserve. This money ends up as bank deposits, which in turn give banks more margin reserves on which to extend loans. You see, a bank's capacity to create money is limited by margin reserve requirements. Typically, a bank must hold cash (or central bank deposits) equal to about 10% of its total customer deposits. The other 90%, it can loan out, thus creating new money. This money ends up back in a bank as deposits, allowing another 81% of it (90% of 90%) to be lent out again. In this way, each dollar of initial deposits ends up as $9 of new money. Government spending of money borrowed from the central bank acts a seed for new money creation. (Of course, this depends on banks' willingness to lend! In a credit freeze, banks hoard excess reserves and the repeated injections of government money have little effect.)
Another way to increase the money supply is to lower margin reserve requirements also called CRR. In practice this is rarely done, at least directly. However, in the last decade, various kinds of non-bank lending have skirted the margin reserve requirement, through the alphabet soup of financial instruments you've been hearing about in the news. The result is that each dollar of original equity has been leveraged not to nine times it original value, as in traditional banking, but to 70 times or even more. This has allowed returns on investment far beyond the 5% or so available from traditional banking, along with "compensation" packages beyond the dreams of avarice.
Each new dollar that is created comes with a new dollar of debt -- more than a dollar of debt, because of interest. The debt is eventually redeemed either with goods and services, or with more borrowed money, which in turn can be redeemed with yet more borrowed money... but eventually it will be used to buy goods and services. The interest has to come from somewhere. Borrowing more money to make the interest payments on an existing loan merely postpones the day of reckoning by deferring the need to create new goods and services.
The whole system of interest-bearing money works fine as long as the volume of goods and services exchanged for money keeps growing. The crisis we are seeing today is in part because new money has been created much faster than goods and services have, and much faster than has been historically sustainable. There are only two ways out of such a situation: inflation and defaults. Each involve the destruction of money. The current convulsions of the financial and political elites basically come down to a futile attempt to prevent both. Their first concern is to prevent the evaporation of money through massive bankruptcies, because it is, after all, their money.
There is a much deeper crisis at work as well, a crisis in the creation of goods and services that underlies money to begin with, and it is this crisis that gave birth to the real estate bubble everyone blames for the current situation. To understand it, let's get clear on what constitutes a "good" or a "service". In economics, these terms refer to something that is exchanged for money. If I babysit your children for free, economists don't count it as a service. It cannot be used to pay a financial debt: I cannot go to the supermarket and say, "I watched my neighbors kids this morning, so please give me food." But if I open a day care center and charge you money, I have created a "service". GDP rises and, according to economists, society has become wealthier.
The same is true if I cut down a forest and sell the timber. While it is still standing and inaccessible, it is not a good. It only becomes "good" when I build a logging road, hire labor, cut it down, and transport it to a buyer. I convert a forest to timber, a commodity, and GDP goes up. Similarly, if I create a new song and share it for free, GDP does not go up and society is not considered wealthier, but if I copyright it and sell it, it becomes a good. Or I can find a traditional society that uses herbs and shamanic techniques for healing, destroy their culture and make them dependent on pharmaceutical medicine which they must purchase, evict them from their land so they cannot be subsistence farmers and must buy food, clear the land and hire them on a banana plantation -- and I have made the world richer. I have brought various functions, relationships, and natural resources into the realm of money. Let me describe this process in depth: the conversion of social capital, natural capital, cultural capital, and spiritual capital into money.
Essentially, for the economy to continue growing and for the (interest-based) money system to remain viable, more and more of nature and human relationship must be monetized. For example, thirty years ago most meals were prepared at home; today some two-thirds are prepared outside, in restaurants or supermarket delis. A once unpaid function, cooking, has become a "service". And we are the richer for it. Right?
Another major engine of economic growth over the last three decades, child care, has also made us richer. We are now relieved of the burden of caring for our own children. We pay experts instead, who can do it much more efficiently.
In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 50 years ago in India, every small town had its own ‘Swaang group’ along with some musical group & folk singers . Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray.
The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact there there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. Today we sell away the last vestiges of our divine bequeathment: our health, the biosphere and genome, even our own minds. This is the process that is culminating in our age. It is almost complete, especially in America and the "developed" world. In the developing world there still remain people who live substantially in gift cultures, where natural and social wealth is not yet the subject of property. Globalization is the process of stripping away these assets, to feed the money machine's insatiable, existential need to grow. Yet this stripmining of other lands is running up against its limits too, both because there is almost nothing left to take, and because of growing pockets of effective resistance.
The result is that the supply of money -- and the corresponding volume of debt -- has for several decades outstripped the production of goods and services that it promises. It is deeply related to the classic problem of oversupply in capitalist economics. The Marxian crisis of capital can be deferred into the future as long as new, high-profit industries and markets can be developed to compensate for the vicious circle of falling profits, falling wages, depressed consumption, and overproduction in mature industries. The continuation of capitalism as we know it depends on an infinite supply of these new industries, which essentially must convert infinite new realms of social, natural, cultural, and spiritual capital into money. The problem is, these resources are finite, and the closer they come to exhaustion, the more painful their extraction becomes. Therefore, contemporaneous with the financial crisis we have an ecological crisis and a health crisis. They are intimately interlinked. We cannot convert much more of the earth into money, or much more of our health into money, before the basis of life itself is threatened.
Faced with the exhaustion of the non-monetized commonwealth that it consumes, financial capital has tried to delay the inevitable by cannibalizing itself. The dot-com bubble of the late 90s showed that the productive economy could not longer keep up with the growth of money. Lots of excess money was running around frantically, searching for a place where the promise of deferred goods and services could be redeemed. So, to postpone the inevitable crash, the Fed slashed interest rates and loosened monetary policy to allow old debts to be repaid with new debts (rather than real goods and services). The new financial goods and services that arose were phony, artifacts of deceptive accounting on a vast, systemic scale.
Various pundits have observed that the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme (America)was not so different from the financial industry's pyramid of mortgaged-based derivatives and other instruments, which themselves formed a bubble that, like Madoff's, could only sustain itself through an unceasing, indeed exponentially-growing, influx of new money. As such, it is a symbol of our times -- and even more than people suppose. It is not only the Wall Street & BSE casino economy that is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. The larger economic system, based as it is on the eternal conversion of a finite commonwealth into money, is unsustainable as well. It is like a bonfire that must burn higher and higher, to the exhaustion of all available fuel. Just as fire breaks existing chemical bonds and frees heat, so does our economy break the bonds of community, nature, and culture, liberating free energy -- called money -- in the process. Only a fool would think that a fire can burn ever-higher when the supply of fuel is finite. To extend the metaphor, the recent deindustrialization and financialization of the economy amounts to using the heat to create more fuel. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the amount created is always less than the amount expended to create it. Obviously, the practice of borrowing new money to pay the principal and interest of old debts cannot last very long, but that is what the economy as a whole has done for ten years now.
Yet even abandoning this folly, we still must face the depletion of fuel (remember, I mean not literal energy sources, but any bond of nature or culture that can be turned into a commodity). Most of the proposals for addressing the present economic crisis amount to finding more fuel. Whether it is drilling more oil wells, paving over more green space, or spurring consumer spending, the goal is to reignite economic growth; that is to expand the realm of goods and services. It means finding new things for which we can pay. Today, unimaginably to our forebears, we pay even for our water and our songs. What else is left to convert into money?
A collapse is coming, unavoidably; indeed, we are in the midst of it. The first government response, the bailout, was an attempt to uphold a tower of money that is far beyond the total value of real goods and services it promises to redeem. Predictably, the bailout was a miserable failure. The next response, Obama's massive stimulus package, will fail for a different and much deeper reason. It will fail because we are "maxed out": maxed out on nature's capacity to receive our wastes without destroying the ecological basis of civilization; maxed out on society's ability to withstand any more loss of community and connection; maxed out on our forests' ability to withstand more clearcuts; maxed out on the human body's capacity to stay viable in a depleted, toxic world. That we are also maxed out on our credit only reflects that we have nothing left to convert into money. Do we really need more roads and bridges? Can we sustain more of them, and more of the industrial economy that goes along? Government stimulus programs will at best prolong the current economic system for two or three years, with perhaps a brief period of growth as we complete the pillage of nature, spirit, body, and culture. When these vestiges of the commonwealth are gone, then nothing will be able to stop a massive inflationary surge and currency collapse on a global scale.
The present crisis is actually the final stage of what began in the 1930s. Successive solutions to the fundamental problem of keeping pace with money that expands with the rate of interest have been applied, and exhausted. The first effective solution was war, a state which has been permanent since 1940. Unfortunatly, or rather fortunately, nuclear weapons and a shift in human consciousness have limited the solution of endless military escalation. Other solutions -- globalization, technology-enabled development of new goods and services to replace human functions never before commoditized, and technology-enabled plunder of natural resources once off limits, and finally financial auto-cannibalism -- have similarly run their course. Unless there are realms of wealth I have not considered, and new depths of poverty, misery, and alienation to which we might plunge, the inevitable cannot be delayed much longer.
In the face of the impending crisis, people often ask what they can do to protect themselves. "Buy gold? Stockpile canned goods? Build a fortified compound in a remote area? What should I do?" I would like to suggest a different kind of question: "What is the most beautiful thing I can do?" You see, the gathering crisis presents a tremendous opportunity. Deflation, the destruction of money, is only a categorical evil if the creation of money is a categorical good. However, you can see from the examples I have given that the creation of money has in many ways impoverished us all. Conversely, the destruction of money has the potential to enrich us. It offers the opportunity to reclaim parts of the lost commonwealth from the realm of money and property.
We actually see this happening every time there is an economic recession. People can no longer pay for various goods and services, and so have to rely on friends and neighbors instead. Where there is no money to facilitate transactions, gift economies reemerge and new kinds of money are created. Ordinarily, though, people and institutions fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening. The habitual first response to economic crisis is to make and keep more money -- to accelerate the conversion of anything you can into money. On a systemic level, the debt surge is generating enormous pressure to extend the commodification of the commonwealth. We can see this happening with the leasing out of mines in tribal areas, auctioning off Oil blocks and so on. The time is here, though, for the reverse process to begin in earnest -- to remove things from the realm of goods and services, and return them to the realm of gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing. Note well: this is going to happen anyway in the wake of a currency collapse, as people lose their jobs or become too poor to buy things. People will help each other and real communities will reemerge.
In the meantime, anything we do to protect some natural or social resource from conversion into money will both hasten the collapse and mitigate its severity. Any forest you save from development, any road you stop, any cooperative playgroup you establish; anyone you teach to heal themselves, or to build their own house, cook their own food, make their own clothes; any wealth you create or add to the public domain; anything you render off-limits to the world-devouring Machine, will help shorten the Machine's lifespan. Think of it this way: if you already do not depend on money for some portion of life's necessities and pleasures, then the collapse of money will pose much less of a harsh transition for you. The same applies to the social level. Any network or community or social institution that is not a vehicle for the conversion of life into money will sustain and enrich life after money.
Violence is in the nature of capitalism. It can not be wished away and the reason is not greed as many would suggest. The reason is fear of scarcity. To overcome your fears you hoard and the only way to hoard goods & services is through money.
Many people talk about violence in terms of violence against humans. I am talking about a larger issue. The issue is violence against every thing living as well as dead. In the quest of monetising we are plundering everything including thought.
Does Capitalism need monitoring? Yes id does. Even the high priest who is quoted every John Maynard Keynes also inserted ‘G’..


Y= C+I+G

G stood for government investment in infrastructure development to kickstart the economy. Does the though ever cross your mind that what he may ambiguously have also meant was ‘Government intervention’ to keep a check on profiteering


* Part of this note is picked from an essay i read on Net by some gentle men named Charlie or Charles..

Why VHP Bajrang dal must be defeated?

Everytime I write something on Islam, Christianity, 'Intellectuals' continue to try their best to put me in dock by suggesting that I am a Closet 'Hindutva vaadi'. I guess it's time for me to explain what Indic/Dharmic means to me and why it is important to oppose the Islamists, Missionaries & idiots like Shiv sena/Ram Sene or VHP.
I truly feel happy that modern day India and Indic paths are coming out of Islamic shadow (Some of you will say, "Again islamic") in very strong manner. One should understand those who stand for Hindutva in Modern Republic of India are themselves totally under Islamic influence, in terms of way of thinking. The basis of Indic Dharma is liberation, freedom of thought. The Ram-sene,Shiv Sena type of guys somehow are still struggling to come out of Islamic conditioning of right and wrong. The issue of women and sexuality, issue about goodness/badness of alcohol, issue about goodness/badness and importance of cow, issue about hussein's paintings, issue about modern western culture destroying Indic values which are typically taken up by Hindutva-vaadis, are not at all relevant relevant as they have no replacement to suggest.

But what are the values which are being destroyed under the juggernaut of globalization? More people drink alcohol, this is considered loss of Indic value system. But taboo of alcohol is primarily Islamic influence. Women are getting more flamboyant about their display of sexuality which is seen as loss of Indic value system. But, confinement of women and their desires and issues is primarily Islamic influence. More people becoming sceptics, questioning the authority of Sadhus and babas and gods, but free-rationalism is basic foundation stone of Indic path. Out of 6 classical Darshans of Indian philosophy, 5 are staunch atheist.


So, in a way, Indian youth is overthrowing the mantle of value-system which is infact arisen due to Islamic supremacy and returning back to free and liberal Indic fold of life; because that is the "Dharma" of Bhaarat. However they are doing it in contemporary manner. This in itself is one way towards that goal. I will reiterate what I have on many occassions. Indic memes cannot defeat Abrahamic memes by becoming to fundamentalist than them, since Islam is as specialized as you can get in monotheistic fundamentalism. India's strength is in diversity. I have infact written a note on Islam & bharat earlier talking about these very points. we must emancipate the women folk. Let her read, write, walk around and liberated. For she holds the key to civilsation. Till the early 1900's Nair women could have as many men as they wanted as their husbands, Wore minimalist clothes and managed the business.

Unleash the diversity of Indian meme-complex on abrahmic memes and they won't withstand the assault. Christ will end up as some avatar of Vishnu. Mohammad will end up as sai-baba or something similar. Allah will end up as 1001st name of Vishnu. However they try to maintain the separate identity, let us embrace them. They will dissolve. Actually Ismaelis have tried to do this. They portrayed Ali as an incarnation of Vishnu and Quran as Atharveda. Last time I had put a link but the resident preacher, 'The original' commented that I do a fine cut and paste job of putting links.

Such morons are dangerous as they have their own book to carry on their head. What I say is that we should drop all 'Knowledge'. See the world through our own eyes, beautiful, Fun and have no pretense in making money.

For all this to happen, we need the death of VHP & Ram sene types. The land of Dharma must assimilate all and let the free flow of ideas and opinions continue. We don't need religion, We need ideas..

What will save India

Quiet Progress
For the last 20 years, World Gold Council has shown Indian gold consumption rising from 400 tons (1987) tons to 800 tons (2007). Estimated Indian gold reserves at 25,000-30,000 are double of the next largest country – the USA with 14,000 tons. India has 20% of the world population and also 20% of the world’s above-the-ground gold.

Which is quite unlike China!

India and the World
For much of the last 2000 years of recorded history, India has been the largest buyer of gold. Roman historian, Pliny, lamented some 1800 years ago, how India, the sink of precious metals, was draining Rome of gold – an appellation that resonates even today.

In the Indian North West (modern Afghanistan), Greco-Bactrian coins were made (seemingly) from the “Roman gold coins, which poured into India.” To “manage” this drain of gold, Romans started cheating the Indians. They reduced the gold content in coins. Septimus Severus, (193 AD-211) further debased the currency. Indians just stopped accepting the debased coin – and demanded payment in pure gold.

In mid 17th century, a Superior of the Capuchin Mission at Isfahan, friar Raphael du Mans wrote an authoritative (in 1660) Estat de la Perse, which was used by the French Minister Jean Baptiste Colbert, to form the French East India company (1664) – and in modern times, as a source book for tobacco habits in medieval Iran. This Christian missionary in Iran, Raphael du Mans thought that India is “where all the money in the Universe is unloaded as if into an abyss.” Central Asian invaders, for gold, aimed at the सोने कि चिडिया (loosely the ‘golden goose’). Their partially successful raids, were deemed as invasions by colonial historians.

The Byzantine Empire, successor to the Assyrian-Achmaenid-Macedonian-Roman lineage, similarly found that their reserves of precious metals were ‘again, leaked away to India.’ A significant part of Indian royal treasuries, when these hoards “fell a prey to European invaders, it was found that the gold coins of the Byzantine emperors formed no small part of their treasures”

In 1748, Baron de Montesquieu, warned Europeans that …

Every nation, that ever traded to the Indies, has constantly carried bullion, and brought merchandises in return. … commerce of the Romans to the Indies was very considerable … this commerce was carried on entirely with bullion … They want, therefore, nothing but our bullion, to serve as the medium of value, and for this they give us merchandises in return … that bullion was always carried to the Indies, and never any brought from thence. (ellipsis mine).


Restrictions on export of gold from Iran to India to India were put by the Safavid Iran. – and the Ottomans in turn put restrictions of export gold to Iran. No help at all.

Even modern writers resent the fact that despite the “absence of indigenous sources of gold and silver” the “very favourable export-import balance” resulted in “inherent strenghth of the Indian economy”. Further, it has been correctly observed that in “our period the subcontinent drew vast amounts of gold and silver, exceeding previous periods and exceeding all other parts of the contemporary world so far.”

A French visitor to India Francois Bernier enviously wrote how

It should not escape notice that gold and silver, after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, come at length to be absorbed in Hindostan. (from Travels in the Mogul Empire By François Bernier, Irving Brock)

Another current day writer describes how

“in exchange for textiles, spices and other Indian agricultural and industrial products, merchants from across Europe and Asia flooded India’s bazaar’s with dinars, tangas, ducats, guilders, reals, francs, rixdollars (reichthalers) and countless other varieties of coins, all of which were minted into rupees. (from The Indian diaspora in Central Asia and its trade, 1550-1900 By Scott Cameron Levi)

Moving away from Central Asia, the general European economy, was simple -

Europe had a net balance in the difference between the arrivals of precious metals (mostly from the New World after the sixteenth century) and export of the same (mostly to the Far East for the purchase of luxury commodities).(from Economic systems and state finance By Richard Bonney, European Science Foundation)

It was not surprising therefore to find that Ian Fleming, pitted Western fiction’s best secret agent, James Bond against Auric Goldfinger – who was smuggling gold out of a declining, post-war Britain to India.

And Indian exports were not only textiles, spices and indigo. Students came from all over the world – and paid large sums of money to Indian teachers for education!

The Pre-WW2 Currency Crisis
During various collapses of temporary gold standards in history, Indian gold reserves (usually unwillingly) stabilised world economies. In recent history, Indian gold reserves went out to stabilise the American currency during the Great Depression and the German currency during the post-Wiemar drift. Indian silver reserves broke the Hunt Brothers’ back and their silver gambit in the 1980’s.

After (colonial) India’s accession to the world gold standard in 1898, India, especially during WW1, rapidly built up a export surplus. British reserves of gold started drying up – in spite of gold export restrictions to India by the USA, Britain and much of the Western world. There was hysteria in popular press and politicians on the subject of India and its appetite for gold.

Crash in silver prices
Between 1800-1900, new mines and increased silver production saw a crash in silver prices. Abundant silver discoveries and mining had flooded the world with silver, depressing prices. Germany moved to the gold standard in 1873, further releasing silver in the world markets. The Opium trade further released vast amounts of silver from China – which was opened to ‘free trade’, giving rise to some of the biggest Western fortunes (of the Roosevelts, for instance).

US silver coinage was being depreciated due to increasing supplies of silver.

On the other side, Britain had a large debt due to WW1 – principally to the US of A and India. Groaning under the weight of WW1 debt, Britain took the easy way out to assuage the impatient creditor – US of A. Britain and America stuck a deal at the cost of the Indian subjects of the British Raj. They paid the US in gold – sourced from South Africa, Ghana, Australia and Canada – and instead bought silver from the US at inflated prices, to settle Indian debts.

Britain decided to settle Indian debts with silver. Large US silver reserves were released when the US passed the Pittman Act which mandated silver sales at more than a dollar per ounce – double the 50c per ounce prevailing price of silver. The resulting payment crisis was averted, and it was decided to pay India in silver released by the Pittman Act. Silver prices which were ruling at o.50p an ounce in the London market, was sold to the Indian colonial Government for more than US$1.0 under the Pittman Act.

Gold prices were deflated. Interest rates in India were increased. Restrictions on gold (and even silver) imports on were placed and gold demand in India was ‘normalized’. Subsequently, even payments in silver became difficult. India then started getting paid by Bank Of England credit notes.

So, finally, it was the Indian native who financed the WW1, who paid the price!

But of course, the Indian native was ungrateful to the US of A who, “by passing the Pittman Act, Congress gave India an opportunity to obtain silver” (from Our silver saved India from crisis - New York Times, Published, August 23, 1918).

Modern restrictions on gold exports to India
Between WW1 end and the start of the WW2, it was evident that sooner rather than later, India would not remain a colony for long. Between 1920-40, in a series of measures, policy decisions were taken, which made Indian interests subsidiary and inferior to Western interests. Central bankers from the USA, Britain, France and Germany had many meetings “coordinate monetary policy.” The agenda – gold flow management between themselves and an obvious understanding - don’t let the browns get the gold.

Indians were paid, with inflated and abundant silver stock, instead of gold. This silver was the same silver released by the Pittman Act. The silver buffer solution to the gold drain to India was seen as the “only buffer to protect Western gold reserves against the Indian drain (was) a silver buffer.” Of course, later the British Raj decided to settle Indian debts with promissory notes – and not even silver. It was this Indian ‘sacrifice’ which enabled the recovery of the West.

They (Hjalmar Schacht, Governor, Reichsbank, Charles Rist, Deputy Governor, Banque de France, Benjamin Strong, USA Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman, Bank Of England) agreed that Indian demand for gold had a “…deflationary effect on global liquidity,” therefore Indian demand for gold had to be regulated.”

in the spring of 1926, when Norman induced Strong to support him in fiercely opposing a plan of Sir Basil Blackett’s to establish a full gold-coin standard in India. Strong went to the length of traveling to England to testify against the measure, and was backed up by Andrew Mellon and aided by economists Professor Oliver M.W. Sprague of Harvard, Jacob Hollander of Johns Hopkins, and W. Randolph Burgess and Robert Warren of the New York Reserve Bank. The American experts warned that the ensuing gold drain to India would cause deflation in other countries (i.e., reveal their existing over-inflation) (from America’s Great Depression By Murray N. Rothbard, Chapter 5, The Development of the Inflation; Ludwig von Mises Institute)

The Anglo Saxon bloc clearly realized that “it was most important for the Allies to agree on a policy that would prevent the Huns from capturing the very valuable raw materials which can be obtained in India, and sometimes in India alone” (from Our silver saved India from crisis – New York Times, Published, August 23, 1918). Further, The New York Times stated “how without Indian products there would be greater difficulty in winning the war” (from SELLING OUR SILVER TO INDIA from The New York Times, Published – August 25, 1918).

So, as the West traded, profited and consumed Indian production and goods, when it came to paying for the goods, they cavilled – and ‘regulated’ Indian demand for gold – and even silver!!

How millions of Indians died
Like much of Western history, the British Colonial administration (Lord Willingdon, Montagu Norman, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer) executed a scorched earth policy in India. (After all what is brown life worth?)

They implemented a series of economic and administrative measures, (significantly, under Churchill’s baleful influence) that killed millions in the Bengal Famine would impoverish India – and sustain the empire. The result – Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed 40 lakh Indians. The Bengal Famine of 1943, of course had may other layers to it – but nett, nett, as Gideon Polya has pointed out, Australian sheep have lower mortality rates.

The Bengal-Burma link of the ages was broken. After being demonized, the Chettiar money lenders were thrown out of Burma, the role of Chettiars (for e.g. in Singapore) was wiped clean. From being a granary of Asia, Burma started declining – and there was no rice for exports. Result – The Bengal Famine of 1943. Tally – 40-50 lakh deaths.


After the fall of Singapore, and the rapid Japanese advance, with Subhash Chandra Bose in the vicinity, a revolt by Bengal would have had catastrophic effect on the colonial administration. Howard Fast, in his novel ‘The Pledge’ believes that the Bengal Famine was deliberate creation – possibly to weaken the local population and deter support for Subhash Chandra Bose.

Crisis in Britain
Britain in the meantime, returned to the gold standard under Montagu Norman and Winston Churchill (then the Chancellor of the Exchequer) – with the famous prediction by Keynes that this action would result in a world wide recession – of which much came to pass. Churchill confessed “I’m lost and reduced to groping” but went along with Montagu Norman, united by their racism.

On October 27th, 1931, the Ramsey Macdonald led “National” Government (Conservatives and Liberals coalition, fearful of the rising Labour Party) in Britain won a huge majority of 554 MPs of 615. The economic crisis of September (misnamed as the Indian Currency Crisis), ensuing Depression era problems in the US, the Weimar Republic problems – and other issues pushed this ‘National’ government to ram through a series of measures (page 130-131) that depressed silver and gold prices and raised interest rates in India.

Done over the protests by Gandhiji, trade bodies and merchants and threats of resignation by the Viceroy and his Executive Council, the resulting ‘money famine’ (page 155) had the Lord Willingdon ecstatically say ‘Indians are disgorging gold.’ Indians have a different reason to revile Neville Chamberlain, who with great satisfaction said “…The astonishing gold mine that we have discovered in India’s hordes has put us in clover …” after impoverishment of the Indian serf.


More currency and less gold
The Nixon Chop
On August 15th, 1971, President Nixon after a two day huddle with 15 advisers at Camp David, delivered the Nixon Chop to the world.

The Nixon chop (my name for this event), one month after his China breakthrough, cut the convertibility peg of US$35 to gold as US gold reserves were severely depleted. The French had been regularly redeeming gold for their dollar earnings – and for this ‘perfidy’ the US had not forgiven France. This was much like the pre-WW2 French methodology of devaluation, new peg, old debt for new gold routine which got the US hackles up. Many decades have passed since these redemptions by France, and the new French President, Sarkozy believes it is now possible to renew US-French relations again.

On the opposite side of the world, a beleaguered Indian Prime Minister was celebrating 24 years of Independence with a “ship-to-mouth“ economy, dependent on PL-480 grain. Private gold reserves in the Indian economy after nearly 25 years of post-colonial rule, were steadily rising. Over the next 10 years, the Western world (and most of the rest) blamed OPEC for post-1971 inflation, gold scaled US$800 an ounce; the Hunt Brothers launched their bid to corner the silver market; stagflation made an entry and Soviet power grew. Nixon Chop, itself the result of many years of gold reserves erosion, was one in many steps that brought the US$ to its knees – only to be saved by the Oil dollar tango.

The Greatest Crime Wave … Ever?
From the 1960-1990, the Big Issue for people across large parts of the world was Big Crime. The 1960-1990 peak in organized crime, globally, is interesting due to the synchronized time frames – across USA, Europe and India.

In India, the rise of the underworld was delayed by a decade – as was its decline. India’s underworld, centred in Mumbai, at its peak, intruded into trade unions, films and entertainment, gambling, real estate, extortion and smuggling. The specter of Dawood Ibrahim haunts India-Pakistan Governmental relations – even today.

Roosevelt had earlier in 1933, during his New Deal years, nationalized all American gold. This restriction was finally eased only on December 31st, 1974, with Executive Order 11825 by Gerald Ford. It was Roosevelt’s gold nationalization which allowed the US to wage WW2 and create the Bretton Woods system.

From 1939, (the start of WW2), gold imports into India, the world’s largest market and also the largest private reserve of gold, were controlled or banned. Not only the largest, but Indian reserves of gold, are also the only significant reserve in the world without a history of war, genocide, slavery or loot, (unlike US, UK, Canada, Australia) or to due nature’s bounty (unlike South Africa, China, Peru, Ghana, etc.).

The first effect of restrictions on gold imports in India was on prices. Indian gold prices, on an average, were 30%-40% higher than international prices. The other thing that happened was that gold imports went underground. Gold imports (illegal), called smuggling, spawned the biggest criminals that India has seen.

The common threads in this were, of course, America, drugs, underworld, war, corruption, warlords – but what made all this possible was Indian appetite for gold.

All this was made possible by the Indian hawala system of money exchange. Hawala made money transfers safe, instantaneous, at a low cost. Traditional Indian ships from a thousand ports in Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat sailed with this contraband and brought back gold.


Golden Triange & Golden Crescent
The countries comprising these Golden Triangle /Crescent are India’s neighbours. The Indian underworld transported drugs through India. These drug shipments originated, were acquired, grown and traded from the Golden Crescent and the Golden Triangle.

The US eliminated gold ownership restrictions in 1975. India followed. In 1992, India started its first hesitant steps towards legalizing gold imports. By 1995, these import control laws had been diluted to near non-existence. With the dilution of restrictions on gold imports came the abatement in the biggest crime wave in modern history.

Today, the abatement in organized crime is ascribed to vigourous efforts by the police and legal systems. The earlier lack of success is conveniently forgotten. Many ‘encounter’ specialists claimed credit for the reduction in the power of the India’s underworld. Much like the fading away of the mafia in the US and Italy, in India too, after the gold trade was legalized, the mafia’s source of power, liquidity, earnings, profit were taken away. With it came the underworld’s loss of power and influence. And that coincided with the reduction and control of organized crime from the US and Europe and India. And an end to the greatest crime wave in the modern history.

So, why this desperate poverty
With global monetary system in a flux and the decline of the dollar (especially after the Plaza Accord), the perceived utility of gold and the price outlook of gold has been positive. After the Nixon chop, at an estimated 15,000-18,000 tons, India was in a position to create instruments, obtain leverage and create wealth from the world’s largest gold reserves.

It is the failure of the Indian economic minds – that they have not found any instruments and means. Some 35 years after the Nixon Chop, and with Indian gold reserves approaching 30,000 tons mark. Some other countries tried feebly, and failed. Japan and Asean tried setting up the Asian Monetary Fund – after 1997, currency crisis – and were arm twisted by the US to drop the idea.

Is the US likely to give up the central role?
Unlikely! Let me correct myself! Pretty damn unlikely!!

Will the Western world share its pre-eminence with Japan, China and India. Bet your bottom yuan, yen, rupee or gold – they wont. Especially since the Anglo Saxon Bloc control nearly 80% of world gold production.

What are they likely to do! Some of the older measures by which gold was transferred from the old (and the new) world to Western world are no longer possible.

But if any central bank (or monetary authority) were to: -

Mask purchases
Build up gold positions
Take physical possession of gold (Avoid Czech Gold, Montagu Norman & BIS Scam)
Look at a positive outcome to a war scenario
then that country will be able to bolster their gold reserves position by: -

About 10,000-15,000 tons
Limit the cost of purchase
Make it economically unviable for anyone else to match them
The only country that can (currently) match these criteria is the USA – and China.

The US GATA Committee has been running a low profile campaign on gold price manipulation. This attempt, if successful, at increasing gold prices will possibly make it difficult for Indians to buy gold in larger quantities. The Indian Central Bank, preoccupied with a developmental agenda, is in no position to take up this challenge.

From an Indian standpoint
While the silver lining is private reserves, we have a blinkered RBI & GOI response. India has one of the lowest monetary reserves of gold in the world. Against a global average of 10.5% RBI holds only 3.4% of its reserves as gold. The EU holds 40% of its reserves in gold and USA – 70%.

And while the RBI & GOI gently sleep, the Chinese have grown their gold purchases. China has become world’s 3rd largest consumer of gold – up from a 100 tons to 350 tons. Shanghai Gold Exchange has made it easier for individuals to invest in gold by reducing the transaction size from 1 kg to 100 gm.

Importantly: -

Is India in a position to militarily defend these reserves
Does the GOI and the RBI have any strategic intent vis-a-vis gold
Making the job easier for the GOI and the RBI are Indian economic habits of the centuries that have allowed this build up of gold reserves. India stands at a historical cross road. Are Indian economic and political minds at work to exploit this window of opportunity. Or will it be a wasted chance.

Gold and War
Alexander’s campaign started with the gold reserves that his father had built from the mining operations at Mount Pangeus. The Macedonians were the first in the Hellenistic world to keep standing army – a luxury and a big expense, in Greece, at that time. The Roman empire was similarly funded by gold mining and loot. Julius Caesar’s European conquests were funded by Gaellic loot. The Punic Wars with Carthage were fought over Spanish Gold. Roman conquest and love affair with Egypt was motivated by grain and Nubian gold.

Carolus Magnus, Karel de Grote, Karl der Grosse, Carlomagno, Charles the Great – or more commonly known as Charlemagne (ruled between 768-814) waged war for 30 years, spread over more than 50 battles. Charlemagne’s conquests were funded by the Saxony mines, the Haartz mountains, etc. His victory over Avars, (modern Hungary) gave him treasures which needed 15 carts, pulled by grey steppe oxen for transport.

The British loot from Canada, Australia, South Africa – and India, gave the world, numerous wars and brought humanity “under the heel by means that will not bear scrutiny.” It is these very same Gold reserves which gave birth to the Bretton Woods – and we know what happened after that! Roosevelt gave a New Deal to the Americans. He took away all their gold. WW2 followed soon thereafter.

This short look at Western history makes the linkage apparent. The main factor is the pattern of gold ownership by Governments and war becomes a fait accompli.


Gold Reserves - Global (2ndlook estimates)
What Should We Do With Gold
Just sell it to people. From all the countries of the world.

The world financial organization should limit control of global gold output by any mining organization to 10% or a single mine – which ever is lower. Gold holding should be widely dispersed, as widely as possible, amongst individuals – like the Indian gold possession model. No national government, in the new financial architecture should not be allowed to have more than 250 tons of gold – to progressively reduce to 50 tons.

What this will do is disperse gold holdings among the citizens of the world – and dilute the ability of nations to wage war! National Governments (like the US), have used gold looted from their own citizens (and others) to deprive other peoples of the world of gold – and wage war.

What we should not do?

Good Ole’ Gold Standard
In the last few decades between the Nixon Chop and the Bush Whack, the Western academic world, has floated another ‘hot air’ balloon. It is the revival of the ‘pure,’ Gold Standard. The story goes that in the ‘olden’ days of 19th century, in the golden age of Western civilization, there once reigned the Gold Standard.

The simplistic logic of this theory is that the world should ‘go back’ to the Gold Standard - or as some put it, improve the ‘corrupted Gold Standard’ of the 19th century, and then everything will be fine. All currencies of the World, should be indexed to Gold – and then everything should be fine. Currency can be redeemed against gold – and gold reserves equivalent to currency should be kept as reserves. This will kill inflation, stop war, make politicians honest, make tax payers honest, citizens hard working and business efficient.

In short a magic bullet.

The last time, we saw this, it was called the Bretton Woods. The US and the Anglo Saxon Bloc came together and said we will administer the new world currency system. The world agreed – once again. And we know what happened.

Two years ago …
This post had estimated that the Chinese could possibly (and they have) increase their monetary gold reserves. On April 24th, 2009, Bloomberg reported that China had increased

its (gold) reserves by 454 tons to 1,054 tons through domestic purchases and refining scrap metal, Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said in an interview with the Xinhua News Agency today. China, the world’s biggest gold producer, has increased its holdings before, Hu said in the interview carried on the administration Web Site. They rose from 394 tons to 500 tons in 2001 and to 600 tons in 2003. The U.S. has the world’s biggest gold holdings at 8,134 tons, followed by Germany with 3,413 tons, World Gold Council data show. France has 2,487 tons and Italy 2,452 tons, while the IMF has 3,217 tons, according to the council.

Another report, from Market Watch, a WSJ web publication added,

The increase makes China the world’s fifth-largest holder of gold, just ahead of Switzerland, and among the six nations plus the International Monetary Fund that have reserves of more than 1,000 metric tons. Although Hu did not elaborate on where China had sourced the additional bullion, her comments were interpreted as meaning they came from domestic sources and may included refining of scrap metal. Traders also say the gold was accumulated systematically over a number of years. Last year China ranked as the world’s largest gold producer with 12.2% of world output, equivalent to 288 metric tons. The U.S. ranked second with a 9.9% share, or 234 metric tons.

What are the future plans of the Chinese? A report quotes an analyst

China should increase its gold reserve from 600 tons to about 2,500 tons in a short term and to 3,000 tons in a long term to cope with the versatile exchange rate risks, said Teng Tai, an economist of China Galaxy Securities Company.

Of course, this really does not mean much – except that it may keep gold prices on boil. Whether a currency is backed by a 5% or a 10% gold reserve may not mean much, in this era of rampant use of (not just by the US of A) “a technology, called a printing press” as an economic tool. For long term economic stability, gold needs to be in the hands of individuals – and not Governments.