Dr M Khalid's global village blog

Can we trust Governement Bank Lockers ? 1. In this case of Punjab National Bank , Rs 100 crore worth of contents were robbed using a highly skilled process to dig tunnel. The bank  did not follow norms for constructing Lockers. The bottomline is police have registered two criminal cases: A case of burglary registered on a complaint from bank officials; another case registered against the bank officials by the owners of the lockers who alleged that the bank didn’t construct the locker room “as per norms of the currency chest”; did not install a “steel plate into the floor”; and that the “almirahs in the bank were also 60-70 years old”. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/the-great-bank-robbery-clues-a-razor-blade-soil-and-thin-air/#sthash.FtUpy6lM.dpuf Ref: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/the-great-bank-robbery-clues-a-razor-blade-soil-and-thin-air/ 2. Robbers recently broke into the strong room of a Punjab and...

France and Italy renewed their commitment to reform their economies on Friday in the hope of winning more time to bring their public finances in order but the ECB's president warned more needed to be done to avoid "a relapse into recession". After the bloc's revival came to a halt in the second quarter, France and Italy want to shift course away from the spending cuts that marked the bloc's response to the 2009-2012 crisis. Germany says debt discipline must continue. Seated around a large oval table in the EU summit's red marble building, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told euro zone leaders over lunch that more needed to be done. "We avoided the collapse of the euro with a joint effort. Now our focus should be to act jointly again to avoid a relapse into a recession," Draghi said, according to his spokesman, who quoted from his speech. "Hope is not a strategy." He said a coherent strategy for economic growth had t...

So far, 2,353 Americans have renounced their citizenship this year, close to the all-time high of 2,369 in the first nine months of 2013. The number of Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship increased 39 percent in the three months through September after rules that make it harder to hide assets from tax authorities came into force. People giving up their nationality at U.S. embassies increased to 776 in the third quarter, from 560 in the year-earlier period, according to  Federal Register data published yesterday. Tougher asset-disclosure rules that started July 1 under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, prompted more of the estimated 6 million Americans living overseas to give up their passports. The appeal of U.S. citizenship for expatriates faded further as more than 100 Swiss banks began to turn over data on American clients to avoid prosecution for helping tax evaders. The U.S., the only Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nation that...

The European Union’s toughest-ever  stress test  was meant to leave banks with nowhere to hide. The results show how the bloc’s capital rules got in the way. A total of 24 lenders failed the European Banking Authority’s stress test with a capital shortfall of 24.6 billion euros ($31.2 billion). The EBA used EU rules as applicable over the three-year horizon of the test. These give national supervisors scope to allow banks to count instruments whose eligibility as core capital will be gradually eliminated over the next four years. Had the fully phased-in EU rules been applied, the number of failures would have increased to 34, according to a calculation by  Bloomberg News  based on EBA results published in  London today. That may be the more reliable gauge, since capital is a measure of a bank’s capacity to absorb losses, and the jury’s still out on how well instruments such as  goodwill  and some deferred tax assets, admitted in the definition of...

1. A false assumption (with big political support) that a system based on universal coverage is the same thing as a single payer system. It isn't. Germany is a great example of a healthcare system with universal coverage and multi-payer (many of which are private insurance companies). We tend to lump the two together (single-payer and universal health coverage) because it’s convenient to argue a simple comparison than a more complex, nuanced one. 2. A fear of "rationing" - which was set ablaze by Sarah Palin and her cavalier remarks about "death panels." The reality is that ALL healthcare (globally) is rationed - but systems from all the other industrialized countries start with “universal coverage”. Our system is largely based on who can afford to BUY health insurance - and if it's provided through employment (about 150 million Americans) you're chained to your employer for health benefits. It's artificial, but it's a great way to keep wages de...

Oct 23, 2014:  Ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned that the euro zone crisis was entering a "stubborn phase of subdued growth" in what it says is a new stage in the region's economic crisis. France has been dubbed the "sick man" of the euro zone over recent months. Gross domestic product (GDP) failed to expand during the second quarter of this year after stalling in the first, and is expected to have grown only slightly—by 0.2 percent—in the third quarter, according to the Bank of France. "We believe that the euro zone's problems are still unresolved," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Moritz Kraemer in a statement. Further data released by Markit showed the private sector in Germany grew, offering some hope after a series of disappointing data for the euro zone's largest economy.   German investor morale fell sharply in October, ZEW data showed earlier in October, while the latest industrial output figures a...

As Russia and China continue to forge trade pacts, including the huge $456 billion gas deal with Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom signed in May, many Westerners are wondering whether this cozy relationship between the two nations is anything to be concerned about. "Right now China's biggest goal is to deflate American dominance, and what better way than to partner with Russia?" said David Silverstein, a global business consultant whose clients include Siemens, Philips and Credit Suisse. "The biggest risk is to the U.S. dollar." Sasha Mordovets | Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping toast during a signing ceremony on May 21, 2014, in Shanghai. The fact that the 30-year Gazprom deal was transacted in a currency swap denominated in yuan—the first time an energy deal circumvented the dollar—is a red flag, according to Silverstein. "If the dollar loses its dominance in international commerce, it...

If one were to ask me what I think is the most dangerous threat to our economy, the answer is very simple: student loans. As I write this, we have more than $1.2 trillion of student loan debt. About 10 million federal students loans are taken out annually, and then there are the insanely dangerous  private student loans  on top of that staggering number. And while 6.7 million borrowers in repayment mode are delinquent, the sad fact is that many lenders aren't exactly incentivized to work with borrowers. Unlike all other forms of debt, student loans can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Moreover, lenders can garnish wages and even Social Security benefits to get repaid. A  new report  by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau details just how bad the situation is for private loan borrowers. (From Oct. 1, 2013, through Sept. 30, the agency handled about 5,300 private student loan complaints, an increase of nearly 38 percent from the previous year.) http://www.cnbc...

In one of the biggest sales days in Indian online retail market, Flipkart  and  Snapdeal  on Monday sold products worth an estimated Rs 600 crore each even as customers complained about technical glitches, while global e-retailer Amazon continued its own pre-Diwali campaign. Flipkart claimed it sold products worth $100 million (over Rs 600 crore) within 10 hours, while  Snapdeal  pegged its sales at Rs 1 crore a minute-which translates into a figure similar to Filpkart's. There was no sales figures from Amazon which is running a three-day discount campaign. "We got a billion hits on our site today and achieved our 24 hour sales target of USD 100 million in GMV (gross merchandise value) in just 10 hours," Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal said in a joint statement. Sale on Flipkart started at 8 am and most of the products under scheme were sold by afternoon. "The Big Billion Day is an unprecedented day for us as this is the biggest sal...

The global financial crisis taught the world how profoundly interdependent our economies have become. In today's crisis of extremism, we must recognize that we are just as interdependent for our security, as is clear in the current struggle to defeat ISIS. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, VP and prime minister of the UAE, ruler of Dubai If we are to prevent ISIS from teaching us this lesson the hard way, we must acknowledge that we cannot extinguish the fires of fanaticism by force alone. The world must unite behind a holistic drive to discredit the ideology that gives extremists their power, and to restore hope and dignity to those whom they would recruit. ISIS certainly can – and will – be defeated militarily by the international coalition that is now assembling and which the UAE is actively supporting. But military containment is only a partial solution. Lasting peace requires three other ingredients: winning the battle of ideas; upgrading weak governance; and ...

About 80 people came into contact with U.S. Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan or one of his family members before he was hospitalized, Dallas County health officials said Thursday. However, not all of them were necessarily in close physical contact with the Liberian national, Dallas County's Health and Human Services director Zachary Thompson said. That number is in addition to the 12 to 18 people who had direct contact with Duncan, including some school-age children, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday. It's unclear if Duncan was already showing symptoms of the virus when he or his family in North Dallas came into contact with the estimated 80 people. But those contacts will be investigated, questioned and monitored to determine exactly how close they got.  http://www.cnbc.com/id/102052914

It's worth pointing out again, however, how much the disparity between rich and poor, as well as the disparity between the rich and the really rich, has widened over the past few decades. SOURCE: MOTHER JONES As the chart above shows, the gap between the bottom 90 percent and the top 1 percent has expanded since 1980. But that gap is nothing compared with the difference in income between the top 0.01 percent -- naturally shown in money green -- and everyone else. The average real income of the top 1 percent has increased more than 175 percent as the bottom 90 percent merely treads water. During the same period, the top earners -- the 1 percent of the 1 percent – have gained about 500 percent. To contact the author of this article: Barry Ritholtz at britholtz3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this article: Alex Bruns at abruns@bloomberg.net. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-01/the-difference-between-rich-and-really-rich-ritholtz-cha...