Breaking news...

...Fucking disturbing, that all news channels since yesterday could not find anything better to report than Mr. Bachchan's digestive system malfunctioning (to be precise, they reported it was intestinal inflammation). How fucking illuminating to get this news, there couldn't be a more severe national calamity, so much so that Mr. Prime minister found it important to convey his concerns to the entire family. Our obsession with the make-believe world is almost complete. Perhaps that explains why we have let our real world be as fucked as possible. 

  Not the media's fault perhaps. What do you do when you have to run 24 hour shows of "news". Just how much news can be cooked up in a day? That's where celebrity illnesses come into picture. Or some stupid inspector's senile dog being lost in the city (and of course, another breaking news when the same dog is found by the police, who obviously have no balls to catch the real dogs out there).

   Reporters need a job too. And what's more enriching a career than standing outside the hospital reporting which tablets are being fed to rich sexagenarians, or the visuals of people offering prayers to make sure that their earthly gods can survive stomach cramps...

   There are perhaps still enough people who believe that if these gods are cured, then maybe there is a chance for the salvation of a billion plus people in India. It's worse than the coverage of wardrobe malfunctions. Because there the fuck-crazy Indian population (how else did we reach a billion so fucking fast?) still has hopes of sneak peeks at coveted body parts. In this case, the only hope in the mind of some perverts would be a spycam fitted to the doctor's glasses, as he/she would attempt to correct the misbehaving intestines...

    We are still far behind on the road to rationalism (the recent example being some anti-Nano politicians). On a scale of one to ten, we are sub-zero. And until we stop these super-star-intestinal-fetishes, we will remain there. Though as always, I am still hoping that someday there would a breaking news that we have crossed to the other side of zero....

   

The house that Jack built...

If there's any news these days, it's that of market crashes, fears of recession, failing bailouts, excessive government intervention in the money markets, and similar stuff which is becoming the talk of every disgruntled town.

Never has Wallstreet been given such a bad name as before this, for triggering off such a widespread financial disaster. The 19.1% fall in Russian markets is an indication that was not a mere flu which had gripped the US economy but a cancer spreading to every limb of the global economic ecosystem. Because this time, there are no political reasons leading to investor concerns (note that there was a 9 odd percent fall in the Russian markets when Mr. Gorbachev was overthrown, but there were no major fundamental economic changes then). What we have now is a once in a fucking lifetime situation where the most basic elements of finance have been casually neglected.

Risk and return are always interlinked. All Jacks know that. And yet, when it came to building the grand financial house that everyone has been living in since the last IT-led recession, they all forgot the equations. Balance sheets are still balanced, but with artificial values. Hypo, Fortis, WaMu and AIG have shown us that even institutions which deal in individual consumer money paid no heed to any risk management ideologies, and conveniently rode the sugar-coated mortgage gravy train. High risk, very high initial gains, and then one day they found termites crawling all over the foundation-less house...

Multi-multi-billion dollar bailout packages are suddently proving to be too less to hold the contagion. Within one month, economic slowdown has assumed higher priority than inflationary concerns, and as is always the case, governments are now racing against each other to see who cuts interest rates the most. The only problem with this solution is that it is inherently cosmetic in nature. It's like providing an analgesic to someone who has just been shot in the knee. The pain might subside for some time, but the wound will only fester if the bullet is not removed in time.

Is there any other recourse we can take to ensure the house is brought back up again? For now, Jack doesn't seem to have any answers...