Where have all the bad boys gone?

Yet another HOLOCAUST post. No, not the one involving Germany. Rather it is the "HOme LOan CAusing US Torture" post.

Take a look at the picture below (this is my summary of the problem when the system is a single household, a bank, an investment bank or Main street in general).

An explanation or rationalization I heard recently that actually makes sense.

What is different between a guy who is borrowing a large sum of money with or without any chance of paying the money back?

One thinks he is a less risky borrower because he forsees his job being stable and his ability to make money over the years to pay off the debt. The other is considered irresponsible because his current income level does not support the mortgage he is getting into! Right?

What if we treat both the borrowers are equally irresponsible for borrowing large sums of money in the first place? Forget the fact that one has 20% equity and the other has 0%. At the end of the day if they both loose their jobs and foreclose the homes, both of them end up losing everything, the house, down payment etc., except the dude with 0% does not lose any of his own money!

I know this sounds socialist! and sometimes goes back to a discussion between my dad and me when he visited the US (the only time he visited the USA!).

Dad : So what do you own in this house?
Me : 20% of the house!
Dad : How does that work exactly?
Me : In India you waited till you were 55 to build a house after you had saved up all the money. Here I borrow the money in advance and pay it when I get to be the same age. Why should I rent when I can own this and pay mortgage and get a tax break on the interest?
Dad : All that is fine. But you are assuming that over 30 years things will stay the same...
Me : Look at it this way. Some dude bought this house for tens of thousands of dollars and sold it to me for hundreds of thousands of dollars, thirty years later and is now sitting in Florida! Worse case in 30 years this house will be worth millions of dollars when we are about to retire.
Dad : Edho sollare. Unakku purinjaa sari! (you are telling me all this stuff. I hope at least you understand what you are saying!)

He was not far from the mark. Really do not know if borrowing is a bad idea in the first place. Especially if you view that the problem with the system gets traced back to the home owner in the block diagram I put together. Every home owner has hedged his bets, along with the blokes who counted on using this to dish out free cash to people and calling it investments.

The banks were really not betting on the guys who borrowed money with "0" down and no collateral. They were betting on the infinite rise of real estate prices!

There was also another water cooler discussion that was enlightening. Sometimes transcripts of these discussions among techies can be used directly as chapters in Dilbert books!

Recently some economist from Princeton gave his opinion on Bill Maher's show and it is doing the rounds on the internet. Apparently that person or Maher said that America is not manufacturing anything and that could be the cause for this problem. It was pointed out to me that the one thing that America still has is plenty of "real estate" or land and the biggest thing that is "Made in the USA" and sold successfully is HOUSES! Americans buy these houses. Foreigners buy these houses. It helps keep money generated in the USA, stay within the States and this problem is because of a demand and supply issue in the housing market.

In short a person put it as "Instead of printing money, they made a lot of extra houses!"

On another note, this is not far from the agriculture loan freebie that the Tamilnadu government gave the farmers. People who were or were not farming went to collect this free cash because they knew that there was nothing to lose, when they defaulted! Same psychology!

In anycase, we will have to see what the bailout does, what it has in fine print, and how much Jr. and the little one will have to pay in future taxes to bailout a concept of living in the future..

Have always been wary of "living in the past", now equally wary of "living in the future". Somehow in the middle of all this, life at present is very very confusing.

Tomorrow is another day!

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Sundar for Vice President

It would be such an honor to be Chuck Norris's running mate!

As a guy who always wanted to drive a Prius, but could never justify the added expense to the Mrs., I am as qualified as qualified can be, to understand the economic ramifications of environmental policies! As it so happens, in my non blogger life, I have come across the word "technology" and throw buzzwords like "solar", "efficiency", "silicon", "energy", just like my guru Chuck Norris throws high leg kicks. Talk of "ram"ifications!

Add to that my dual citizenship and the fact that I actuall won certificates three years in a row in the Geography Talent Test in my middle school (thank you shoebox!), I may actually know something about Foreign policy. Okay, okay, the previous sentence only implies that I know something about "foreign" and not anything about policy.

Did I mention that my dad worked for 40+ freaking years in the LIC (Life Insurance Corporation)? Yeah, the tallest building in Madras (Chennai) for the longest time... that corporation! If there is one other English word, other than "a" , "an" and "the" , that I have heard more often as a child, it is the word "policy"! That proves, beyond all doubt, that I know all about Policies.

That said, lets put two and two together and come up with 700 billion! I am qualified on foreign policy also.

What else does a vice presidential candidate need today? Governing experience!

Governing is all about taking other peoples money and spending it on yourself. It is true that as a grown up, I have spent only money I had to earn, the hard way. But wait, as a child, I did take whatever money that was gifted to me and converted them to firecrackers!

My mother would say "let's buy you some new clothes with that money". My father would say "enn da kaasa ippidi kari akkare?" (Why, you are literally burning money by buying firecrackers?) and a lot of other near and dears would give me many an option to spend the money in other ways (note ,as a true governor, I said "other ways", not "wisely").

The solid governer in me, walked up to the nearest fireworks store with the money! That settles it then. I also have experince in governing for many many years.

In the coming election, please vote for Chuck and Sundar!

The new slogan?

Change is Stale..

Rage is coming!

ps. Have been writing a post of "what ever happened to all that money?".. but it has got to wait for the weekend..

pps. When 9/11 happened people went and filed a case against Osama. Has anyone filed a case or at least a class action lawsuit against the B@$!@^#$ who took all that money? In the event some of it is recovered, I would like a portion put back into my 401k

ppps. I will eat my US passport in public if McCain/Palin win! Will videoblog it.

pppps. Will a US passport taste better when mixed with Sambar saadam, rasam saadam or thayir saadam?

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Should non Americans be able to critique Bailout?

A good buddy PK starts questioning himself on his right to critique the USA on the current economic situation, bailout etc.

Having been on the other side of the coin as an NRI whose right to question desi politics and happenings, here is my take.

People all across the globe have every right to criticize the current situation, irrespective of their nationality.

Why?

The President of the United States has conferred upon himself the title:

"Leader of the free world"!

Now, what are the implications of that statement?

After a lot of soul searching, it is my belief, that this is purely a pretext, to drive a catch-22 situation which implies one of two things:

a. If you are part of the free world, then the US President is your leader
b. If he is not your leader, then you are possibly not free and he will feel obligated to send his army to free you. Plain and simple!

Having said that, one should feel free.. at least to criticize the happenings here!

That is possibly the only thing this freedom buys you! Nothing more. Not cheap gas, Not more fuel efficient cars, not your tax dollars spent on things that matter like education, energy, healthcare, border security, etc.

So, please, feel "free**" to put in your two cents on what is going on. Don't let your local government hold you down!

**Disclaimer : All freedoms subject to change. You are being watched. Anything you say may be used against you. We know where your retirement money is!!! We also control your tax rate...

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Chuck Norris for President

This post is about "A tale of two countries", USA and India -the perspective of a F1->H1B->NRI->OCI

Before we barge into the perspective (of What? Why? When? etc.), let us get some definitions cleared.

F1 - the student visa on which the fresh off the boat Narayanan landed in the US of A, fifteen plus years ago

H1B - the work visa that changed the economy of the still single, but doctoral graduate ten plus years ago

NRI - Non Resident Indian, a change brought about by taking up permanent residency in the united states, also known as "getting a green card", seven years ago.

OCI - Overseas Citizen of India, the latest change that came with American citizenship two plus years ago, which defaulted the Indian Citizenship to an Overseas Citizenship.

Based on the last weeks news, you have won, if you bet that this post was about the economy, the reaction to the Lehman collapse, etc. Considering the way things are going, it should be obvious that you have not "won" anything, except the bet.

There should be one fact that will be out in the open before anyone judges this post as a meandearing, from a person who came to the US of A with exactly $ 1,050, and is now "living the American Dream" (as one of my Israeli buddies puts it). Since that fateful day fifteen odd years ago when I entered this country to the present, I have been a liberal democrat. I may not have known it by that name, but rest assured, those set of "values" if that is what one calls those, have not changed much.

That said, this post is more about, how my opinion of the USA changed and is continuing to change, based on how intimate I get with the day to day workings of this great country.

The last part was not sarcastic. I do believe that the USA is a great country. At the end of the day, as a collective people, they somehow get policy right. Was so sure of it, in my naive grad school days.

Granted, my view of America was not all that great in the early nineties and Hollywood did not help much. Like in all those Chuck Norris movies where four hundred and thirty five international bodies fall, so the special task force, can rescue that one American hostage who actually looks like his only contribution to his country was to improve the economy by eating a dozen donuts a day. I wanted to be Chuck Norris, and if that was not an option, at least be rescued by Chuck Norris after I ate a dozen donuts and was trapped in an airplane!

All the Americans around me made me feel that being American was like being born again. No, not "born again" as in the Christian sense, but rather "special" like in Tamizh when they ask you "Nee enna rendu thadavai pirandhiya?" ("Are you so special that you were born twice?"). You almost got the feeling that your strength would increase by a factor of 435 if you became American overnight. This theory especially gains momentum after you have read way too many Asterix comics which involve a certain magic potion.

Towards the end of my school days, a lot of things reshaped my view of America. There was talks of restricting immigrant workers, which did not go through, the one person who practically was looked up to by every desi graduate student turning out to be just another liar in the oval office, a simultaneous change of government in India with a nationalist party bent on testing nuclear weapons, a sudden surge in the bank balance thanks to a full time job, having as much fun doing R&D compared to being a not so well paid post doctoral researcher, being respected for doing what one likes to do, tasting "freedom" in a sense it had never been enjoyed before, owning a car, filling up at a gas tank on a regular basis, learning to fill more complicated tax forms than the 1040 EZ, and the list goes on.

During this time, America was the "in thing"! It was a sure bet. A place that held me in awe, simply because I could do what I wanted to do, as long as it was legal and no one would care. It was also a place where a "go getter" attitude was a plus and there was no run in with policy! To top things off, Chuck Norris was now "Walker, Texas ranger" and would grace our screens twice a week, not to mention the reruns. We were introduced to Texas. In a way Chuck gave us a preview to GWB in ways that only we could imagine.

That is when we got married and had dependents, bought and sold property, started accounts in stock trading houses to understand "quick money", lived through black tuesday and learnt some valuable lessons which were already available to us for free, had we only listened to people who had been there before. We were NRI's going through some questions on where to live, raise family, citizenship, voting, taxes, schooling...again a list that goes on and on.

One thing that was a surprise was 9/11, GWB and the rise of religious fundamentalism in the USA. After you get a dozen forwarded emails from people you know and work with, which talk about the "wrath of the eagle" mentioned in the Bible and how Iraq had it coming etc. etc., you start getting cynical, frustrated and then just plain astounded and ask yourself "How come I never saw this side of America before?" , "Was it always there?" or it is just coming out of the woodwork after Cheney runs his proxy dictatorship? not to mention other questions like "what if I dont like this war?", "How come no one has the balls to stop this?" etc. etc.

That is when a profound realization hit me!

When on trips to India, I complained about the local cop who takes a bribe for no reason by stopping you on some non existant pretext, or questioned the medical shop guy who would say "no change" and give me unwanted candy instead of the three rupees he owes me on the 20 I gave him, people around me (mostly family) would attribute my contention to my "American-ness"!

and now for the big realization..or realisation if you prefer,

This so called American-ness is only limited to showing some temper and gall at localized injustices at the everyday level with people who do not make as much money as you. You still do not get to question MK or Jayalalitha or Ramadoss (local politicians) for fear of retalliation. This option is not available to us in the USA if you make money and are above the poverty line. You don't get to see such things in your day to day life. The guy at the store hands you back a penny when you purchased something for 79.99 and you hand him eighty dollars. The cops here flag you, hand you a ticket, and off you go to court. For the most part, you know the law and try to stay within it.

When it comes to bigger things like the Iraq war, government spending, EPA, oil drilling, defense spending, security, freedom, bailouts for irresponsible people, etc. one is left in much the same boat, be it in India or the USA. Your voice is pretty much drowned. California, considered the fifth largest economy in the world (sure it is in the top ten at least) has been going without a budget for months and the common people who were hit by this have not been able to do much, with officials "they" elected!

At a much higher level, the machinery of politics is oiled by the same grease, irrespective of India or USA.

Only, the currency is different!

Now that we are American Citizens and OCI's, we do not think that commandos will be storming in to rescue us anytime soon from any impending crisis.

The day to day life, although a little more stressful, goes on with the knowledge that somehow the people who make way more money than us will get hit more and they will have the money and power to plug this hole! I know, I know. We are being selfish here. But is that not what got everyone to the point we are in now?

It is high time Chuck Norris took over as president of the USA. He can kick the crap out of the bad guys on Wall street and Main Street and put his "star" on the US dollar!

Being born and raised in the great state of Tamilnadu in India, which has been ruled by movie legends for the last thirty plus years, it is in my blood now, to hope for Chuckie to come and solve all our problems with his high kick. If we can expect MGR to solve all problems with the same ease with which he won swashbuckling swordfights with Nambiar, why not Chuck Norris?

I will say it again, Chuck Norris for President!

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