اخبار 1

Thomas Greisa is an ass. Thomas who , you might ask. This specimen is a Judge of the Southern District Court of  New York. Why should you bother about the "Southern District Court of New York", you might want to know. Unfortunately, the state of the world is that, we have to. For the USA is back to its old game - imposing its laws on the rest of the world. The problem is Argentina. Remember the many times I have railed against Argentina, here , here and , on the same matter, here . This time my sympathies are entirely with them. It all stems back to 2001 when Argentina defaulted on its international loan obligations. As is usual in such cases, an agreement was reached with most of the creditors , rescheduling the interest and repayment obligations. The operative word is "most". A few funds simply sold  their debts at a deep discount to whoever was willing to buy them. Up stepped a bunch of hedge funds, whom we shall justifiably call "vulture funds" as th...

Entrepreneurship is all about ideas. If you have an idea for a great product or service, capital, talent and profits will flow to you. You will become a multi millionaire. In recognition of all the patience you dear readers have shown, this blogger now offers an idea for free - a product from which you can make millions ! The idea is, well, an old fashioned one. The product I suggest to you is the typewriter !! Before you groan, consider the following facts. The country (to its eternal credit) which is completely fed up with the antics of the NSA is Germany. Even in the erstwhile East Germany the extent of snooping and surveillance probably did not go this far. When revelation after revelation brings home the extent of NSA spying (even to the extent of tapping the phone of Angela Merkel), the Germans have become angrier and angrier. And businesses, and government, have started to react in the only way possible - ditch the computer ! Back comes the good  old fashioned typewriter. German...

I think it has. Nothing but madness can explain the awfulness of the last few days. The downing of the Malaysian Airlines plane over Ukraine is one of the sorriest events to ever happen. Two bunch of loonies are fighting over God knows what - yes Russia is meddling in Ukraine, which as a country has almost ceased to exist and everybody is bent on killing everybody else. But to shoot a civilian airliner that was simply overflying the country ??? What sort of a nut case or , in reality a group of nut cases wants to shoot that down ? For what ? What did the poor people who just had the misfortune of being in that plane do to deserve this. Reports say a large number of them were actually flying to Australia for an AIDS conference. Some of the leading AIDS researchers have been lost to the world. What a senseless tragedy. Consider the situation of Malaysian Airlines. What have they done to deserve the double whammy over the last few months. It is now difficult for them to even survive. And ...

Beware, if you are a US citizen, or a green card holder,  living abroad. FATCA is on you ! FATCA stands for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and is the latest weapon unleashed in the awful American tax code. On measures of awfulness, FATCA must be a contender for one of the worst pieces of legislation ever passed. It takes America's unilateralism - something this blogger has long railed about - to a new level. Basically FATCA is an imposition of its tax laws on every financial institution in the world, wherever they may be. Every bank, even in Timbuktu, is required to report to the US authorities, details of bank accounts and transactions of all US persons (citizens and green card holders). If they fail to do so, they would essentially barred from doing any business in the US. Terrified of being shut out of US markets, almost every country of any standing has signed bilateral agreements with the US to this effect. Did I mention the word, bully ? All this arises from the stupi...

A mobile phone app start up has received $ 1 m in funding. Nothing special about that - after all thousands of start ups get funding. What is interesting is the nature of the app itself. It is called Yo. And what it does is that you can send a message - Yo - to any of your friends. That's it. That's all you can say - Yo. Apparently its USP is that you can say Yo in two taps instead of the 13 taps it will take you in Whatsapp.  I am scratching my head in bewilderment. Why would I want to say just Yo to you ? In comparison, Twitter seems positively garrulous. Yo is being downloaded like there is no tomorrow - it has reached the top 50 downloaded apps on the Apple store. For some strange unexplained reason, iphone users want to say Yo more than Android users ! Apparently this is the start of something called "contextual communication" ! If a world cup match is going on and you send a Yo, it means - Dumbhead; somebody has scored a goal; turn on the TV and watch it. If you...

If you nodded your head saying money can't buy love, that wasn't what I meant ! After all this is a business blog and starry eyed affairs of the heart seldom feature here !!. Money can't even buy the thing money is supposed to be good at buying - a major sports championship. The trigger for this post is the NBA finals that concluded yesterday. The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Miami Heat to win the "World Championship" of basketball . For the sports purist, it was a wonderful result. The Spurs played sublime basketball. They came back after a heartbreaking loss last year to win it this time around. This is their fifth championship.  But this post isn't about the sport - its about the money. In sports, superstars make insane amounts of money as salaries. If ever there is a breed even more mercenary than bankers, it is sports stars. Salary levels are simply insane. Kobe Bryant the highest paid NBA star, earned a salary of $ 1 per second ! There are 31 m seconds...

It is fairly clear that I would not be able to get a job with Rockwell (a web hosting company) or the Kerry Group (food ingredients company). This is because I would have to answer, in the selection interview,  "How would you react if you were shot in the head with a Nerf gun?" (Rockwell) or "Is a Jaffa Cake, a cake or biscuit ?" (Kerry). Since I do not know what a Nerf Gun or Jaffa Cake is, it can be safely assumed that I would flunk the interview. The Glassdoor Blog chronicles each year the weirdest questions that companies have been known to ask in interviews. It of course makes extremely interesting reading and I would strongly recommend it instead of that useless report you are writing at this minute ! How would you answer to " "How many square feet of pizza is eaten in the US each year?" (Goldman Sachs !), or  "Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words?" (Living Social), or, "I...