Travel!!

Some Old Travel Pics!!

I love to travel..... alone!!

Uploading some pics from past trips...... hope to add on many more!!

For starters, these are from Vaishno devi and Manali!!

What to expect out of the budget??

Simple......... nothing!!

Unfortuntaely, this government is headed by an "Administrator" and not a "Leader"...... the administrator will only come up with some measures here and some there to make his work easier (read:- liberalise) and his income greater (read : higher taxation/inclusion of more and more people in the tax net)!!

The reason why i don't give importance to the budget exercise:-

1. CA's & Lawyers - they will twist, turn and bend the laws enough to find out enough loopholes to reduce the tax burden.... the trick...... to dispute the tax incidence and carry the case for years in the various courts..... at the end, if and when the case is decided against them, the amount would have become meaningless!!

2. The deilivery and control mechanism in the Government is a joke...... what they say they will spend rarely gets beyond planning and what they say they have actually spent has litrally gone down the drain!! Also, they have so many special reserve funds and grants and schemes and what-not-pools of funds which they can access under one pretext or the other, that the people in charge of spending rarely bother to know how much has been budgeted for them!! And i am yet to say anything on corruption!!

3. In whatever the budget may be, i only try to look at things from one point of view... where is the money going to come from and where is it going to go. This basically tels me what should be the level of deficit financing that is required by the Government for meeting the expenditure, which in turn tells me how much extra money needs to be printed by the government and that gives an idea of the liquidity that can be expected in the market. Beyond this, the fact that the Govt. can print as much currency as it wants and meet it's expenses, tells me that the entire budget exercise is nothing but a sham!! I am yet to see anything that tells me to expect this govt to be any different from any other and would exercise fiscal prudence. They really don't care if the excess money leads to problems (such as inflation etc), because the impact of the extra currency will only be felt with a time lag and the intention of all governments has been to ensure immediate survival!!

4. Who actually gives a hoot about the budget??? Any idea???

• the stock market speculator, who wants to know which stocks he can put his money on!!
• the poor salaried guy who has no hope of improving his working conditions for the next 20 years at least and needs those tax exemptions to survive!!
• the small business owner who is wondering whether his customers would have enough money left in their hand to buy his products and services
• the NGO-wallahs who want to know how much money is available for them to siphon off in the name of social development projects and
• the politician who wants to know what kind of arm twisting he can do for getting more from the business owners who want to expand or do business in their area or otherwise invest for getting investment benefits!!
• the poor CA student who has to worry about mugging up the "recent changes" for his final exam!!

Money Laundering

This is one fascinating aspect of the capital markets!!

There are always people who are exploring ways of increasing their incomes without letting others know....... it may be the taxman or the wife or the over cautious parent!! There are always businessess which need to generate "black" money to be able to pay off those corrupt officials in governments the world over...... yes, they are present in each and every country and at each and every level of the administration..... and there always will be the ever watchful regulator wanting to know more about the wealth which is evading taxes!!

So... the money launderers come in with their skills of generating "white" capital as and where required and provide this service at a cost (estimated at around 30%, just a little less than what the taxman would have taken, but unlike the taxman, the launderer doesn't ask any questions!!)

Now, some questions which have always intrigued me are :- what is the profile of the money launderer?? how do they execute their transactions??? since a large part of their work involves cash management, how do they manage to undertake large transactions where a huge amount of currency notes are involved physically??? how does the system view money laundering??

In my subsequent posts in this section of the blog, i shall try to answer these questions and raise many more!!