Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

No, seriously.

In my case, I was rather oblivious to investing until the end of grad school, and something kicked in. I must have made my parents proud, both of whom monitor and manage their investments rather intently.

The question, of course, is where the penchant for risk comes from (since most Asians/Indians tend to be more than a little risk-averse).

I recently read this narcissist yet insightful (albeit depressing) piece on Bloomberg that talked about how there might be a cause-and-effect relationship between being rude and being rich.

While it may not apply to a precious few, I’m sure we’ve all seen the type. Well, turns out that establishing yourself as the alpha male (or female) has a lot to do with success.

The richer you are, the less reliant you are on other people. It doesn’t matter much what others think of you, since you are unlikely to be asking them for a favor any time soon.

And yet while the rich may be rude because they are wealthy, it is just as likely to be the other way around. Just as plausibly, they are wealthy because they are rude.

Carnegie and other self-help writers have missed the point the last few decades. Getting ahead in life isn’t about making people like you. It is about getting them to serve your interests.

Success depends, more than anything, on an inner ruthlessness. As anyone who has spent much time with chief executives will know, they are mostly an unpleasant bunch.

To quote a friend, “You’re trying to be the asshole you’re not. Be the asshole you were meant to be.”

At least to the woman, or so it would seem.

Keeping in line with my sex and finance theme, someone sent along this article on wealthy men give women more orgasms. I guess there really is no mystery to anything in life. It all comes down to money.

Who would have thought that Hugh Hefner really did give his girls everything?

…print your own money.

I meant to to post this earlier, but here’s an interesting story from a couple of weeks ago from the WSJ on a Thai village that prints its own money. Somewhere, Neal Stephenson is grinning like a monkey.

My friend Rebecca sent this along — be warned that the accuracy of this has not been validated, but it looks about right.

The NYT has an excellent article by Professor Tyler Cowen on how a falling USD is not all bad news. The WSJ also has a related article that talks about how the USD may actually rebound.

The crux of both the articles is this that while the USD may have had a significant fall (~19.8%), it still isn’t grounds for fear. For one, it has definitely helped bridge the trade-deficit gap because imports coming into the US are becoming more expensive while exports going out from the US are becoming cheaper.

In fact, some of the people hardest hit by the falling USD are European businesses. As the USD falls, it becomes harder for them to compete in their own local regions because it is a lot cheaper to buy American stuff paid for in USD than it is to buy European stuff paid for in Euro.

Secondly, the WSJ talks about a 30% fall in the USD to equalize the trade deficit — and we’re almost at 20%. Now whether the USD falls another 10% remains to be seen, but once again, that need not necessarily be a bad thing all around.

Also, other economies in the world are in just as bad a shape (or worse) than the US economy. British, Canadian, German and French economies are also struggling, and the falling USD isn’t necessarily helping them, either.

Now, the Chinese are whole another story. That’s a mixed bag — while they have over a trillion in dollar-dominated assets, they aren’t too particular about dumping it all overnight, simply because of what it might do to their assets. It is in their best interests to have a strong dollar, especially since we are their largest consumer.

The biggest problem that’s likely to arise from a falling USD is of course worries about volatility. A shaky currency is not good for any economy, and ours is no exception. And of course, the middle-east, who make money off oil, no matter which way things go.

I think that over the next quarter or so, the USD will slowly stabilize, and that the fall in the USD that’s happened is not necessarily a bad thing for us.

One thing that a lot of people seem to forget is that while a falling USD is not a good thing, it certainly isn’t bad all around for everyone. For instance, the cheap dollar has made items made in US extremely competitive in terms of pricing, especially in comparison to European goods and services within Europe.

As a result, a lot of US products have been in high demand (especially high-tech), causing a serious surge in US exports which has lowered the US trade deficit to record lows in more than 2 years.

And the consequence of a weaker dollar is making it harder for Americans to spend on European goods and services, making the European Central Bank chief to worry that the recent rise of the Euro against the dollar is making life harder for European businesses.

Now China — that’s an entirely different story altogether.

A quick look at the market the past few days would suggest that the banks and other financial institutions are having a particularly bad time. Most of it is the remnant effect of the sub-prime mortgage tomfoolery that everybody happily part-took in, but the other half is the serious credit crunch that’s been going on in the market.

And of course, a lot of this originated from the fact that these guys decided to sell asset-backed securities when their very assets were in question. So, our beloved (I use that term very loosely, of course) treasury department decides that that is not a good thing.

What do these guys do? Citi, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America decide to come together and build a $100 billion Structured Investment Vehicle backed by – get this – more asset backed commercial paper. Heh.

Quite aptly, the folks at Dealbreaker have termed this “master” SIV as The Entity.