Barack Obama has probably appointed more Indian-Americans to positions in his administration than any former president. They range from Kal Penn whose role is as a liason to the Asian-American community to Vivek Kundra who is Federal Chief Information Officer. But there are several others and they are listed in this article in the Hindustan Times.
But the one that caught my attention is Vinay Thummalapally who was appointed to the post of the US ambassador to Belize.
I have to admit that I had never heard of Thummalapally. It turns out that Vinai K. Thummalapally was the President of MAM-A Inc., formerly Mitsui Advanced Media, the nation’s leading manufacturer and distributor of archival recordable optical discs. He is
originally from Hyderabad and moved to the U.S. in 1974 to pursue his engineering studies. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California State University in 1977 and completed post graduate Business Administration courses at California State University in 1980 and the University of Tennessee in 1995.
What drew my attention to Thummalapally was an article “Nothing better than a plum ambassadorship” by Melvin Durai which appeared in Indolink. It is well written and funny especially to anyone who is familiar with the Indian/US slant. It also shows that some things never change – like how ambassadorships are awarded under different administrations. Here is the article:
“Barack Obama promised to bring change to Washington, but did you see whom he selected as ambassador to Belize? His old college buddy Vinai Thummalapally!
The folks in Belize had better give me a call. For only $9.99, I’ll help them learn how to say “Ambassador Thummalapally.”
Thummalapally, in case you’re wondering, has no experience as a diplomat, but he did pass Obama’s foreign service exam, which consisted of a single question: “How much money did you raise for me, bro?”
Any insurance is, by definition, discriminatory since premiums are based on actuarial determinations of risk. For example, life insurance premiums are higher for men than for women because the life expectancy of the former is less than the latter. People who are engaged in high-risk activities such as mountain climbing are also subject to higher premiums or denial of life insurance coverage. Similarly, teenagers pay considerably more for car insurance than do adults because they are a higher risk group when it comes to accident claims. Someone with prior accidents or moving violations usually pays a higher premium for car insurance than someone who is accident free.
The question that arises is whether there are certain types of “risk” that should not be subjected to higher premiums. When I was a student in England in the sixties, I paid almost double the premium for car insurance because I was an immigrant, from a “developing country” or “under-developed country”, who had no driving experience in the UK – a person born in the UK or an immigrant from a “developed country” would however not be subject to a higher premium. I was told categorically by insurance agents that because immigrants, from “developing countries” are not familiar with road conditions in the UK they are viewed as high risk and so insurance companies either do not insure them or demand a much higher premium! However, the way the policy was structured, essentially it was “people of color” who paid the higher premiums. I was upset at the time though upon reflection, if there was actuarial evidence to show that immigrants were, in fact, prone to more accidents, I guess one could argue that it is a legitimate risk factor to be taken into account in determining a premium.
I watched the “balloon boy” live and was glued to the TV, like many others, while the balloon that the world thought was carrying an endangered six year old drifted several thousand feet in the air. The balloon floated around Colorado, at a height of up to 7000 feet, for over two hours and finally landed on a field ………. but there was no kid. Since then we know that it was a hoax and “balloon boy’s” parents were just trying to generate publicity with the goal of getting their own reality show.
What I did not realize was that 17 years ago in 1982 we had another incident in which “Lawnchair Larry” actually “took off” using helium ballloons – and what he did was no hoax. The far-fetched but true story came about because Larry Walters, a California truck driver, had this dream of ascending above ground in a contraption of his own making using helium balloons. What transpired was something that went well beyond his wildest imagination and was to become a legend of sorts!
The contraption that Larry used was to hold him in position while the balloons took him up was a lawn chair! Larry’s intention was to ascend to a modest height of about 40 feet – but the best laid plans sometimes go wrong and he ascended to a height of 16,000 feet! In the process, he caused consternation as he floated into the air corridors of Los Angeles Airport!
Larry had apparently dreamed of flying but his poor eyesight prevented him from joining the Air Force as a pilot. So Larry did the next best thing – he tied himself to a lawn chair and with the aid of helium balloons took off!
One of the most effective ways to deal with an adversary or to make a point, is with a quick-witted response or come-back. Some people are exceptionally talented when it comes to such rejoinders or retorts. The best of these involve brevity and pointedness and it is this combination that makes for their effectiveness. Here are a few that I found on the net as I prepared this post. Some I was familiar with and others were new to me:
John Montagu, also known as the Earl of Sandwich, and the reformist politician, John Wilkes had a long-standing rivalry. During a heated argument, Montagu scowled at Wilkes and said derisively, “Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die upon the gallows, or of syphilis”. Unfazed, Wilkes came back with what many regard as the greatest retort of all time: “That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles, or your mistress.”
Winston Churchill & Lady Astor were constantly feuding: One one occasion she said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
Lewis Morris, a poet, complained to Oscar Wilde: “It is a conspiracy of silence against me – a conspiracy of silence. What should I do?” Oscar Wilde who was not overly impressed with Morris’ poetry said: “Join it.”
George Bernard Shaw sent a message to Winston Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend – if you have one.” Churchill responded “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend second – if there is one.”
I was talking to a couple of people this week and the subject came up about aging and how the topics of our conversation changes as we get older. We seem to emphasize certain areas that were never a subject for discussion in years gone by.
One conversation was with my sister, Fifi, who lives in Australia. We asked each other about our well-being as far as it concerns our health. She remarked about how when she conversed with our older sibling, the conversation invariably seemed to veer into issues pertaining to health even though neither has any health issues of major consequence. I realized that I tend to do the same with others of my generation. Now this is not to convey the impression that this is all that we talk about but there is no question that health issues and how we can stay well does seem to feature in our conversations.
I wonder whether this is merely a function of aging or whether it has to do with the fact that those of us who live in the West are particularly conscious of health issues given the culture that exists here of emphasizing wellness and how one can stay healthy.
Now there are some interesting variations that arise as a result of this tendency to talk about age and health issues.
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Move over techies – there is a new area in which India is achieving prominence in the area of outsourcing!
Now this is not a field of outsourcing that we, as diasporan Indians living in our adopted homelands or those who live in India, would feel that we would want to brag about! But it does show a combination of resourcefulness, economic necessity and old fashioned entrepreneurship!
So what is this new field? I don’t know if you will be as surprised as I was but it is in providing surrogacy services! Yes, Indian women are functioning as surrogate mothers for Western couples who want children.
Why do they seek the services of Indian women for this purpose? It is a combination of lower cost and relatively liberal laws which make India a haven for this purpose. The cost aspect is self-explanatory – it is cheaper in India than in the US and presumably other countries in the West. The legal issues are more interesting: first, there is little risk that the surrogate mother in India will claim custody of the child and the other factor, quite surprisingly, is that Indian law is more receptive to gay couples using the surrogate services of Indian women without potential legal complications.
Let me start by saying that I voted for Barack Obama but I feel the Nobel Peace prize award to President Obama was premature. He has not done enough during his nine months in office to justify the award. Sure, he has proclaimed some noble goals and has made a concerted attempt to integrate the US into the world community after the eight years under Bush when the attitude was “my way or the highway” – to use an American expression.
But what is unseemly to the point of being totally bizarre is the spectacle of right-wing wackos in the US condemning the award to an AMERICAN president! This comes on top of the scenes of cheering by right-wingers when the International Olympic Committee announced that Chicago had been eliminated as a potential venue in 2016 in the first round. Imagine Americans cheering the decision that the Olympics were not going to take place in the US!
Much of this vitriol is directed against Obama who made a pitch for the games to be held in Chicago – his hometown. A loss for Obama is now viewed as more desirable than a victory for the US by the right-wing nuts. Equally offensive is the notion that the award of the Peace prize to Obama is considered so repugnant to this fringe group within the Republican party, that condemnation of the award takes precedence over any sense of pride that an American won the award!
Previous recipients of the Peace prize have occasionally been controversial and it has not always been based on true accomplishments. Consider the award made to Arafat, Peres and Rabin – it was an award based on hope more than real accomplishments. Henry Kissinger and Lee Duc Tho were awarded the prize based on a peace agreement between the US, South Vietnam and North Vietnam -even though it turned out to be a very tentative peace since the North over-ran the South subsequently – not to mention the involvement of Kissinger in other highly controversial policies with regard to Cambodia and Argentina. Menachem Begin, the prime minister of Israel, shared the award with Anwar Sadat, although Begin was the head of Irgun – a Zionist terrorist group – that was responsible for the bombing of King David hotel in which many civilians were killed.
This site has a list of some of the more controversial prior winnners.
One of the most glaring omissions in the award of the prize was as it pertained to Mahatma Gandhi.
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Anyone who has been unhappy in a job and then resigned has probably wondered just how candid one should be in that final parting communication. Usually one decides to hold back on being too honest about the frustrations encountered while working at a company if for no other reason than not burning one’s bridges. After all, one might need a reference in a future job and so discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to that final missive!
At the same time one can understand the frustration of Cian Kelliher, who worked at the Dublin office of the Ernst & Young and felt the need to unload before he finally left. He never realized that his email sent to his colleagues outlining his grievances about his supervisors and colleagues would become known throughout the world thanks to the internet. It was so widespread that under pressure from E&Y, Kelliher did a mea culpa of sorts though it appears less than convincing. His original communication, however, clearly smacks of a certain level of genuine frustration during his tenure with his employer.
So what did Kelliher’s email contain that would cause such consternation? Well, here is it is verbatim:
I first heard of “The Big Texan” when I first arrived in the US and was working for Blue Cross/ Blue Shield in Chicago. I was 25 years old and one of the “old-timers” told me of a restaurant in Texas which served a humongous steak – and the best part of it was that it was FREE if one could eat it in an hour with the usual trimmings! At the time I had an appetite which was impressive by almost any standard and I was confident I could accomplish it – but Texas seemed a long way to go for a free steak no matter what the size!
I know that I could not do it today – age and other factors have taken its toll on my capacity to eat. Today I share an entree and appetizer with Mini and it satisfies both our appetites! So you young ‘uns take full advantage of your capacity to eat because I assure you, it will not last!
But I digress – the steak is still being served at “The Big Texan” in Amarillo, Texas. If you can eat a 72 ounce steak, plus a shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad and dinner roll in an hour, it is free! You have to pay for the meal in advance – $70 – and it is refunded to you if you can actually accomplish the feat. When the restaurant first opened in the 60s’ the steak was less than $10!
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It was Euripedes who said: “Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first make mad.”
It is a quotation that seems appropo as one sees the far right-wing in the US getting increasingly unhinged. Having lived in the US for almost 38 years, I have never come across a time when things were as polarized as they are today. Even during the sixties and early seventies when the country was undergoing massive social and political upheavals as a result of the civil rights movement and the war in Vietnam culminating in the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, there seemed to be a greater semblance of sanity than exists today.
Gun sales in the US have gone through the roof – a result of the belief that Obama will seek to limit the ownership of guns and the conviction by fringe groups that the country is reaching a point when there will be an armed insurrection and citizens will need to be armed to protect themselves and the US as they knew it. Not only have gun sales reached record levels but apparently sales of ammunition are so huge that ammo is actually difficult to acquire because shops don’t have adequate inventories!
Then we have gold – the investment of last resort – at close to record prices with spot gold at over $1000 per ounce. What is more is that it is now difficult to actually acquire gold coins and if one is able to get them it is necessary to pay a premium of over $100 per ounce over the spot price. Again, the reason for the demand for gold is related to the belief that the economic system in the US and around the world is reaching a point of collapse where all paper money – including the dollar – will be worthless and inflation will be rampant making the the US currency analogous to that of the Weimar Republic or even Zimbabwe.
Some of these extreme reactions are the result of Barack Obama, an African-American, being elected president. We also have animosity resulting from a decisive victory by the Democrats resulting in the presidency, the Senate and the House being controlled by the Democrats. There was a similar hostility to Bill Clinton during the 90s’ when he was president with relentless attacks on him.
But what is different this go around, is the intensity of the opposition to Obama and the various conspiracy theories that are making the rounds which essentially claim that the US constitution is being subverted and what is being substituted is everything ranging from socialism or Marxism to the institution of a world government. These are claims by fringe right-wing groups – but the distressing thing is that the mainstream Republican leadership are not willing to take on these wackos and dissociate themselves from these outlandish claims and allegations.
Now we have a reached a new low: a right-wing publication, NewsMax, actually published an online column by John Perry suggesting that a bloodless military coup could be on the cards in the US to overthrow the Obama administration!
Max is our 2 1/2 year old German Shepherd dog – we have had him since he was a puppy. We also have Kaya – another GSD. Kaya belongs to Richard & Saira but we have been taking care of her since May when we returned from our sojourn in India & Asia. We have, what Saira describes as, a “joint custody arrangement” since for about four months of the year Max & Kaya reside with them while we are out of the country and when we return to the US, we assume “custody” unless we are out of town town. We try and keep them together because we feel that it would be cruel to separate them.
I have always liked animals – after all, I wanted to be a vet when I was a child. Dogs are for me the ultimate embodiment of an animal that provides unconditional love and loyalty. Dogs are almost universally loved in the West. I remember when I first went to England from Kenya I felt that, at times, the average Britisher seemed more concerned about animals, and dogs in particular, than their fellow-humans.
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I belong to a Yahoo Group for East African Indians and recently there was a fascinating communication alleging that the Indian national anthem – “Jana Gana Mana…” (JGM) was written by Rabindranath Tagore in honor of George V and Queen Mary during their visit to India in 1919. I was surprised by this suggestion since I had never heard it before.
So I decided to resort to Google but it did not help matters since the very communication that was passed through the Yahoo Group was quoted verbatim on several websites and this sort of consistency usually suggests some sort of chain letter/email that gets circulated. Essentially the allegation goes something like this:
Tagore composed JGM in honor of George V and Queen Mary on the eve of their visit to India in 1919.
Motilal Nehru had the first five stanzas sung at the Indian National Congress that the King attended during his visit and that these stanza basically honor and thank the King.
Vande Mataram was considered and rejected by Jawaharlal Nehru for reasons ranging from it being too difficult for the band to play to it being a glorification of Hinduism which would be viewed as provocative by non-Hindus in India.
Those who allege the above argue that the national anthem of India should be replaced with Vande Mataram because it is demeaning for India to have a national anthem that was written to glorify the monarch of a colonial power.
One of the striking aspects about religion in the US is the number of churches, denominations and the high level of church attendance among the American populace. At a time when church attendance in the UK and parts of Europe is declining, it continues to remain relatively high in the US. About 40% of Americans attend church regularly and only 15% say that they never attend church at all – the remainder are less frequent attendees.
There was a Gallup poll conducted that identified the reason/reasons why Americans attend church and makes for interesting reading:
For spiritual growth and guidance 23%
Keeps me grounded/inspired 20%
It’s my faith 15%
To worship God 15%
The fellowship of other members/The community 13%
Believe in God/Believe in religion 12%
Brought up that way/A family value/Tradition 12%
Among the reasons cited above, as a regular church goer, if I had to select one reason I’d probably go with “keeps me grounded/inspired” though a couple of other reasons cited also play a role in why I go to church. If you care to comment on the reason/s why you go to church or other place of worship, please do so.
There is a controversy in the US about where Barack Obama was born ie was he born in the US or in Kenya. If it were the latter, under the constitution, Obama would be precluded from the presidency. Obama has provided a birth certificate establishing his birth place as being Hawaii but it has not satisfied his detractors.
The term used to denote the people who are challenging Obama’s legitimacy as president, because he was allegedly born outside the US, is “birthers”. There is also a group among the “birthers” who claim that even if Obama was born in the US he is not eligible to be president under the constitution because he is not “natural born” as called for by the constitution since his father was a Kenyan. Tangentially, there is a controversy ignited by former president, Jimmy Carter, that at least some of the opposition to Obama is related to his race.
The purpose of this post is neither to discuss the legal issues nor to discuss in any detail whether Carter’s charge of racism has merit. What I wanted to comment on is some polling I saw that is revealing and, perhaps, offers a clue as to how much of a factor Obama’s race is when it comes to the “birther” controversy.
Here are some salient findings (quoted almost verbatim) from two polls (Research 2000 & “Public Policy Polling”):
In the Research 2000 poll:
-“93 percent of Democrats say he was born in the country and 83 percent of Independents, the figure is only 42 percent for Republicans. A majority of Republicans either believe he was born abroad (28 percent) or don’t know (30 percent)
-“a majority of Southerners either believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States (23 percent) or are not sure (30 percent). Only 47 percent of Southern respondents believe Obama was born in the USA. By contrast, 93 percent of Northeasterns said yes, he was born here, 90 percent of Midwesterners did and 87 percent of Westerners.”
In the Public Policy Polling:
– “62% of Americans think Obama was born here, while 24% think he was not and 14% are unsure
– “10% of the country thinks that he was born in Indonesia, 7% think he was born in Kenya, and 1% think he was born in the Philippines.
– “That leaves 20%, which includes at least some people who correctly believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but who don’t consider Hawaii to be part of the United States. You read that right- 6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure.
– “It’s hard to say what the rest of that 20% thinks. We did ask them if they thought Obama was born in France and while less than half a percent of respondents did, two thirds of that remaining 20% said they ‘weren’t sure’ whether Obama was a Frenchman.
“So who are the birthers?
I received several emails about my last post on China so I thought I’d post again about our trip on a more light-hearted note.
The two most challenging aspects of our stay in China were language issues and food. Communication in English is severely limited though we did find that the younger generation were a little more proficient than others. People were invariably very friendly and anxious to help but limited in their ability to do so because even rudimentary English is not spoken.
The other, occasionally frustrating aspect, was our lack of familiarity with the food. Chinese food in China does not bear the faintest resemblance to Chinese food served in the US, the UK or in India. Now this did result in some amusing situations as we tried to communicate our food orders. A Chinese lady who shared our table during the Yangtze cruise wrote on a piece of paper in Mandarin the words for “beef”, “chicken”, “pork” and “fish”. We would show the waiter or waitress the paper to understand what type of meat or fish was being served or to specify what we wanted served! If all else failed our fall-back was McDonalds, KFC or Pizza Hut!!
One of the more amusing incidents that occurred was in Beijing at a restaurant renowned for its Peking Duck.
“I want my country back” is the sometimes plaintive, occasionally frustrated and frequently angry cry of a fringe section of the Republican party. I never fully understood what these people meant until I read a couple of Patrick Buchanan’s columns
Pat Buchanan has decidedly right wing views but he is one a handful of conservative columnists I enjoying reading. Although Buchanan is very conservative on many issues he sometimes blazes his own path eg he was outspoken in his opposition to the war in Iraq which he felt was a war being waged by the neo-cons for their own reasons. He is also critical of Israel’s expansionist policies in Palestine which in turn has caused him to be labeled as anti-Semitic by many Jews.
Pat Buchanan worked for Richard Nixon and he openly and proudly states that he advised Nixon to burn the tapes which were to result in his downfall over the Watergate scandal. In later years he sought the presidency of the US and was viewed by some as responsible for Papa Bush’s defeat by Clinton in 1992.
He was also unintentionally responsible for Al Gore’s loss of Florida in the 2000 presidential election which resulted in George W Bush winning the presidency. He won a lot of votes in a predominantly Jewish district of Florida. It turned out that many of the Jewish voters who voted for Buchanan inadvertently voted for him because of confusion over the design of the ballot – they thought they were voting for Gore even as they voted for Buchanan. Even Buchanan admitted that the number of votes he won in that district did not make sense given the demographics of that district.
Buchanan has been accused of being a racist – a charge that those who know him well say is unfounded. But he makes no bones about his concern about the changing face of the US. As he puts it:
“Without the assent of her people, America is being converted from a Christian country, nine in 10 of whose people traced their roots to Europe as late as the time of JFK, into a multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural Tower of Babel not seen since the late Roman Empire.”
Shades of Enoch Powell who expressed similar views about the flood of non-white immigrants into the United Kingdom in the 60s’.
So said Napoleon Bonaparte presciently two hundred years ago. I am not sure if Napoleon was focused purely on the military aspects or whether he saw China’s potential in broader terms.
Napoleon’s admonition came to mind during a recent visit we made to China. We spent close to four weeks there and were truly STUNNED by the progress the country has made. The world saw what China achieved in terms of the Olympics in 2008 and in a sense that event is a microcosm of what they have achieved in other respects. Despite all the new construction, the Chinese have made a concerted attempt to enhance and preserve their numerous cultural attractions.
Admittedly my travels were mainly to cities – large and small – and saw little of the rural areas. I talked to several people who have been to China multiple times – some as long ago as 1982 and others as recently as 2000. They all agree that China’s progress is beyond description. A Texan, on assignment in Shanghai, told me China is not a third world or developing country. Its infra-structure compares with that of the US and in some respects is ahead of the US. Six lane highways abound both in small and large cities.
Having an authoritarian regime that brooks no opposition enables them to makes things happen expeditiously. What they have done is to learn from what the West did wrong and plan their cities accordingly.For example, Beijing has six “ring roads” – analogous to the Beltway in DC – and they are in concentric circles starting with one close to the city center and extending to the outskirts of the city. “New Shanghai” which today boasts a skyline that is comparable to any major city in the US was literally farmland fifteen years ago. The train from Pudong airport in Shanghai to the city reaches a top speed of 430kph and completes its 30km journey in 7 minutes! It takes at least an hour to do the same journey by taxi.
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My younger daughter, Neeta, moved from California to Northern Virginia a few days ago. So I now have my three children and two grand-children within a few miles of where I live. I also have my brother, Peter, and his family in close vicinity. So I have an abundance of family physically close to me!
It is the dream of most parents – and especially Indian parents – to have their children living close to them though it is an aspiration that is rarely realized given the demands and exigencies of life today.
I recall reading an internet posting of a former colleague of mine who hailed from England and who I worked with in the early/mid 70s’. He posted on some site that was for the alumni of his high school that he was from some small town in England but he considered “home” to be where he now lives in the Mid-West since his only child and her children also live – he said “home, after all, is where one’s children are located”!
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It has been a while since I updated this blog – attributable to laziness and procrastination.
The catalyst for starting again was a thought-provoking email I received from my older brother, George, who is 70 years and was recently diagnosed with “vocal nodules” – also called “singer’s nodules” or “screamer’s nodules”. George is not much of a “screamer” and his singing is, for the most part, limited to a bawdy song about Cleopatra. It is more likely the result of excessive talking having taken its toll as he makes presentations to audiences around the world on the subject of multi-cultural mathematics. Apparently the remedy for this particular ailment is to minimize the use of one’s vocal chords which essentially means talking as little as possible.
“Non-speaking bliss” is how George’s daughter, Holly, referred to it. This, in turn, reminded me of my father when he was getting hard of hearing. He was averse to the use of a hearing aid – he claimed that it was because of the background noise from the hearing aid. He also said the continuous use of the hearing aid would necessitate replacing the battery frequently which he deemed an unnecessary expense – echoes of an episode of “Fawlty Towers” with the female guest who would not turn on her hearing aid to conserve the battery! In my father’s case his inability to hear was rather selective and one could not help coming to the conclusion that it suited his purpose to either not hear or claim that he was not able to hear depending on who was talking to him!
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So something happened last night in Singapore that was for me a “first”.
We had gone on an organized city tour which lasted several hours and took in the main highlights of Singapore. Following the tour, we decided to have dinner on Orchard Street which is one of the main shopping areas in the city. We then took the MRT – which is Singapore’s subway system – to return to the hotel. The train was crowded and it was standing room only. As I grabbed one of the overhead “pulls” in front of a row of seated passengers, a Chinese lady who looked like she was in her late 30s’ gestured to me to ask if I’d like her seat!! I thanked her and declined.
We will be spending the next four weeks, commencing the 22nd, visiting Singapore/Hong Kong/Macau/China and I have been working on an itinerary for mainland China by researching travel sites.
I came across an informative – albeit, lengthy – trip report by an Australian woman who visited China with her husband relatively recently. The excerpt below is quoted verbatim. It should be noted that her overall report about China was quite balanced even if the excerpt is somewhat critical.
Those who know me can relate to the minor trepidation I felt after reading her report given that I, too, am likely to have the same problem as this lady’s husband! It is hilarious to read – although the lady’s husband was less than amused!
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To quote the inimitable Yogi Berra: “It feels like deja-vu all over again”!
When Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, uttered the infamous phrase – “greed is good” – during the 1987 movie, “Wall Street”, shown in the above video clip, he went on to say:
“Greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but also that malfunctioning corporation called the USA”
The “malfunctioning corporation”, as Gekko referred to the US, has had its economy and that of many other countries just about brought to its knees because of greed and imprudent risk taking by real-life Gekkos’.
Milken
Boesky
The Gekko character was based on a composite of real life individuals including the junk-bond king, Michael Milken, and Ivan Boesky, an arbitrageur. a
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In trying to find a suitable title for this blog, I checked out a lot of sites – including a blog that was started by someone wanting suggestions from readers as to what he/she should name the blog! I settled on “Reflections, Ruminations & Recollections” because it captured what this blog is about. It is not a snazzy title – I am leaving it to my kids, and especially Neeta who is probably the most creative one, to come up with something that has more pizzaz!
One does have to be careful when coming up with a name or it could lead to unintended consequences as is only too apparent in these actual domain names. Read the rest of this entry »
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