Tuesday, September 16, 2008

the end of lehman bros and the buyout of merill lynch, etc.

sep 16th, 2008

i find all this quite remarkable. is the crisis taking on a life of its own? if someone had told me a year ago that bear stearns and lehman and merrill would be in such bad shape i wouldn't have believed them.

i am also trying to figure out whether this crash is a buying opportunity or whether i should sit tight on cash (FDIC ki jai!).

it's sad in a way. after we are all finished with the schadenfreude (i love that word, and the concept of taking small guilty pleasure at someone else's minor misfortune -- although in this case it is a fairly large misfortune) i wonder if the american-led financial system is in complete shambles, and what it would mean to the allegedly booming indian stock market as well. in some sense, the huge valuations in the indian market (3000 to 20000 in a short while) were based on speculative plays by these american market participants. now that they are running for cover, does it mean the indian market is now going to be trending down for some years?

2 comments:

Tranquil said...

I am sure one person would not be surprised or shocked at all.

That is S.Gurumurthy.

For quite a long time , he has been writing extensively in thuglak about how dangerously illusory this so called 'richness' of America is.He is not one of those asinine West bashing leftists.His grasp over several facts & ground realities is simply breathtaking.

He always warns against India's eyes-wide-shut embracing of credit card-consumerism-westoxicating culture.

Recently a commission constituted of people like Vittal( ex Vigilance ) unearthed, that money salted away by India's politicians & VIPs in Swiss bank & elsewhere can not only wipe out all our debts but would make India formidably rich.

If this crisis emasculates them all including environment unfriendly industrialists , big pharmas ( with their invent 50 diseases a day with 100 vaccines & breakthrough medicines policy)I am more than gratified.

sansk said...

like US currency indian stock market is heavily rigged. It would be a long and painful period because the world's biggest consumer won't be able to consume outside its resources.
This is very likely to pull down indian IT and real-estate growth story because to a large extent both are interdependent and linked to US real-estate bubble.

In the extreme case US might take the route Zimbabew has already taken.