| Housewives cash in as India learns that even gold has its price
India's love affair with gold is waning as high prices deter casual buyers in the world's largest gold importer and savvy housewives try to sell their spare jewellery to capitalise on rocketing prices. As gold, which traditionally is viewed as a safe haven in uncertain times, hovered close to record highs yesterday, Suresh Hundia, head of the Bombay Bullion Association (BBA), said that Indian consumers were deferring all but the most essential purchases. "Households are selling spare gold. There is zero demand at these prices in India," he said. Gold hit a record $923.40 (£465) an ounce in New York last week, as investors hurt by tumbling share prices put their money in the yellow metal. Prices have also been buoyed by power outages in South Africa, which have hurt production in goldmines there.
Adobe's Outlook: A Pretty Picture
INVESTORS SEEM MORE INTENT on finding fault with Adobe Systems than rewarding performance. When we wrote our bullish cover story on the software company last spring ("High-Wired Act," April 16), we figured that the Street's then-estimate of $1.48 a share for the 2007 fiscal year, was too low. Thanks to the likely success of the 13 linked programs that make up the San Jose, Calif., company's new Creative Suite 3 (CS3), we predicted that earnings would be closer to $1.60. Well, with the full fiscal year having ended last month, profits came in at $1.61. Although the stock (ticker: ADBE) jumped 7½% the day after the company announced an unexpectedly large fourth-quarter earnings gain of 21%, it has since traded lower, to around 42.17. That's almost exactly where it was at the time of our story, when we thought the stock was headed to 50.
America will soon seem like fond Hollywood memory
If memory serves, and generally speaking it does not, there was once one of those mad Beatlemania press conferences. In 1964, I think. Mr Lennon was asked how he had "found" America. John dodged the obvious joke, and did better. "It's just like Britain, really," he said. "But with buttons." For a child of the time, this was entirely true. They had the TV button. They had the glamour button. They had the hydrogen bomb button. They had the button that could devalue your pound, destroy a sovereign foreign policy and turn everything you ever knew into a suburb of a cowpoke town. A button. .
CEO & Wholetime Director, JPMorgan AMC
For the rest, we are pretty well protected: systemic risks in our stock markets are probably the best managed in the world.
Some of the world's leading economies are going through problems and India will not be completely immune from this; but the resilience of a transparent, democratic economy with a billion people behind it should not be underestimated. I suspect our much-criticised democracy will stand us in good stead during these times and bring us out stronger, as will the dynamism of our entrepreneurial class. Similarly, I believe that our rather cautious approach to systemic changes will also stand us in good stead. The global problems may be an opportunity to take India to the next level: nothing like a meltdown to level the playing field.
It is usually asked at these times whether our local institutional investors can compensate for the foreigners.
Imperialist Propaganda
American media is in the business of “manufacturing consent" for war crimes in support of corporate profit. The $Trillions wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan in an effort to subsidize American oil corporation's hegemony over resources in those regions has already exceeded the profits that may be realized. This has become the largest corporate subsidy in world history and is slowing draining the American economy. Unfortunately, win or loose, the military corporate complex is making money and recycling those profits in the form of campaign donations and lobbyist to keep a vicious cycle in motion. War related deficit spending has also fueled inflation thus raising energy prices for the average consumer. No doubt, “One of the severe side effects of imperialism in its advanced stages seems to be that it rots the brains of the imperialists." Americans have not only become blind to crimes against humanity but can't seem to see that this 21st century version of imperialism is economic suicide.
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