Tuesday, January 30, 2007

el nino, drought, inflation and other monsters

jan 30th, 2007

the extreme cold weather that hit california recently is supposed to be el nino related. and we know from good old mike davies (late victorian holocausts: el nino and the making of the third world) that the result is drought in the deccan.

what does this portend for the indian stock market? a sharp drop in 2007 as the rains fail?

with inflation already shooting up, this is a scary prospect.

if stocks are going to drop, have to abandon the equity mutual funds. if inflation is going up and interest rates too, then have to abandon the bond mutual funds.

if both are happening, then cash is king, i suppose. this might also burst the real estate bubble. i hear prices have stabilized in bangalore and delhi after shooting through the roof recently.

2 comments:

Ghost Writer said...

Rajeev,
The first thing we have to do is to get water harvesting going in a big big way in India. It's not just El Nino thats the threat - the Hans are about to divert all major rivers starting with the Brahmaputra, thus reducing us to a wasteland. Imagine all those Bangladeshi refugees pouring in because there is no more food left in their country - one shudders at the mere thought.

On another note - this one in the Pioneer today got me laughing till I fell off my chair.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage&file_name=story2%2Etxt&counter_img=2
Now the Comrades are calling the Mohd.'s "communal". Well - cest la vie Comrade - you thought that by registering all those illegal Mohammedans on the electoral rolls you could actually hold on to them forever? That was only until they formed their own "Muslim league" party, and voted themselves in (and you out). You heard it first here - Muslim League Part Deux - coming soon to West Bengal

nizhal yoddha said...

ghostwriter, that *is* funny. this fits with my hunch about marxists and mohammedan-love: if marxists have a choice between their wallets and their mohammedan-love, the wallet wins every time! the chinese have demonstrated this too, by regularly shooting mohammedans in xinjiang when they threaten their extraction of minerals.

apparently, 'secularism' stops when their pocketbooks are at stake :-)