When unity is not strength – Greek Fiasco

On 1^st Jan 1999, eleven European countries joined together and adopted Euro as their official currency. These eleven countries joined forces with an intention to bring stability to the region and also to develop an alternate currency to dollar. With the advent of Euro, it made trade, investment and travel easier for these European countries. Also joining together made currency of each of these countries stronger. Euro was considered to be as strong and stable as dollar or yen. In 2001, Greece became the twelfth country to adopt Euro as its currency. Decision to include Greece in the list was more of a political decision than an economic one because Greece was not as stable as other countries in the region. A clear north-south divide in Euro was prominent. On one hand there were countries like Germany, in North, which had a strong economy and which relied on exports to power its growth, saved hard and ran trade surpluses. On the other hand, Southern economies such as Greece leant too much on consumer spending, had weak public finances and relied on foreign capital to supplement their low savings. This was the coming together of two un-equals and differences were obvious. But still Euro members went ahead and included Greece within their fold. As they say, when economy is booming everything you touch becomes gold and so was the case of Euro, it moved from strength to strength and problems with Greece was neglected. Some people had predicted that such a situation would arise soon after the inclusion of Greece in the group. For Greece, membership was a boom. It allowed government to refinance debt in favourable terms and also improved the sovereign rating of the country and thus gave easy access to long term borrowings.

But history continued to haunt Greece. Always known to have fiscal trouble, Greece continued with its chronic budgetary mismanagement, resulting in public debt to increase more than 100% of GDP and fiscal deficit to increase to 12.7% of GDP. And now rating agencies have reduced the ratings of Greece to BBB- and thus downgrading the sovereign rating of the country. There have been many voices which are suggesting removing Greece from the group and still many who are insisting to keep it within the group. It will be a tough decision for Euro to decide whether to bail out or to let IMF bailout Greece from this financial mess. The treaty governing the European Union includes a “no bailout” clause, forbidding countries from assuming debt of others. But then it would set a very bad precedent for Euro if it lets one of its member default, so the logic step would to bailout Greece themselves and then enforcing steps to ensure that Greece would not resort to such loose fiscal measures in the future.

Some experts are calling this as the beginning of the end of Euro. But we all know it’s always good to get pot holes at the start of the journey so that you learn to build the road to the future and this is just the beginning of the Euro journey.

Sex, Lies and Celebrities

Of late media has found new ways of exposing celebrities. And by exposing I really mean exposing them really bad. It started with Tiger Woods, followed by N D Tiwari and few days back it was the turn of Chelsea & English skipper John Terry. But what makes these exposures really turn around our head and make us sit and waste hours in front of TV, newspapers, etc. We always have been inspired by heroes and we always live our dreams through them. These celebrities give us the joy of living through the lives we have always dreamt of. So we follow our celebrities in their moment of joy and grief. We rejoice when they achieve something special and we celebrate in their moment of reckoning. The media put them to front page and make sure they are treated like Demi-gods. But what makes us really happy is when these Demi-gods fail. It’s human tendency that it gives us more happiness when the infallible falls. When we see these celebrities getting exposed then it gives us sigh of relief that they are also mortal human being. And media don’t fail to take advantage of this and makes sure they add all spice up reports and make a good business out of it. But should we really make such a fuss about celebrities and their personal lives? There isn’t a reason that the needs & desires of a Tiger Woods or a John Terry would be any different from that of an average person on the planet. But what makes their life different is that their life is always viewed under microscope and is in complete media limelight. So every action or statement by these celebrities makes it to the drawing room of their followers and fans. So it becomes the responsibility of a celebrity to act in such a way that he/she is idolized as a role model to millions of fans. But then as we say “To err is human and so are celebrities”. So it is the duty of us, common men, to become mature enough not to take extreme views in the event of rejoice and despair & let these celebrities have their personal space as well.

Save Tigers!!!

The other day I saw one TV Commercial where in I was astonished to see that there are only 1431 tigers left in India. This prompted me to write this blog. Tiger, our national animal, is on the verge of extinction. And we all are supposed to do our bit to help save tigers. But seriously speaking, what an ordinary citizens like us can do to help save tigers? We don’t hunt nor do we can stop hunting by becoming conscious of this grave situation. Even though we are not directly or indirectly responsible of this situation, we can do our bit in conversation of tigers. What as a citizen of this country we can is to spread this awareness among each and every people of this country by means of blogs, advertisement, street plays, internet chain mails, memo to governments, etc. While we do this we can be sure that someone, who is responsible, somewhere will become aware and might take necessary steps to stop killing of tigers. As a citizen of this country, it’s our duty to make sure that we don’t let our national animal ‘Tiger’ extinct.