The American Insurance Group, the world’s largest Insurance company, situated in US, was amongst the most respected insurance companies just few years back. But with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 beginning, and with the sub-prime crisis growing out of proportion, and with commodity prices crash landing, AIG went into deep financial mess.

They were forced to seek an immediate 60 billion dollar aid from the US government in the middle of 2008 saying that they badly need the money , otherwise they will sink. The US government then could not afford to allow another big financial institution to fail, hence they forcibly agreed and pumped the money.

But the problem is not over. AIG has now sought another 100 billion dollars from the government, saying that they are unable to meet their financial liabilities to many other global institutions. They have also thrown a bomb shell on the US government saying that even after this second round of pumping in of huge funds, they may still make losses in the coming quarters.

Now, the US government is feeling the heat, because the money it will be paying to bail out AIG will be tax payers money, and it cannot be used without any end in sight. Over the next few months, we can expect a major revamp of the AIG top management because we cannot allow the same management with no control over the company, to continue managing the affairs.

Finding a capable new management for a messed up organization like AIG is a bigger trouble for the new Obama government, which looks inevitable. It will also make lot of sense to change the management as quickly as possible, because continuation of current messy style of functioning can put AIG under further financial strain which Obama cannot afford. Also changing the entire top management could also send the right signals to erring companies including top banks and automobile companies.

India is known for its Information Technology capabilities, due to its huge English educated skilled labor. Over the last decade, top Indian IT companies have been able to garner more business than their technically superior US and European IT companies only based on their cost efficiencies.

The Indian IT industry has been able to grow at an astounding 35% annually for the last decade or so, even during the Y2K problem and the internet bubble burst. And Satyam computers limited, ranked fourth largest in India, was amongst the best rated companies in terms of corporate governance.

Now, the Satyam Computers chairman Ramalinga Raju himself has confessed to defrauding the company to the tune of over 1.5 billion dollars. He said in a written communication to the stock exchanges that he was forced to inflate the top line and bottom line figures of the company to make it look big and gain more business. He said that over the last few years the problem has grown beyond his control and hence he has accepted his mistakes now.

This fraud episode is indeed expected to force the already fearing Foreign institutional investors out of India and that does not augur well for the Indian economy. The government on its part has gone swiftly into action and arrested the Chairman and few more senior directors.  More arrests and investigations are likely in coming weeks, but given the Indian history towards such scams, people are not expecting anything tangible to come out of the investigations.

It is important to note that India has the record of getting into some scam or the other once every few years. The famous scams of the past include Harshad Mehta scam , IPO scam

Prevention is better than cure. Pro-active identification of any ailment / disease can help you to cure the same easily with minimal efforts. Being human beings, and with all kinds of wrong practices in terms of not exercising and poor eating habits, we are bound to have innumerable health issues.

To complicate this, we also do not sleep on time and adequately most of the times. The greed for growing faster and having everything we see or read, puts our blood under pressure. Thus after we cross 35 years, we are bound to have obesity, blood pressure, sugar, hair loss, general weakness, eye sight issues, bone joint issues etc.

We can easily come out of any of our body related problems with minimal efforts through medicines and exercises, provided we identify it early. All we need to do is to check our health every year. By doing a master health check up that can take just a few hours of your time once a year, you will be able to identify any abnormality right at the beginning stage.

This will help the doctor to provide you pro active treatment and cure the problem quickly with minimal efforts. Not doing your annual medical checkup might prove very costly, because with passing age, any major ailment might need surgeries and long term medication which need to be avoided.

The US Auto majors were taunted a decade back for their technical excellence and they were amongst the most profitable automobile companies in the globe. Slowly but steadily, the Japanese auto giants started overtaking the US automobile giants and in the last few years they have grown faster in terms of profitability and also in terms of technology.

In the past few years due to dropping demand for their brands in US and also across the world, the US auto giants, namely Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, were seeing their top line recording flat to negative growth. Also , their profits were vanishing.

Now, with the deep economic crisis shocking everybody, the already weak US auto giants are deep in red, and are screaming for bailout financing from the US government. But the government is already bleeding with billions of dollars funding to the banks and insurance companies.

So the US government has already indicated that they may not be able to extend any financial help unless it is direly needed. The US auto giants have already done few rounds of presentations to the US government authorities including the FED, and they have even expressed their fear that any further delay in funding might lead to their bankruptcy. God only should help US and the world.

The UK housing prices have been plunging for the last year or so, and the latest monthly data shows no sign of recovery. With more and more people losing their Jobs every month, the problem is only expected to get compounded in coming months. The UK Central Bank has already cut its interest rates aggressively in the past couple of months, and more cuts are likely in the near future.

Experts tracking the housing prices, say that further housing price erosion will be hitting the base confidence of millions of people, and even genuine buyers might stay away from buying their houses. That can have a cascading effect on host of industries and the economy as a whole.

So, expect the UK government to take further drastic measures in the coming months, which might include taking the interest rates to almost zero levels like the US FED. As it has already used all the tax related tools, it might take the final step of going in for fresh currency printing in order to boost the economy and put fresh life into the banking system.

Let us all hope that the UK economy revives at least by the end of 2009, because continued downturn in UK and US would mean more pain for the rest of the world, which is not acceptable.

Swimming is one of the most enjoyable form of physical exercising for kids, adults and elders. Swimming for at least half an hour a day will go a long way in ensuring good health for you throughout your life time. When you are swimming, you enjoy every bit of it, and without yourself even feeling about it, you are exercising every part of your body.

The diving, the movement of your hands, body and legs puts lot of exercising to these parts. Also the splashing of water and also the water pressure depending on the depth levels and your diving height, activates major parts of your body. And needless to say, the huge inhaling and exhaling and also the holding of breathe for longer durations during swimming, ensures oxygen for every nook and corner of your body.

And by the end of your swimming for the day, you would have unknowingly completed the physical exercising requirements for the day. So, if you are swimming for half an hour a day, and also ensuring decent food eating habits, you can be absolutely sure of trim and healthy body always. So, go ahead and swim your way to health, right from today and enjoy every day of your life in full. No disease or disruption due to health issues is a wonderful thing and is better understood when you fall sick.

The Inflation has been haunting the Indian economy in the year 2008 right from the beginning. The central bank i.e, Reserve Bank of India, has not been able to cut down the interest rates in line with the global trend, only because the inflation was continuing to hover in two digits till few months back.

Now with crude oil prices crashing, and all other industrial commodities also crashing, and a decent agricultural output in the last few months,  India is seeing the inflation going below the 5% for the first time in over 15 months. The central bank is expected to announce sharp cuts in bank lending rates in the coming weeks, because the Indian economy is also facing a sharp drop in its exports and for the first time it has gone into negative growth rate.

This has definitely caused concern for the authorities including the ruling government, because with general elections round the corner, they need to take all the steps possible to revive the economy. The ruling government has gone to the extent of cutting down the petrol and diesel prices sharply in the last few weeks, and with further cooling down of the crude oil prices, political experts say that there could be more oil price cuts in the offing. That could be a small bit of good news for the 100 billion Indians.

The entire oil consuming countries including US, Japan, China and India were at the receiving end for the last two years due to the steep spike in the Crude oil prices. The crude oil prices went up from around 30 dollars to over 146 dollars in 2007 and 2008. The OPEC countries were blaming the surge in the consumption in China and US, and also the speculators for the spike in Price and went to the extent of saying that the realistic price for Crude is around 150 dollars.

In the last six months, the Crude oil prices have started softening, that too sharply, due to the global economic meltdown. The US announced that its financial system is in a mess, and its economy is heading for a recession. It was soon followed by China and Japan indicating that their exports are seen crashing due to weak demand in US and Europe.

And with the financial messup, all the speculators have been forced to wind up their forward position in all commodities including crude oil. That has forced the crude oil prices to touch a new year low of below 80 dollars this month. There are seasoned experts who are predicting the crude oil prices to go below sixty dollars to a barrel in 2009. That could be a silver lining for all oil consuming countries and their billions of customers.