The US FED has taken the bank interest rates to an all time low of near zero. This is expected to help banks to push more funds into the economy which is the only way to revive. Even with a very low interest rates, banks are reluctant to fund industries, fearing bad debts.

Quite a few of the US banks have gone under in the last one year due to bad debts created by the sub prime mortgage crisis and the Lehman Brothers collapse.  And most of the remaining banks have taken a huge financial support from the US government. Hence, no bank wants to take the risk of creating new bad debts.

The US FED is expected to take the next step of printing new currency notes and also direct buying of debt papers from leading corporates, in order to induce the banks to normalize their lending process. Once the recovery starts and normalcy returns to the credit market, authorities are expecting the growth to trickle in.

Only after the growth accentuates to a decent level, which is expected by the middle or end of 2010, we can expect the US FED to start raising the interest rates again, to cool the economy. Till then the low, near zero, interest rate regime is expected to stay.

The Indian economy is heading for trouble with its exports recording their negative growth rates in the last few months. Indian exporters of diamond jewelry, gold jewelry, leather products, engineering products, clothes and apparels, automobiles etc. are seeing their demand crashing like anything in the last few months.

More and more exporters are cutting down on their exports on their own, because they are not sure of the repayment capability of the importing parties. This is primarily because the export credit has literally dried up in most of the importing countries like US and Europe. That has forced lot of importers to default / delay the payments to the exporters from India.

The problem of the Indian economy is getting compounded by the Foreign investors on the other hand. The Foreign Institutional Investors, famously known as FIIs, have started pulling out their funds from India ever since the beginning of 2008. The withdrawal has continued, albeit at a low pace, in 2009 also. The continued withdrawal of dollars by the foreign funds has forced the Indian rupee to touch a new low of 50 rupees to a US dollar recently.

More interest rate cuts cannot be done by the Indian central bank like US FED or EU, because any sharp reduction in interest rates would lead to withdrawal of more debt funds by the FIIs. And many Indian companies in the sunrise software sector are laying off part of their work force, and many of the leading companies have announced freezing of their salaries for the next year.

So overall things are not looking rosy for India, and unless the US economy revives, the Indian economy might go into a tail spin, may be by the end of 2009. The next two / three months are going to be worse for the Indian economy, because the general elections are set to happen and no major policy decisions can be taken in the meantime. The new government will be in place only by June, and even after that key policy decisions could take time or may not be taken, because of coalition pressure.

The Swiss government has been thriving only on zero cost or low cost deposits worth trillions of dollars, made by tainted politicians and businessmen from across the world. The US government has sought the account transaction details of over 52000 US citizens , from the Swiss banking giant UBS.

While the Swiss government initially cited confidentiality agreements, it could not maintain the same , because US threatened it with black listing.  Now the Swiss government has agreed to share details of confirmed tainted people, with the US government which is expected to raise suspicion in the minds of millions of investors.

Already over the last one year or so, Swiss banks have lost over 1.5 billion of their deposits, which has lead to a tailspin of its economy. The latest commitment to share select information is most likely to instill fear in the minds of millions of investors from across the globe, who might start withdrawing their funds with Swiss banks.

This can further accentuate the recession in Swiss economy, and the entire Swiss banking system might be heading for trouble in the near future. US looks determined to cull out the data from Swiss banks, because it strongly feels that it can trace a few billions of evaded tax in those accounts. Such a drastic revealation could also mean reduction in further tax evasions by its citiznes, which can augment the government revenue collection.

So the loss of Swiss bank might be the gain of US and other countries. Countries like India with a huge tainted list of politicians and businessmen could be heading for an unexpected windfall, because all the billions of dollars to be withdrawn by its “great” citizens, could be forcibly ploughed back into the Indian economy, which could have a marvelous effect for the economy as a whole.  Overall, it could also reveal the link between businessmen and politicians and also the terrorist network, if any.

The new US President Barak Obama has unveiled a 850 billion US dollars stimulus plan which is expected to create over two million new Jobs in the US over the next few years. The plan includes infusion of funds into the weak banks, with a clear aim of putting the banking credit flow for the industry back on track.

The plan also includes support for the automobile industry, which is still under negotiation. Obama wants a good part of the amount to go to the lower income group people, in order to help them to keep their homes for a longer period. He strongly feels that the extended period of retaining their homes could help these low income people to work towards paying all their mortgage dues on time and retain their good credit rating.

He is also planning to spend a good part of the plan amount into infrastructure building including roads, bridges and power plants, which could generate more jobs for US citizens. He has also said that any US company taking the support of stimulus fund has to give priority for jobs for US citizens. He is also planning to put a ban on hiring of foreign talents by companies taking tax breaks.

This is expected to result in a sharp contraction in the outsourcing of jobs by US companies to low cost high output countries like India. But with the business environment in a very bad shape with all key industries like banking, insurance and automobiles reporting dismal performances, the US companies do not have any choice over cost control. Most of the US companies are bleeding, and they need to use every avenue for cost cutting, and the primary source could be outsourcing of highly paid jobs.

By doing that alone, the US industry can reduce their losses by 100 to 200 basis points, which is quite lucrative for the industry. But they cannot go against the government directions at least for the time being, and hence outsourcing is likely to remain curtailed for some more time.  Once the US economy shows some signs of revival, and the focus shifts on to growth management instead of crisis management, the US companies can slowly start outsourcing some of their high cost jobs to countries like India. Till then outsourcing has to definitely wait.

The most populous democratic country in the world, India, is heading for its general elections next month. The five year term of the present United Progressive Alliance, UPA, has come to an end last month. The Election commission has announced the election dates for all the states across the country to elect 534 members of Parliament next month.

Based on the latest alliance negotiations, it is very clear that neither of the two major political parties, namely the Congress and the BJP, are going to get simple majority on their own. And either of the party which comes somewhere close to the simple majority, has to seek the help of either the Left parties or other regional parties.

Whichever way it happens, it is going to be a marriage for the sake of convenience, of different parties with different ideologies. That only can lead to more confusion on key policies and more delays on economic reforms. Especially the regional strong parties like BSP and Left parties do not favor any more reforms , and in fact they may insist on reversing some of the policy decisions already implemented.

And if the margin of dependence on coalition parties is higher, then there is a strong possibility of the new government falling down without completing the full term.  That could lead to more uncertain future, which the foreign investors and even the local investors may not prefer.

Leading a healthy life needs just little but consistent efforts on a daily basis. You need to practice a few good habits like eating on time, eating balanced food consisting more vegetables and fruits, walking for at least half an hour a day , working for five to six hours a day effectively, and ensuring physical exercising for half an hour a day.

Physical exercising can be done in various forms including physical exercising through a gym, going for swimming, or walking for an hour or at least half an hour a day. And walking is the simplest of all the three, because you do not need any skill or guidance for doing that.

You need to just ensure that you do not eat before walking, and you need to walk continuously, and you need to avoid doing any other task while walking.  Over a period of time, you can slowly increase the walking time to at least one hour a day, which will ensure that you remain healthy for most part of your life. Walking needs to be continued with passing age, because in your late 50s or 60s, walking is the only way of physical exercising for your body. All the very best for a healthy life.

The Indian economy is in deep trouble with rising fiscal deficit and also due to falling exports. The crash in exports have been very steep in the last few months and all indications are that the pain will continue for few more months. The central bank is expecting the rupee pressure to remain and it has been forced to allow the rupee to tumble to a new low of 51 rupees to a dollar in the past few days.

The record low value for rupee to dollar, is in spite of record low prices for crude oil. India imports over 80% of its crude oil requirements and the sharp drop in crude oil prices has helped it to cut down its huge trade deficit marginally.
Experts tracking the country, say that the indian rupee will continue hitting new lows until the Foreign institutional investors start pumping in money into Indian economy. Given the bad state of affairs in US and Europe and Japan, there is indeed no scope for the foreign institutional investors to press new funds into India in the near future.
On the contrary, the foreign funds might accentuate their funds withdrawal from India, because lot of stocks are available cheap in US and Europe which they might not want to miss.

The crude oil prices took the entire world by surprise in the year 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 by touching multi-year highs almost every month. Ever since the middle of 2008, we are seeing the crude oil prices losing strength, due to weakening US economy and also the economic woes of rest of the world.

The entire Europe, Asia and OPEC depend on US for good part of their livelihood in the form of exports of goods and services to US. And with tumbling US due to sub-prime crisis, exports of all these countries have been badly affected. So there is reduced demand for crude oil form across the world.

This has pushed the crude oil prices to multi year lows in the last few weeks, with prices going below the 40 dollars mark. At this level, the crude oil prices are far lower than the prices even two year ago and this would mean sharp drop in the earnings of OPEC and Russia. OPEC countries can only hope for better and quicker recovery in the US and Europe, and also Japan and China, so that crude oil prices can come to respectable 50-70 dollars level.

And when the whole world is talking of further drop in crude oil prices, we can expect it to remain at least range bound in the 30 to 50 dollars band, for at least a couple of months.