Metamorphose

Stings forgone,
Loathe outgrown,
Tireless tufts
-  A silken solitude

A statuesque silence
Pained to perfection,
Paragonian  pressures
- A sheathed solitaire

A feathery flight,
A surreal sight,
A chiffony caress,
A worshipped witness

Bubbles and Billions of Bucks!

I started my career working for an export house in India and hence had developed a keen interest in international trade early on. However, with my current career in banking after moving to the United States, the interest has increased manifold especially with the global impacts of the Great Recession creating a universal consciousness around creating a stable economic environment across countries.  I wanted to share two articles as regards the economic facets of global business.

The first talks about looking out for bubbles in the global business environment and the second lists out the trends of global inflation.A combined review of both is interesting to analyze because of the interrelationships between inflationary trends, interest rates and the financial markets and the delicate balances required to be maintained in order to prevent far-reaching adverse impacts.

http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/watching-bubbles/
http://online.wsj.com/articles/global-inflation-picks-up-in-april-1401875791

The first article lists out how the global rise in asset prices may be an output of the money pumped into the economy by the Central Banks of countries across the globe and discusses on whether this would be a bubble that would burst in a manner similar to the mortgage-backed securities burst of 2008, causing the Great Recession. It discusses on whether the Central Banks should consider increasing interest rates in order to reduce risky investments. The second article reports on how global inflation is picking up and how necessary it is in order to continue in the path of the global economic recovery. In this case, interest rates are not something that Central Banks would look to increase in order to encourage consumer spending. While I found both articles interesting and thought provoking, because of the intricate interdependence of economies across the world in terms of almost all aspects of business, the combination of both sets of information and how it might impact policy decisions of Central Banks around interest rates is even more interesting.

Further, the national economies have different types of economic systems such as market economy, mixed economy and command economy. The systems outline how decisions are made in each economic system. Hence, another thought-provoking as well as connected consideration is how the different economic systems adjust to these global trends and pressures to keep them going, despite their different mechanisms and ideologies.

I hope you enjoy reading this post and were able to enhance your knowledge of the current global economic and business environment a little further.

Shift Happens

Shift Happens is a series stating the movement or distribution of resources in different countries across the globe. This is a phenomenon occurring due to natural as well as man-made factors and is too large to be controlled by any group of people or nations. The moot point then is to shift with the ‘shift’ in a direction that will lead to growth and prosperity for ourselves as well as for everything that we impact in our course of activities.

While this global shift of resources happened from the western nations to the emerging markets, I have been through my own ‘shift’ of 8500 miles in the reverse direction while moving from India to the United States. Despite arriving just a couple years before the Great Recession hit the US economy, I managed to make for myself a career in banking through the troubled times.However, considering the vast technological jumps and with it emerging careers and ways of doing business, it has me thinking on whether I should enhance my skills further to keep up with the global trends. Even though my personal inclination is to use technology only as much as absolutely necessary in today’s course of life, I believe staying abreast and honing new skills will become absolutely necessary to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the shift.

The presentation on Shift Happens lays focus on several aspects of growth in the emerging economies such as China and India. It also lays down facts about technological advances and how it precipitates a one-world norm for humankind. However, it doesn’t lay out the parallel shift that could be happening wherein developed nations are benefited by the growth of the emerging economies as well as information technology. For example, the off-shoring of jobs could lead to creation of jobs in the home country due to expansion of the entire industry made possible by the catering of the basic requirements through off-shoring.Countries could gain reciprocal advantages and join hands to eradicate some of the problems of the dark ages that still linger on as well as newer or emerging issues that plague humanity as a whole through multinational cooperation.

Globalization causes movement in multiple dimensions across the globe. It is for us to make sure that we reap its benefits while minimizing the bad effects. Our objective should be to remain engaged in information about changes that are taking place if we do not want to be left behind and ensure we are securing our future prospects in career growth and stability. At the same time, we should also keep in mind reciprocal benefits that we may be able to leverage even if a particular shift appears to impact us adversely. Shift has happened in our planet from its very genesis. Compared to the ones that history has recorded, this shift in the global power-houses and technology is trivial no matter how huge it appears in mankind’s own relative recent history. The goal should be to make the most of it for the benefit of everyone like never before.