From light to darkness

Tamaso jyothirgamaya is a famous quote from tha Upanishads which basically say that let me go from darkness to light. But now I think we have to reverse the quotation. Let us go from light to darkness. I am not pessimistic here but the dark underworld is much more interesting.
First concerning the nature of the universe. Scientists say that the visible matter accounts for less than 1% of the total universe's mass. The rest of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is said to constitute around 10% of the universe's mass and dark energy is said to constitute 90% of the universe's mass. Nobody has any clue what this dark matter and dark energy are. But the effects are quite visible. Galaxies are tearing apart from each other at phenomenal speeds and this cannot be explained by the visible matter at all. Scientists say dark energy is responsible for it, a sort of anti-gravity. Dark matter is also present as black holes and WIMPs (Weakly interacting Massive particles) which are hard to detect. There are talk of hidden dimensions and multiple universes in physics. So all of 21st century physics is in quest of darkness.
Second is the human organization and nature of dealings. There is a black market for goods, which forms a substantial portion of our GDP. There is the unorganized sector which accounts for 50% of the GDP. Things are accomplished without explicit rules and mainly through relationships and word of mouth. There is vast amount of black money in excess of $1trillion which is hidden from the formal world. Most of the stock trade in US happens in dark pools in which players do deals privately. The amount of derivatives and the OTC trade which happens discreetly is $2400 trillion which is mind boggling. Much of world trade is for transfer pricing and tax evasion. 70% of the internet traffic is for torrent downloads and other filesharing. In other words most of the formal world is just the tip of the iceberg. The real business is deep within hidden from the public.
The third is the human mind. There are so many things within in the subconscious that we do not know. It is all hidden deep within us. Our values, our biases and our desires all stem from it. We do not want to know about it or we do not have mechanisms to uncover it. It is deep within us, hidden from the conscious mind, but they are the ultimate drivers of our behavior.
We either have to redefine the unknown and stop calling it darkness or we have to go and explore the darkness since we only see and learn the tip of the iceberg in our everyday lives but the real action happens underground

Towards an epic crash

Earlier I had written about the continuing financial crisis which has plagued the developed world. Now the motions towards the end game has been accelerated with competitive devaluations being conducted by all the major central banks of the world. The US Federal reserve is the biggest culprit of them all and is printing money like there is no tomorrow. It has already wasted $2 Trillion in propping up the junk mortgage backed securities. Even such a large amount has not propped up the economy. It is planning another QE2 with another trillion dollar. Money has transformed from being a "store of value" to just a number with trillions cropping all over the place. 

The ponzi scheme of fiat money is eventually going to come to an end and it will end in a spectacular collapse. The notional value of derivatives is around $2400 Trillion. That is around 50 times the World's GDP. Most of these derivatives are interest rate swaps which are highly sensitive to both interest rates and credit defaults. With so much money being pumped to revive the economy, there is massive uncertainty in what will happen. Fundamental market analysis is passe and old school now. When stock prices rise, it is not because the company is doing well. It is only because the Federal reserve is pumping in more money through benami accounts to prop up the market. With industrial production dropping across the world and more than 10% unemployment in US, the stock markets are jumping by more than 20% which is clearly ridiculous. 

The implied correlations between stocks are reaching 90%. Implied correlations are market expectations which give the amount of correlation between stocks. For example, steel and automobile stocks are related. If automobile sector is doing well, there will be more demand for steel and hence steel stocks are also expected to do well. But the correlation will not be perfect or even 80%. That is the whole concept of diversification. You invest in different companies and different sectors so that your overall risk is lesser. This is possible since there is no perfect correlation between stocks. 

With massive pumping of money into stock and bond markets the implied correlation is very high which means that there is no diversification at all. This will lead to massive understatement of risks and can cause a potential black swan event.

The corruption in US has reached such a level that there is perpetual money machine created by the Federal reserve for top US banks. The money machine gives free money for no risk and no investment. But this is available only for a select bunch of bankers. Basically the short term rate is 0.25% per annum in the US and the long rate for 10 year bond is 2-3%. So you borrow money in the short term from the Fed and lend it to the US government at 2-3% and make the cut for free. Since the Fed will maintain the yield curve at all costs, there is no risk involved at all. Basically it is taking money from one arm of the government and giving it to another arm and making a huge profit in the middle. With US government running $1.5 Trillion deficits every year, there is no shortage of business.

The US has become so indebted that its citizens don't even have the money to lend it to the government. 25% of the US debt is held by China, Japan and other countries. Another 25% is held by the Federal reserve by Printing money. Less than 10% is actually held by private individuals. Another huge chunk is held by Intergovernmental departments where the social security is invested in government bonds.

Ultimately this is all an unstable equilibrium and sooner or later it has to give in. It is only a matter of time. I was quite skeptical of gold in the beginning but if this behavior by central banks continue gold may reach huge valuations. Thankfully India has more than 25,000 tonnes of gold amounting to $1 Trillion safely distributed in thousands of temples and on bangles and necklaces of women. It may ultimately benefit from the impending mega train wreck that is going to happen soon

 

My history with computers

I have a long history with computers. I saw my first computer in 1992 when I was in 2nd standard. My dad had got it for replacing the old typewriter in the office. Back then I did not know anything about it at all. I was only interested in playing games. The first computer was just brought for a trial and all I remember about it that it had a green screen with command prompt. Apparently that cost about Rs 1 lakh. That computer was replaced by a computer which my dad actually bought. Along with the computer a dot matrix printer was also there. That dot matrix printer was strange in the sense that it also had a keypad. You could both type just like that without a computer or you can print using a word processing software.

I don't remember the make and other details of the computer. All I remember was that it had no hard disk. Everything including the OS had to be inserted through the floppy disk. You used to have big floppy disks at that time. Initially there was the boot disk and that had to be inserted. Next you had to insert any other floppy disk which contained your applications. The computer vendor had just given a single boot disk and you had no idea how reliable a 5 inch floppy disk was!! The boot disk was protected with the greatest of care. I had 3 favorite games. I only the remember the name of one game, "digger". It was a nice game where you had to dig through ground and then find treasures. Other game was one in which you had to traverse squares and after each level the number of squares doubled. You were also chased by enemies and had to avoid them.
The third game was paratroopers which is quite popular.

We had that computer till 1998 after which that computer started becoming obsolete. The word processing was done using Wordstar and it was kinda nice. Everything had to be done using keyboard since there was no mouse. Printing used to be a problem. So we decided to go for an all out upgrade. We got a new computer with Windows 3.1 and a brand new dot matrix printer. They gave a new CD with animated rhymes. I was playing cricket and chess in that computer. After some time we tried to install windows 98 on that computer and there was a big problem and none of it worked out. So in 2000 we got an upgrade and the computer had 5GB hard disk and 32MB RAM. I was using that computer till my 10th standard results after which I wanted to install AOE. With difficulty I was able to play AOE and close combat on that computer. The encarta CD was the most educating and that was my wikipedia for almost 5 years,

In 2002 we junked that computer and brought another good computer. This was state of the art at that time. We also got the BSNL netone connection. The early days of the internet was quite good. There used to be yahoo directories and I was searching there for the information I need there. I saw the website of  NITK first time in 2002. I did not have an email account and I thought having an email account was a big thing!! However I saw AIEEE,2nd PU, IIT, CET results all online.

I went to NITK in 2003 and I used to browse in CCC. There was NITK squirrel mail. My friend first showed me some email forwards in 2003 and I was quite enthralled by it. I  first saw Windows XP and liked it quite a bit. I quickly became conversant with it. I used to C programming in the old Borland C. Soon I wanted Windows XP and I got it installed in my home.
In 2004 we got the BSNL dataone broadband which offered 2MBPS speed which was amazing then. (The sad part is even after 6 years it is still 2MBPS). In 2004 I first encountered linux.

2005 was a phenomenal year for my computer skills. I got to learn MATLAB better and I also played around with VHDL. I did my first linux installation in my home and that was pretty horrendous with the GRUB and all that. I had become conversant with Windows XP and I installed/reinstalled changed drivers and played around with it a lot. I also did some basic Java programming for my internship in CDAC. I also got to know more about the hardware as I opened up the computer myself and examined the mother board, changed the hard disk etc.

I got my first laptop in 2006 and I tried to install linux on it. That was one big headache and finally managed it. But the linux installation went waste as I could never install magic(Layout tool) and SPICE on it. I deleted LINUX using windows recovery  tools and did it without reinstalling windows. I also learnt P2P networks and file sharing using torrents and eMule. NITK got internet in the hostels and I was busy modifying IP addresses to get better speed. I also learnt about wireshark and other network analyzers.

In 2007, NITK got a firewall to block some unwanted sites. I was able to connect to proxy servers and break open the firewall. This was quite an accomplishment. Then I also caught hold of amazing key loggers and I was able to get many passwords discreetly.

In TI I encountered the Solaris OS which was absolutely old school. I got to know some Unix commands and remote logins and simulation firing. I did not do much except some Perl programming and some file copying.

In 2008 I got my first Vista computer and from then on things have been a downhill as I never had to do anything drastic with the comp. I think slowly I will loose out on the fun part of tinkering with the computers

Terrorism & Evangalism

There has been a potrayal of Islam in the western press as a religion of violence and terrorists are inspired by Islam and wage jihad against everyone else. They are also show Islam as a regressive religion and it has no respect for human rights. To my mind it is mostly western propoganda. They just want to show themselves in a better light and in order to achieve it they have to disparage other religions. The common perception of hindusim is that hindus worship monkey gods and do snake charming or ride on an elephant. As Glenn Beck says the river Ganges(westerners cannot even pronounce Ganga) sounds like a disease. Hindus are casteist and they are "pagans" and hence need to be converted. Even the so called Indian americans like Bobby Jindal (Lousiana Governer) and Nikki Haley(Republican candidate for a senate seat) have to de-emphasize their Indian background, proclaim loudly that America gives them opportunity and go the extra mile to show that they are christian. If such a thing happens elsewhere they will shout religious discrimination. The fact is that religious discrimination is quite strong in southern united states. Probably the only difference between the southern united states & pakistan is that South USA is well off and technologically sophisticated. Otherwise it is mostly the same,the gun culture, religious fundamentalism, gender discrimination, racism and xenophobia are all there.

Unfortunately the evangelists from USA are promoting a number of terrorist missions in asia. Although I have no concrete proof to substantiate my claims, there has been evangelical funding of LTTE, Maoists, Nagas and Manipur based terrorists by the evangelical churches. Some of the top maoists and LTTE members are converted christians. There have been evangelical inspired terrorist movements in Myanmar. This was also shown in the Rambo IV movie where the burmese military attack missionaries and Rambo saves them. The only villian in all of this is really the evangelists. There are heavy conversion activities in Nepal and the rise of Maoist movement corresponds to it. Bhutan is also opening up to such interests by hiring McKinsey for consulting and opening of tourism will lead to huge influx of missionaries. There are also reports of heavy evangelism activities in China. Apparently 100 million people have been converted and they are all practicing their religion secretly. I think it is just a matter of time before some major event happens there also.

The point of this article is to suggest that how clever media manipulation can turn two similiar movements, one into a civilizing mission/freedom struggle/struggle for rights and the other into a terror movement. The sad fact is that whatever media dishes out has been accepted by the majority and anyone who opposes will be called a "rabid hindutva fundamentalist" and a "internet hindu"

Free will vs Destiny

The question of free will vs destiny is a common theme of western philosophy. There are big debates as to which one actually guides us. It is important from the western view point since they believe in heaven and hell. If you do not act out of your free will, then you cannot be held responsible for your actions. Consequently you must not suffer in hell for eternity for actions not of your own. Similarly you must not enjoy in heaven for actions not of your own. Hence the concept of heaven and hell require that you be responsible for your own actions.

Then there is the concept of destiny which says that you are not responsible for anything. You do what you have to do on the orders of a higher force and situations determine what kind of a person you are. Everything is pre-determined since you are a product of history and the historical path you have taken in life determines what you do in the future.

There are arguments for each of the points and the debate is quite an interesting one. I was a strong believer in free will once upon a time. I thought you determined what you wanted to be. But now I have changed my mind. It is only destiny. There is no such thing as free will. Whatever you think is a result of your past history. If you were born in a poor family, then you will a certain way of thinking. If you are born in a rich family and pampered you will have a different way of thinking. Based on the resources you had in the beginning, you would probably go to a good school or a govt school. Irrespective of how intelligent and how resourceful you are, background plays a very big role especially in a country like India. You will have access to information which others won't have. For example I did not know about the existence of IITs till I reached I PUC. Not that I regret not going to IITs. I still feel NITK is better than going to IITs.But the fact is that people do not have guidance in their lives and exposure to many things. The way you think and the value systems you have are mainly determined by the path you take and the experiences you have in life. The way you think determined what happens to you in the future assuming of course that you act on the basis of your thoughts.
So all in all, it is all destiny and there is nothing you can do about it. The only thing is that it is very hard to predict. Free will is just bullshit, meant to make ourselves feel good about ourselves.
Indian philosophy which recognizes the role of destiny is much more mature than the arcane western philosophy and is actually applicable to life

PS: Philosophers may say that the debate is only between free will compatible with determinism or not or sophistry of such sort

The Auranagazeb syndrome

The former prime minister of India P.V Narasimha Rao talked about the "Aurangazeb syndrome" which basically described the shitty situation during Aurangazeb's rule and how it applies to India of the 1990s. During Aurangazeb the Mughal empire was at the height of its power, stretching from Afghanistan to Assam and from Kashmir to Bangalore. But the empire was in decay. There were rebellions all over the place, in Deccan, golconda, Western ghats, Bengal, present day pakistan and so on. There was tremendous changes in the social fabric with the dominance of the muslim rule being challenged everywhere. The British were slowly becoming strong although they were crushed by Auragazeb in a skirmish. The centralized Mughal empire won every battle but totally lost the war. In 20 years after Aurangazeb's death the empire was a small shadow ruling no more than the city of Delhi.

The same situation was somewhat prevalent in the 1990's India with terrorism in Kashmir and Punjab, Maoists in central India, LTTE in Tamil Nadu, Terrorism throughout the north east, stagnating economy and increasing population growth. There were external problems from Pakistan getting nukes from china, the fall of the Soviet Union, gulf war and the worst of all the foreign exchange crisis and the IMF diktats. Thankfully India survived such a precarious position mostly due to the brilliant strategic thinking by bureaucrats and the PM PV Narasimha Rao. But congressism as usual denies him the true position he deserves in saving India from becoming Africa.

The coming lost decade

The lost decade is a decade in the history of a country which there is widespread economic stagnation and high unemployment. It is also characterized by loss of confidence in the populace and widespread social strife. There is hardly any progress scientifically or politically. India had its share of lost decades in the 1960s and the 1970s. Usually lost decade is referred when people talk of the Japanese economy in the 1990s and the 2000s. Japanese economy was doing very well in the 1970s and the 1980s and was 60% of the US economy. Japanese competitiveness was at an all time high. Toyota, Honda, Sony and other Japanese companies were beating the US companies left, right and centre. The US could not compete on price, quality, and customer service and even in technology. Finally they had to resort to protectionist techniques and this led to a long term decline in American manufacturing. Following the real estate bust in Japan in 1989, Japan experienced low growth, deflationary pressures and huge stimulus packages which hardly resulted in growth. Japanese companies steadily began to lose in competitiveness and the country suffered a demographic decline marked by severe aging of the population. Post 2001, Japan’s population started decreasing and if trends continue Japan’s population will halve by 2050. Politically Japan is having a crisis in leadership with weak governments, frequent changes in prime ministers and loss of status as a world power. Socially, Japanese are aging and losing savings and any energy to make radical changes to offset the disadvantages. There are increasing cases of divorces, suicides and unemployment in Japan.

The lost decades of Japan could soon transform into a lost decades (or even a lost century) for Europe and America. Europe is especially facing the same problems that Japan is facing, aging of the population, growth of a welfare state, high unemployment and social exclusion for a section of society. In some ways Europe is even worse with a low savings rate, illegal immigration and lack of a strong export sector. It is definitely going to see a weak growth rate in the order of 1 to 2% over 2010-2020. Japan will see a growth rate of 1-2% over the same period. America is definitely more dynamic and should see a decadal growth rate between 2% to 3.5%.

The real black swan is China. China has seen unprecedented growth in the last 25 years. It definitely cannot sustain the same growth rate for the next 10 years especially with rest of the world slowing down tremendously. China has a huge construction sector and consumes more steel and cement than rest of the world combined. One day it has to end and that day will be in the 2010s. I will predict a decadal growth rate of 7 to 8%. India should also see a decadal growth rate of 7-8% doubling its economy in real terms in 10 years.

So in 2020 the biggest economy in Nominal GDP would be United States, followed by China, Japan, Germany, India, France, UK, Brazil, Russia, Italy and Canada. The world will definitely see a lot of changes in the decade 2010-2020. Not all of it will be positive. The decade will not be that much of a transformation in terms of technology or social change. It will be driven by deft maneuvering in a slowing world.