1 The BBC on Eastman Kodak facing bankruptcy. Shares in Eastman Kodak have fallen 28% on speculation the photography firm was preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in the US. The sell-off was triggered by a report in the Wall Street Journal alleging Kodak was preparing a Chapter 11 filing after struggling to sell key assets. The company said it was going to explore selling or licensing around 1,100 of its digital imaging patents - roughly 10% of its total library. Kodak may file for Chapter 11 either this month or in early February, the WSJ claimed, adding that the company would continue to pay its bills and operate normally if went in bankruptcy protection. The 131-year-old firm has been squeezed by weaker sales of consumer products and the heavy cost base of its operations and employees around the globe. In the third quarter of 2011, the company reported a three-month loss of $222m, its ninth quarterly loss in three years. However, despite the problems, Kodak does have assets that could point to a more viable future. Analysts said the patents could fetch between $2bn and $3bn if the company can find the right buyer.
2 Al Jazeera on the decline of the American empire. The US has the world's biggest economy, the most influential culture, and the most potent military machine, with a budget that equals that of all other nations combined. It is the only power with a global project defended and supported by more aircraft carriers, Fortune 500 companies, and more successful media-tainment conglomerates than any other. But the last decade has been problematic for the world's only superpower. America's post-Cold War optimism has given way to pessimism, forecasting a declining power and more crucially, the end of "the American era". The rise of new regional and global powers, coupled with Washington's recent war fiascos and financial crisis have worsened the outlook for the future of the US.
3 Nathan Lewis in Al Jazeera on the end of the Keynesian era. Today, governments have not really followed the hole-digging-and-filling routine of mid-century Keynesianism. However, the idea that the government will attempt to fix private-sector problems with the expenditure of vast quantities of public money remains. So far, this has taken the form primarily of filling the financial holes in bank balance sheets, so that private investors will not take a loss on their earlier poor decisions. To do so, governments have dug huge holes in the public balance sheets. Several countries - Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland - have already reached the point where they would have defaulted if left to the private markets. The notion of spending your way to prosperity has run into the brick wall of default.
This has made the Keynesians even more reliant upon their second trick, which is some form of "easy money" policy. Today, this has reached a degree that is unprecedented in the last century. The United States, the United Kingdom and Japan have adopted "zero interest rate" policies, and on top of that, they have undertaken aggressive "quantitative easing" policies. The result of this hyper-aggressive Keynesianism is that the values of currencies around the world have steadily declined over the past 10 years. I expect we will have our Keynesian crisis, in which several more governments, including the US, either default, or print money to avoid a default. Currency values will probably continue to decline, perhaps not so gradually as has been the case thus far. Eventually, governments will be incapable of either borrowing or devaluing their way out of their problems. Then what? If Keynesianism amounts to can-kicking, a better approach would be to address the fundamental problems that are causing the crisis in the first place, and to improve economic conditions in a broad sense.
Keynesians have always hated the gold standard, because it prevents them from engaging in one of their favourite pastimes, currency jiggering. By the end of our crisis, we will probably see a worldwide rejection of Keynesian funny money ideology. People will want to return to the stable money principles of the gold standard era. Today, government default, bank insolvency, and depreciating currencies plague our economic environment. Humans seem to learn slowly, and only with great pain and struggle. Eventually, I expect the crisis to get so bad that all attempts to maintain the status quo will disintegrate. However, this would be the first step toward a much brighter future. With banks that have been restructured to solvency without public funds and a world gold standard system, the post-Keynesian era should be a time of great prosperity.
4 The Wall Street Journal onThe Hindu rethinking its ad policy after an “atrocious” Sonia Gandhi ad was carried in the paper. The editor of the Hindu newspaper described an ad extolling Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi as “atrocious” and said that in future it would not carry such ads on the front. The ad, placed by Tamil Nadu businessman and Congress politician H Vasanthakumar, told Mrs. Gandhi that her followers were “ever at your feet.” Readers who saw the ad appear to have complained to the Hindu editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, who posted this response on Facebook: “To all those who messaged me about the atrocious front page ad in The Hindu’s Delhi edition on Jan 1, my view as Editor is that this sort of crass commercialisation compromises the image and reputation of my newspaper,” said Varadarajan. “We are putting in place a policy to ensure the front page is not used for this sort of an ad again.”
Many readers praised the move, though some said it wasn’t the nature of the ad that had bothered them. “Thanks for your quick positive response. Looking at some of the other comments, I am not talking about the contents of that ad as such,” wrote Santhanam Vaidya. “I would like to see Hindu front page with topical headline news items, with right bottom quarter for an advt (the usual Hindu way). I do not want to see massive full page ad (be it Vasant or Volkswagon).”
5 The Times of India story on flamingo slaughter in Kutch, Gujarat. Wildlife experts and enthusiasts from around the world will congregate in the air-conditioned environs of Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar as part of the Global Bird Watcher's Conference on January 19. But it would make more sense if they met in the marshlands of Kutch and surrounding areas, which have become a graveyard of some of the most endangered winged species in the country - flamingos. Conservation activists have uncovered a major incident of poaching of lesser flamingos in the Little Rann of Kutch.
Last week, activist DV Girish of Bhadra Wildlife Conservation Trust of Bangalore was shocked when he found a large heap of white feathers in the wasteland near Velasar village in Maliya Miyana taluka in Rajkot. On closer inspection, he found 33 severed heads and legs of lesser flamingos. The torsos were missing, indicating that they had been killed for meat. The lesser flamingos are local migratory birds that flock to the region during winter months from the southern part of the country. Despite being the most populous species of flamingo, it is notified as near-threatened due to its declining population and depleting breeding sites. "I fear that this is not an isolated incident," Girish said.
6 The Hindu editorial on another atrocity in Kashmir. For no crime other than that he stood alongside a crowd demanding the restoration of electricity supply to his village, Altaf Ahmad Sood was shot dead on Monday. This appalling murder, at the hands of a Central Industrial Security Force picket guarding a power installation at Barnait, a village near Uri in Jammu and Kashmir, makes clear the casualness with which central forces reach for their guns against the people of Kashmir. In this case, multiple rounds were fired into the crowd, aimed to kill rather than to disperse the crowd. N.R. Das, the CISF chief, has said his men were “outnumbered” — a bizarre claim, given that there is no indication that the crowd was armed or seeking to attack the police.
The killing raises two issues that need to be addressed by New Delhi — not Srinagar. The first is the central government's dogged refusal to sanction the prosecution of central security force personnel facing credible allegations of murder in civilian courts, thus fostering a culture of impunity. Secondly, the central government's unwillingness to ensure security force accountability is rivaled only by its indifference to enhancing security force competencies. Even though tens of thousands of personnel have been recruited into the central and state security forces, they remain ill trained — and, inevitably, trigger happy.
7 ICICI chairman MV Kamath stating in Business Standard that stock markets are breaking India Inc’s back. In the minds of corporate India what is enveloping the gloom and negativity is the situation with the stock market. My feeling is only 20-25% investments, that were to happen, probably were throttled. But the impact on the feel-good sentiment is disproportionate, probably 50-60%. The stock market is at a level that is not giving corporates any leeway to do things that are needed. It is virtually breaking the back of corporate India.
8 The Financial Chronicle editorial, titled Ambani magic. Mukesh Ambani’s big deal with Raghav Bahl of the Network 18 group and a slew of smaller service/content providers over past year are signs that a Goliath is preparing ground for a mega communications foray in the telecom/broadband space, riding the cutting-edge 4G platform. Ambani Sr needs to be applauded for his foresight and 360-degree planning. In many ways, the current ICT strategy, and the earlier telecom foray when the original Reliance Infocomm mobile phone service was a Mukesh Ambani baby, reveal the grand scale of backward and forward integration originally made textbook case study by their father, the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani in the petroleum-petrochemicals-textile complex he set up in his lifetime to deliver mill-made cloth to consumers. So grand was Dhirubhai’s design of backward integration in its strategy and execution that it made the final brand Vimal and the final product, textiles, irrelevant in the consumer mind space.
Today, RIL is a global leader in the manufacture of polyester yarn and fibre and among the top producers of other major petrochemical products. History now appears to be repeating itself in the shape of Dhirubhai’s elder son delivering content, riding a giant technology pipeline. RIL is setting up a pan-India 4G broadband network that is likely to revolutionise several sectors as diverse as entertainment, information, education and healthcare. Ambani’s target is not just the 900 and odd million mobile phone subscribers, the biggest consumer base anywhere in the world, but also the 540 million-plus TV viewership that is influenced every minute in their buying and selling decisions. Instead of first erecting a 4G pipeline, Reliance is putting the several pieces of a giant information jigsaw in place to overwhelm the customer with voice and data choices. To pull a significant number of people, Reliance is said to be talking to device makers, infrastructure providers and content generators to create a complete ecosystem that would eventually install Ambani and his Reliance brand at the apex of the nation, guiding the destiny of 1.2 billion and more people, waiting to ride the technology boom to encash the demographic dividend.
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