Sandy damage may be $50bn; 'Too big to fail' remains real; The co-branded employee; Great depression of individuals; Ganga -- sacred yet sullied

1 Sandy may have caused $50bn damage (The New York Times) Economic damages inflicted by Hurricane Sandy could reach $50 billion, according to new estimates that are more than double a previous forecast. Some economists warned that the storm could shave a half percentage point off the nation’s economic growth in the current quarter. Losses from the storm could total $30 billion to $50 billion, according to Eqecat, which tracks hurricanes and analyzes the damage they cause. On Monday, before the storm hit the East Coast, the firm estimated $10 billion to $20 billion in total economic damages.

Eqecat predicted that New York would bear 34% of the total economic losses, with New Jersey suffering 30%, Pennsylvania 20% and other states 16%. That includes all estimated losses, whether covered by insurance or not. The estimates and the share that will be covered by insurers are far from certain at this point, as government officials, property owners and insurance adjusters struggle to assess the destruction. 

2 ‘Too big to fail’ remains real (Simon Johnson in The New York Times) Prominent voices within the financial sector are increasingly insisting on one point: We have ended “too big to fail.” The idea is simple: through a combination of legislation (the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010) and supportive regulation (particularly regarding how big banks would be handled in the event of “liquidation”), very large financial institutions are no longer perceived by investors to be too big to fail.

Unfortunately, while tempting, this idea is completely at odds with the facts. The market perception that some financial institutions are “too big to fail” is alive and well. If you want to remove that perception, you need to break up our biggest banks. In a paper prepared recently at the behest of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (Sifma), Federal Financial Analytics Inc. argues that “too big to fail” has effectively been ended.


You can theorize that “too big to fail” should have been removed by the recent reforms or will be eliminated by the passage of time. But as a practical matter “too big to fail” is still with us. Implicit government guarantee lowers the funding costs for very large financial institutions because investors are convinced that debt issued by these firms is less risky than, for example, debt issued by small and medium-size banks.  The point is to have multiple fail-safes in the system — do not rely on any one reform too much. You really do not know what will prove effective, particularly as the financial system continues to evolve and the nature of risks changes.

3 The co-branded employee (Alexandra Samuel in The Wall Street Journal) Meet your newest management headache: the co-branded employee. A growing number of professionals are using social media to build a personal, public identity—a brand of their own—based on their work. Think of an accountant who writes a widely read blog about auditing, or a sales associate who has attracted a big following online by tweeting out his store's latest deals.

Co-branded employees may exist largely below the radar now, but that's changing fast, and employers need to start preparing for the ever-greater challenges they pose for managers, co-workers and companies. Their activities can either complement a company's own brand image or clash with it. Companies that fail to make room for co-branded employees—or worse yet, embrace them without thinking through the implications—risk alienating or losing their best employees, or confusing or even burning their corporate brand. Part of this change is generational. Younger employees show up on the job with an existing social-media presence, which they aren't about to abandon—especially since they see their personal brands lasting longer than any single job or career.

Social-media services like LinkedIn and Facebook also encourage users to build networks and share their professional as well as personal expertise. And increasingly, companies are recognizing that these activities have a business value. When a management consultant leads a large LinkedIn group, he builds a valuable source of referrals and recruitment prospects; when a lawyer tweets the latest legal news, she positions her firm as the go-to experts in that field. How can an employer resist?

And yet, there is a downside: Co-branded employees can raise tough questions about how to contain their online activities—and how to compensate them. It also isn't easy for managers to balance responsibilities among the bloggers and non-bloggers within a team. And it takes an effort to make sure employees' brands align with the company's.

4 Great depression of individuals (Khaleej Times) Hefty bailouts by Western governments and quantitative easing by top central banks across the globe may have prevented developed economies from sinking into a depression, but at the individual level, the continuing recession is causing untold mental miseries for ordinary people. A report by the Health and Social Care Information Centre in the UK, based on a survey of 8,000 general practitioners, reveals that one out of every 10 persons in the country is suffering from depression.

Worryingly, over the past 12 months, the number of people suffering from depression has shot up from 4.9 million to 5.1 million in the UK, says the survey. Not surprisingly, Ed Miliband, the Labour party leader, described mental illness as “the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age”, which “blights the lives of millions”. The Labour leader has called for a change of culture while dealing with mental health, as had happened with other illnesses — including cancer and Aids — that were considered taboo in the past.

The economic downturn of the past four years, along with the concomitant uncertainties of job losses and pay cuts, has undoubtedly had a devastating impact on millions of people, triggering a wave of mental diseases. Psychiatrists have warned of an epidemic of mental ailments in countries such as the UK. Experts also claim there is a well-established link between economic well-being and mental state; the poorer parts of the UK have more people suffering from such ailments than the economically vibrant regions. A recent Gallup poll in the US revealed that 31% of impoverished Americans said they have been diagnosed with depression at some point, as against just 15.8% of those who were not poor.

Carl Gustav Jung, the renowned Swiss psychologist and thinker, had once remarked that about a third of his patients suffered from no clinically definable neurosis, “but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” And this, he added, “can be defined as the general neurosis of our times.” Tough economic times apparently reflect this neurosis.

5 Ganga – sacred yet sullied (Neeta Lal in Khaleej Times) Gangajal – the “holy water” of the Ganges, the world’s most sacred river for Hindus — is revered like an elixir in Indian households. Despite a strong hold over the collective national psyche, it is surprising to note the sorry pass the country’s ‘national river’ has come to today. Its muddied waters — once glutinous and azure and full of plump fish — are a lethal cocktail of garbage waste, chemicals, sewage and human and livestock corpses. 

They are also the dumping ground for over 1.3 billion liters of sewage everyday. Over 50 tanneries, 10 textile mills and other industrial companies, it is estimated, shove 37 million gallons of waste per day into the river. Worse, the offenders get away unpunished — or with paltry fines at best — as there is no strict law to take them to task.

A welter of recent reports have underscored the grave dangers the Ganges’ water poses to human health. According to the National Cancer Registry Program, those living along the river’s banks are highly prone to cancer. Due to the relentless discharge of effluents into the river — including toxic industrial wastes such as arsenic, fluoride and other heavy metals — cases of gall bladder cancer among those inhabiting the river’s coasts are the second highest in the world, while those of prostate cancer are the highest in the country, says the program.

The freshly minted, state-sponsored ‘Mission Clean Ganga’ mandates an investment of Rs 15o billion over the next 10 years to cleanse the river. Failure to fulfill this goal, say ecologists, will not only create the world’s worst health disaster zone but also spike the momentum of India’s industrial and economic growth.

6 Pak girl killed for talking to boy (Dawn) A Pakistani couple killed their teenage daughter by pouring acid on her face and body after they caught her talking to a boy, police and a doctor said on Thursday. The parents of the 16-year-old confessed to police in Kotli, a town in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, that they attacked their daughter after she had spoke to the boy outside their house, said Mohammad Jahangir, a local doctor at the hospital where she was brought.

“There were third-degree burns on her scalp, face, eyes, nostrils, both arms, chest, foot and lower part of legs. Even her scalp bone was exposed,” he said, adding that the mother initially told the hospital their daughter tried to commit suicide. Police have arrested the parents.

Almost 1,000 women lost their lives last year in so-called “honour killings” in the conservative South Asian nation, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Activists say the actual number is much higher as most cases go unreported.