Aim High!

"Shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

I have found this to be true time and again. When I aim high, I don't always achieve the level of success I am shooting for, but I always achieve a far greater level of success than I'd previously imagined possible. For example, I applied to a couple of investment banking firms for a summer project. They did not offer me any decent project [aah...the impediments of being an undergraduate :-( ] but I got a call from MDI, Gurgaon! I will be the first ever undergraduate to do a summer project at a premier Indian B-school. So although I missed the moon, I landed among the stars.

The power of setting goals....the power of aiming high is tremendous. The sky really is the limit!

Untitled

Just when I thought I knew all of Life's answers.........They changed all the questions..

Mr. Google Vs. Mr. Originality

There is a lot of hue and cry about googlization of information. When I've an assignment to do, my starting point is typically google and the end result (the report) is a potpourri of matter from different sites which sometimes makes sense and sometimes does not. Apparently google is students’ best friend, but is it not harming their growth in the long run?

Today something happened to me...something that happened to Samuel Taylor Coleridge way back in the autmn of 1797 when he conceived Kubla Khan of Xanadu in his dream (where do you think I got this date from...of course google ;-) ) I had a dream - a dream full of ideas. I woke up and tried to scribble them on paper. Now I expect something somewhat original somewhere.

The point I’m trying to make is if we give it a thought and don’t mindlessly start googling (as I do), we sure can come up with original ideas. And then may be some day....

We would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And drink the milk of Paradise.

;-)

Inflation: Are Banks Responsible?

“That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium [paper, and now not even paper]…that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.”

—Thomas Jefferson to Abbe Salimankis, 1810

Now this statement seems to be absolutely absurd!! After all who can dare question a bank's role in the development of any economy? I, for one, am a banking enthusiast but sometimes I ponder whether banks could be held responsible for inflation.

Over 95% of the world's population does not understand the meaning of “dividend” , “mutual fund sales” and “investment-banking fees” but thanks to these three things, the Royal Bank of Canada made record profits of 1.49 billion dollars in the first quarter—which, from a purely instinctive point-of-view, seems STUNNINGLY OUTRAGEUOS to me!

By doing nothing-productively-tangible for the world—in fact by simply creating money—are banks nothing more than an aspect of that part of the machine that endlessly drives up inflation by devaluing currency?