links for 2009-10-11

• What’s With Salman Khurshid? » Givvup Only Are There
  Even if Indian CEOs were paid obscene salaries, and Indians resented this, and Salman Khurshid wasn’t a sanctimonious arsehole living off the public trough, this is India, where we outperform the rest of the world when it comes to innovation in corruption and fiddling accounts…
  Searching for a reason for this utter lunacy, I’ve come up with:
  * Salman Khurshid is a moron. This explanation has the benefit of fitting Hanlon’s Razor.
  * Salman Khurshid wants CEO salary to start getting paid out in black money and lots of manipulation in IPO issuing so that the amount of black money in the economy increases. After all black money is the lifeblood of the Congress party.
  * Salman Khurshid is trying to raise money from Indian businesses ahead of the Haryana and Maharashtra elections…
  * The whole thing is not for the benefit of Indian CEOs, or the media, but for Sonia Gandhi, who Salman Khurshid is trying to impress by showing how quick he is to catch up with American trends.
  (tags: economics politics india government)
• Vantage point: Nobels (plural) for Obama?
  Almost everyone is shocked and amused that President Obama will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, less than 9 months into his first term. People think it's a mistake and very premature to give him an award before he has done anything meaningful. I vehemently disagree. The Nobel committees' mistake has been to give him only that one prize. This should have been a year of a total Obama sweep.
  This horrendous mistake can be at least partially atoned for by announcing him the winner of the Economics prize next week. The Swedish bank should take note. He rolled out the biggest stimulus package in history and managed to stimulate the economy by spending just a fraction of it! He caused a shocking (although temporary) upswing in GM's year-on-year sales figures for a couple of months! And he has managed to convince the smartest man in the world (himself) that he can spend trillions on everything and yet reduce the deficit, a miracle that defies the laws of math.
  (tags: obama satire nobel)
• The Indian Investor's Blog: Can't Outsource Due Diligence on Homes to the Financing Bank
  First, note that all home loans in India are full-recourse loans. Meaning, if you default then they can sell the house – if the sale yields less than the loan amount, they can take other assets from you.
  This means you can't just mail in your keys and say goodbye to the loan (like the US allows). This also means banks have not enough reason to do "background checks" or scrutinize the property you have taken a loan for. If the collateral gets stuck because of some legal issue, you're still liable for the loan. They can take something else you own, like your car, and FSM forbid, your cellphone.
  The incentives are just not there for a bank to really investigate a property they lend against
  (tags: housing finance india banking)