http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jan2009/db20090116_786365.htm

So it appears, not all is gloom and doom in a recession. A very nice article from BusinessWeek about recession unaffected jobs. Some of them are quite logical, trades relating to repair tend to perform better as people resort to more reuse, so does training and education.

Satyam scam: It was there, we refused to look

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3968559,flstry-1.cms

finally somebody’s putting 2 n 2 together.

What is a 'strong balance sheet'?

http://www.equitymaster.com/detail.asp?date=1/12/2009&story=

The Satyam Saga continues ....

Raju yesterday declared that he was a fraudster. And this melted Satyam’s stock value by 90%. Some people made a lot of money selling short but a lot other have panicked. The questions remain though. And for some reason, the figure don’t seem to add up.

• If Satyam does not have any money now, how does it propose to pay salaries to its employees.
• A collorary to the above, if satyam had gone ahead with the deal to buy Maytas with its fictitious money, then how did Satyam propose to pay its employees and the suppliers?
• How has satyam been giving dividends all this while?
• How come there were talks of a buyback coming from the company when the actual situation was so dicey?
• How did PWC did not manage to check the big hole in the balance sheet?
• What is the value or EPS of the share now?
• What happens with the management now?

The situation is still dicey with a few people now suggesting that raju did manage to siphon off the money and now is lying about it not being there….

Some of the coverage doing rounds…

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1219762
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1219704&pageid=0

Looking beyond...Should I be hedging against inflation??

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/investment-tips-for-retirees-worried-about-inflation/

Now this is really interesting… Due to this whole business of injecting liquidity and easing credit crisis, one thing we are surely going to launch headlong into is INFLATION. Big and nasty and probably again commodity driven (because of their depleting nature), read mainly OIL. The big question here not IF but WHEN. And WHAT are we doing about it from a personal investment point of view?? All ideas welcome… Here’s to start this…..

· Start buying into commodity stock and companies. (Ensuring at the same time that they would survive this slump)

· Start buying into Gold????

The Traffic Paradox - Do additional lanes contribute to overcrowding?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7D81530F936A15751C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

A very interesting article on how traffic congestion can paradoxically increase on the additional of additional lanes and vice versa. Essentially it implies that by suggesting that an additional option is available to people, the existing system tends to slow itself down as everybody crowds to the same route. Traffic is something I have begun to understand quite well in the past years and this brings a new perspective it all.

Getting Things Done- A review

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/05/06/review-getting-things-done/

A really nice review of this Iconic book on Productivity. Courtesy The Simple Dollar.