Loud Thinking

Archive for 2013

Love is a feeling of warm personal attachment.

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”

Pema Chodron (born 1936);
Buddist Nun

Spur Creativity by Setting the Right Constraints

Conventional wisdom holds that the best way to make a team more creative is to unshackle them from constraints. But you don’t need to remove all creative limitations – instead impose only those that move you toward clarity of purpose.

Focus on the vitals. What is the one thing you want your customers to know or do? If you could only communicate with them via a business card or a very short video, what would you say? Once you’ve determined that, you may be surprised by the superfluous pieces that once seemed critical.

Get uncomfortable. Challenge habitual assumptions and apply a different set of limitations to how you think about problems. A service company, for instance, could consider what would happen if it started offering the service the way a well-known brand in a very different industry would.

Adapted by HBR from “Boosting Creativity Through Constraints,” by Adam Richardson.

“My strength did not come from lifting weights. My strength came from lifting myself up when I was knocked down.”

— Bob Moore

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890);
Post-Impressionist painter

Miracle Drink : Carrot, Beet Root and Apple

This MIRACLE DRINK has been circulating for a long time long ago. It is worth your while to take note. There is a celebrity Mr. Seto who swears by it. He wants to make it public to draw the attention of people who have cancers. This is a drink that can protect bad cells forming in your body or it will restrain its growth! Mr. Seto had lung cancer. He was recommended to take this drink by a famous Herbalist from China . He has taken this drink diligently for 3 months and now his health is restored, and he is ready to take a pleasure trip. Thanks to this drink! It does not hurt for you to try.

It is like a Miracle Drink! It is simple.
You need one beet root, one carrot and one apple that combine together to make the JUICE !

Wash the above, cut with the skin on into pieces and put them into the juicer and immediately you drink the juice. You can add some lime or lemon for more refreshing taste.

This Miracle Drink will be effective for the following ailments:

1. Prevent cancer cells to develop. It will restrain cancer cells to grow.
2. Prevent liver, kidney, pancreas disease and it can cure ulcer as well.
3. Strengthen the lung, prevent heart attack and high blood pressure.
4. Strengthen the immune system
5. Good for the eyesight, eliminate red and tired eyes or dry eyes
6. Help to eliminate pain from physical training, muscle ache
7. Detoxify, assist bowel movement, eliminate constipation. Therefore it will make skin healthy & LOOK more radiant. It is God sent for acne problem.
8. Improve bad breath due to indigestion, throat infection,
9. Lessen menstrual pain
10. Assist Hay Fever Sufferer from Hay Fever attack.

There is absolutely no side effect. Highly nutritious and easily absorbs! Very effective if you need to loose weight. You will notice your immune system will be improved after 2 week routine. Please make sure to drink immediately from the juicer for best effect.

WHEN TO DRINK IT ;

DRINK IT FIRST THING IN THE MOR NI NG W IT H THE EMPTY STOMACH! AFTER ONE HOUR YOU CAN EAT BREAKFAST. FOR FAST RESULTS DRINK 2 TIMES A DAY, IN THE MOR NI NG AND BEFORE 5 P.M.

YOU WILL NEVER REGRET! IT DOES NOT COST YOU MUCH MONEY! PLEASE CIRCULATE TO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

This is a cross post from Pakpotpourri of Ms Yasmin Ali Sahiba.

Honourable Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Sahab,

Salaam.

While your government is increasing the size of the begging bowl, look what India is doing…!

A TOI eye opening news..!

Govt launches austerity drive, bans meetings in 5-star hotels
PTI | Sep 18, 2013, 08.37 PM IST

Chidambaram earlier met financial advisors of various ministries to impress upon them the need for austerity.

NEW DELHI: Government departments have been banned from holding meetings in 5-star hotels and officials barred from executive class air travel as part of a slew of austerity measures announced on Wednesday to cut non-plan expenditure by 10 per cent.

Aiming to restrict the fiscal deficit to 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2013-14, the Finance Ministry has ordered all ministries and departments not to buy new vehicles, create new jobs or fill posts lying vacant for over one year.

It has also directed that the size of delegations going abroad should be kept at the “absolute minimum.”

The government has been introducing austerity measures since 2008-09, most recently in November 2012.

“Such measures are intended at promoting fiscal discipline, without restricting the operational efficiency of the government. In the context of the current fiscal situation, there is a need to continue to rationalise expenditure and optimise available resources,” the finance ministry said.

Finance minister P Chidambaram earlier said he had drawn a red line and would not allow the fiscal deficit to breach the target of 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2013-14.

The various austerity measures helped the government to contain the fiscal deficit at 4.9 per cent of GDP in the previous financial year, against the budgeted target of 5.1 per cent.

The circular came a day after Chidambaram met financial advisors of various ministries to impress upon them the need for austerity. ———————————————————–

Mr. Prime Minister, one thing must be made clear to all your advisors that only foreign loans will not and never cure the ills of the Pakistan’s economy, for which we will also have to reduce our expenditures in a big way and not just in a cosmetic manner.

Wishing you all the best in your untiring efforts to put Pakistan back on the rails of recovery.

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad

Lahore.

Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE

“Confidence is the only key. I know a lot of people who aren’t traditionally ‘beautiful’ — not symmetrical or perfect-bodied or perfect-skinned. But none of that matters because all that shines through is their confidence, humor and comfort with themselves. I can’t think of any better representation of beauty than someone who is unafraid to be herself.”

— Emma Stone

Mr. Ishaq Dar! why can’t you launch this scheme in Pakistan for gathering enhanced foreign exchange from the expatriate Pakistanis?

Foreign banks to provide upfront loans to NRIs for dollar deposits

A TOI report.

SINGAPORE: Foreign banks will provide upfront financing for wealthy non-resident Indian clients to entice them to place bulky dollar deposits back home in response to India’s drive for dollar funding to defend its weak currency, sources said.

This would resurrect a practice which proved successful in drawing in dollars from non-resident Indians ( NRIs) in 2000, when the rupee was also under pressure, and the sources said banks could raise about $10 billion or more.

Foreign banks will finance the bulk of these dollar deposits. This is likely to be welcome news for Indian authorities because it could avoid the need for a sovereign bond or special government-backed deposit schemes to attract dollar inflows to support the rupee.

Banks including Citi, DBS and Standard Chartered Bank are offering the terms to the richest segment of their private banking clients by providing roughly 90 per cent of the foreign currency deposit placed in India, four private banking sources said.

The banks will officially roll out the upfront loans this week, the sources said.

“Client equity in these deposits is just 10 per cent and the client effectively makes between 18 and 21 per cent on the dollars,” said a private banker with a European bank.

The scheme is a variation of the foreign currency non-resident bank account (FCNR), which are term deposits non-resident Indians can maintain in five currencies, including US dollars, euros and pounds, at banks onshore and earn a fixed rate of interest.

As part of efforts to rescue the rupee as it sank towards record lows near 69-per dollar in late August, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) freed interest rates on FCNR deposits last month.

It allowed banks to offer as much as 400 basis points over the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) for deposits with maturities between 3 years and 5 years. It exempted these deposits from statutory bank reserves.

To incentivise banks, the RBI also offered to swap FCNR deposits of maturities above 3 years into rupees at a fixed rate of 3.5 per cent, less than half the prevailing market levels. That swap window is available until November 30.

Leverage

Investors need to have just 10 per cent of the amount of deposit they intend to place, and can earn nearly 20 per cent on their dollars.

Foreign banks can earn 3-4 per centage points over Libor for their dollars, while local banks in India can swap those dollars into rupees more cheaply than market rates using the central bank swap window.

Banks, both foreign banks with presence in India and local ones, have made a huge push to raise money from India’s vast diaspora since the RBI relaxed rules on FCNR deposits. The FCNR deposits can be used as collateral to borrow overseas.

The difference in the new upfront financing scheme is that the banks pool their resources with non-residents and place deposits in India, thus creating bigger deposits with each new account.

One private banker with an American bank said the practice had been prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s and widely used by banks in 2000, when they raised $5.5 billion through an India Millennium Deposit scheme.

Indian authorities discouraged the practice thereafter because they were worried about hot money flows, he said. The Reserve Bank of India did not immediately comment.

One source at a European bank said banks were cherry-picking clients for this product.

“For every billion dollars I place in India, the bank has to fund $900 million,” he said. “We can’t allow just any customer to piggyback on us, only a handpicked few.”

Still, bankers said the scheme was not without hurdles.

For one, the effective cost of the rupee funds would be about 8.5 to 9 per cent, he said, which limited the investment options. Ten-year rupee government bonds yield 8.5 per cent.

Secondly, there were unresolved issues of how much credit exposure foreign banks wanted to take on their India branches, and who would place the collateral for the loans and take the risk of premature withdrawal of the deposit by the non-resident Indian.

Lastly, investors placing millions of dollars would need assurance that their money could eventually be repatriated, without the risk of capital controls. One European bank was already offering insurance against this risk, for a price, the private bankers said.

Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire.