Friday, December 28, 2012

Lest we forget!



I read with relish analysis of what went wrong with Mitt Romney’s Presidential campaign. ‘He ran one of the worst presidential campaigns ever’, ‘He was so wooden and out of touch with the voters’ are common diagnosis.  What everyone appears to forget is that whatever the mistakes and blemishes of Romney might have been, he came very close to beating President Obama in the 2008 Presidential Election. He was on a roar to bury the President  after the first debate.  A brilliant speech by former President Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention slowed this momentum.  But Romney was again moving up in the polls in October all set to overtake the President in the last few days (when swing voters finally decide).  Then hurricane Sandy hit and made Romany mute, while President Obama as the Commander-in Chief, basked in praises notably from a straight shooting Republican Governor of New Jersey.  In short, President Obama and the Democratic Party should thank their lucky stars in getting reelected to the office of the President. I will not be surprised if other candidates adopt Romney’s etch-a-sketch campaign strategy in the future. Yes, it was thoroughly dishonest, but it almost pulled off for Romney!

Saturday, December 01, 2012

Indian crabs

Just heard that son of one of our friends in Florida, Mathew Martoma, got arrested for insider trading. I remember him (Ajay) coming to our house in Florida when he was seven or eight years old. He was a brilliant student getting degrees from Duke and Stanford. It is a shame that he is in deep trouble now. Martoma is the latest 'catch' of the well known New York prosecutor Preet Bharara who is also of Indian origin. Mr. Bharara, who is in the 100 most influential people list of Time magazine, recently got a lot of publicity by getting jail terms for Rajaratnam (Sri Lanka) and Rajat Gupta (India) for insider trading. While I agree that insider trading is wrong and should be punished, I am bothered at the focus on Indians for it, that too by another Indian. Should not be a surprise.Like Indian crabs who pull down the crabs which try to to get out from the container, we Indians have no hesitation to rat on each other. There are strong Jewish and Irish networks in Wall Street who share similar confidential information at their country clubs and exclusive gatherings. They go scot free. Life is not fair.