Saw this on IndiaTimes. Cast your vote and Enjoy.

The Government of India wants your help. It has invited the public to suggest a symbol for the Rupee. Just as the Dollar is universally denoted by $‚ the government thinks the Rupee should also have its own unique symbol that captures a sense of India’s history and culture.Listed below are 19 suggestions from ET’s team of designers. Please vote for the one you find best. ET will present all these symbols ‚ along with the ET viewers’ preference‚ to the Ministry of Finance . And‚ if you don t like these and have a symbol of your own to offer, mail it to us at editoret@indiatimes.co.in So hone your design skills and choose the right symbol for the Rupee.
For more details, please see "Ropee Symbol"


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Saw this on Wine Spectator Today. We have one more reason to drink wine.

Study finds that a glass or two a day lowers risk by more than half

Drinking wine in moderation may offer protection from the onset of Barrett's Esophagus, a precursor to esophageal cancer, according to a study released Monday. Researchers found that subjects who consumed between seven and 14 glasses of wine weekly lowered their chances of developing the disorder by 56 percent. Those who drank beer showed no reduction of risk, and moderate to heavy consumption of spirits may raise the risk, according to the research conducted by Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif., and published in the March issue of Gastroenterology. Heavy consumption of any alcohol may raise the risk.


Barrett's Esophagus (BE) occurs when gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), or chronic heartburn, permanently damages the cells of the esophagus, the tube that transports food from the mouth to the stomach. Overflowing stomach acid burns the lining of the esophagus and, over time, the tissue is replaced by cells similar to those found in the intestine, explains Dr. Douglas Corley, a gastroenterologist and one of the study's leaders.

This abnormal healing of the esophagus may lead to a kind of cancer called an adenocarcinoma. "People with Barrett's Esophagus have a 30- to 40-fold higher risk of developing esophageal adenocarcinoma because the Barrett's Esophagus cells can grow into cancer cells," said Corley. Esophageal cancer is now the United States' fastest growing form of cancer, with the number of reported cases rising 500 percent in the past 30 years

BE currently affects 5 percent of the population, the study claims. There are no symptoms or warning signs, and doctors only discover the condition after an endoscopy, usually to monitor another ailment, such as anemia, heartburn or a bleeding ulcer. There are currently no treatments for BE.

To test if alcohol habits may have an impact on the development of BE and, therefore, a link to esophageal cancer, the scientists looked at data from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California population study, an ongoing long-term survey of the insurance plan's more than 3 million patients in the region. Corley's role in that study is to look at abdominal obesity and the consumption of dietary antioxidants in connection to BE. Corley previously found that eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day helps maintain a normal body weight and reduce the incidence of BE.

For the current research, Corley and his team examined 953 male and female patients, who were asked about their drinking habits as part of a litany of tests. They were categorized as nondrinkers, those who drink up to seven servings a week, those who drink seven to 14 servings and those who drink 14 or more. A standard drink was defined as a 4- to 5-ounce serving of red or white wine, 12 ounces of beer or a 1-ounce shot of liquor. If the subject drank one type of beverage more than 50 percent of the time, the team classified them as preferring that drink over others.

When Corley looked over the incidence of GERD and BE and compared it to drinking habits, he found that moderate wine drinkers were the group least likely to develop BE. In fact, wine drinkers who drank up to seven servings a week were 19 percent less likely to develop BE than nondrinkers, and 56 percent less likely if they drank seven to 14 servings of wine a week. Drinking anything more than that was associated with a higher risk overall (44 percent greater), but the scientists did not classify the subjects with the highest consumption rates by preferred beverage as the numbers of participants in those categories were too low to make a significant comparison.

Beer drinkers in the low and moderate categories showed no significant risk increase compared to nondrinkers. However, spirits drinkers showed an increase of 67 percent if they drank more than seven drinks a week. Drinking less than seven servings of spirits showed a protective effect, with a 19 percent lower risk than nondrinkers.

The study concludes that alcohol may not have a direct relation to BE, noting that the liquor drinkers tended to have the poorest diet and highest rate of obesity. "It's not actually clear that treating the acid reflux will necessarily prevent someone from getting Barrett's Esophagus," said Corley, in a statement. "The best way to prevent reflux is to maintain a normal weight."

The recent findings also echo an earlier meta-analysis that found drinking wine is not linked to the incidence of GERD. But Corley added that, in the case of BE, wine may offer an additional benefit. "Red wine and many foods, such as fruits and vegetables, contain antioxidants. It appears antioxidants may decrease the risk of getting Barrett's Esophagus."

The study adds to the conflicting evidence of wine's relationship to cancer. A recent Oxford University study found that wine increased the risk of women developing breast cancer and rectal cancer, while decreasing the risks of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, thyroid cancer and renal cell carcinoma. Past studies have found that wine can reduce the risk of lung cancer.


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Saw this on Bloomberg today.

Review by James Pressley
March 6 (Bloomberg) -- The end for Bear Stearns Cos. proved swift and brutal.

As the scrappy U.S. securities house slipped into a sudden death spiral a year ago this month, Chief Executive Officer Alan Schwartz was hosting a media conference in Palm Beach.
Chairman Jimmy Cayne was playing tournament bridge in Detroit and didn’t fly back to New York right away.
The man who would pick up the pieces, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co., was preparing to celebrate his 52nd birthday at Avra, a Greek restaurant in Manhattan.
These are just three snapshots from the opening chapters of William D. Cohan’s “House of Cards,” a masterly reconstruction of Bear Stearns’s implosion -- a tumultuous episode in Wall Street history that still reverberates through our economy today.
Cohan is a former reporter and Lazard Freres & Co. banker best known for his bestseller about that storied firm, “The Last Tycoons.” He now has turned his hand to chronicling the cocky rise and meteoric fall of Bear Stearns, whose swoon into the arms of JPMorgan in March 2008 underlined the greed, hubris and madness that have plunged the world into its deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The inherent precariousness of Wall Street is now clear. Investment banks like Bear were borrowing tens of billions of dollars a day on the strength of their reputations and assets, many of them illiquid, mortgage-related securities, Cohan says.
“The dirty little secret of what used to be known as Wall Street securities firms,” he says, “was that every one of them funded their business in this way to varying degrees, and every one of them was always just 24 hours away from a funding crisis.”

Meticulous Reporting

That assertion is as close as Cohan gets to editorializing in this meticulous piece of reporting. Drawing on interviews with bank executives, central bankers, government officials, investors and analysts, he weaves a narrative from published accounts, e-mail exchanges, court documents and direct quotations from the likes of Cayne, Dimon and Timothy Geithner, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now U.S. Treasury secretary.
Cohan, to his credit, persuaded a number of bankers to go on the record about topics ranging from tantrums -- picture a Bear Stearns executive flinging his jacket on the floor in a huff -- to the company’s refusal to join a bailout of Long-Term Capital Management LP. Cayne, with his cigars and mini- blowtorch lighter, unleashes a stream of profanities when asked about Geithner’s decision not to open the Fed’s discount window to Bear Stearns.

Lingering in Detroit

We also learn why Cayne didn’t fly back to New York as soon as he heard about the meltdown. The man who grew rich at Bear Stearns -- with a net worth of more than $1 billion in 2007 -- lingered in Detroit to play in minor events with Alfredo Versace.
Some outsiders, according to Cohan, viewed the board’s lack of involvement to this point as an abdication of its fiduciary duty. I’ll say. Insiders shrugged it off as a classic example of the insular culture at Bear Stearns, which “continued to operate as a small partnership despite having been a public company since November 1985,” Cohan writes.
Throughout, Cohan is scrupulously fair. He gives Dimon, for example, ample space to explain the hard bargain that JPMorgan drove on Bear Stearns: “I tell people, buying a house and buying a house on fire are two different things,” Dimon says.
“House of Cards” is three books in one. The first presents an hour-by-hour account of the 10 days in March 2008 when Bear Stearns was overwhelmed by rumors, short sellers, cash withdrawals and margin calls.

‘Armies of the Night’

By the time Schwartz asked Dimon for help on Thursday night, March 13, Bear Stearns’s cash balance had plunged to $2 billion from $18 billion that morning, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Soon, teams of bankers and lawyers -- “the armies of the night” -- converged on Bear Stearns’s octagonal granite-and-glass tower at 383 Madison Avenue.
Part two of the book is a brisk history of the company, from its founding in 1923 to its golden age as a swaggering outlier throwing off money from trading and clearing. Part three returns to tick-tock mode, describing the devastating consequences of Bear Stearns’s decision to set up two hedge funds that invested heavily in mortgage-backed securities, much of it subprime.
Along the way, we meet Bear Stearns legends such as Alan “Ace” Greenberg, described here as “a tough-minded Midwestern Jew with a gambler’s instinct and a serious itch to get rich.” As the company struggled to stay afloat in March 2008, Greenberg tried to keep people amused by performing magic tricks.

Mooning Traders

We also get to know some impressively frank executives from lower down the chain, including Paul Friedman, a senior managing director and chief operating officer of the fixed-income division. His recollections give this narrative much of its fly- on-the-wall appeal, as when he relates how he and his colleagues commiserated over Glenlivet and wine after Bear Stearns’s board approved a JPMorgan takeover, originally for $2 a share.
“We’re now holding our wake,” he says. “We’re crying and drinking and working on getting pretty drunk.” They were also, Cohan adds, “mooning the JPMorgan traders who were just opposite them on the north side of 47th Street.”
Bear Stearns survived the Great Depression, World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Until December 2007, the company had never posted a quarterly loss in its 85 years. Then, poof, it was gone.
Cohan’s skittishness about editorializing makes for a frustrating and inconclusive epilogue: Everyone, by this account, was to blame for Bear Stearns’s demise -- the company itself, the government, the Fed, hedge-fund managers, ratings companies, you name it.
Yet first drafts of history don’t get much better than this.

“House of Cards” is from Doubleday in the U.S. and Allen Lane in the U.K. (468 pages, $27.95, 25 pounds). The book will be available in stores starting March 10.

(James Pressley writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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Saw this on Telegraph.co.uk today. A doll of the financier Bernard Madoff has gone on sale complete with its own hammer to smash it.

Bernard Madoff doll: Its Australian creator, Graeme Warring, said that it was inspired by the experience of a friend Photo: GETTY

The Smash-Me Bernie action figure holds a pitchfork and is dressed in a red devil's suit, and comes with a gold hammer so that investors in his doomed scheme can take symbolic revenge on the $100 (£70) doll for losing out in Mr Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.

Its Australian creator, Graeme Warring, who unveiled the doll at the New York Toy Fair this week, said that it was inspired by the experience of a friend had lost money in Mr Madoff's alleged $50 billion fraud.

"He lost quite a bit of money and he was pretty grumpy about the whole thing," said Mr Warring.

"So I made him this little action figure of Bernie Madoff ... I put a hammer in the box and I said, 'Listen, when you get this thing, just smash it to pieces - it'll make you feel better, and then go bury it in the backyard and put it behind you'.

"So he did it, thought it was terrifically funny, and then he started telling some of his mates about it and before you know it, everyone's started to order these things."

The 70-year-old financier and former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange, who is under house arrest in Manhattan and is yet to make a plea, faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a substantial fine if he is convicted.

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Category: Puzzles, Adventure
Description: Fun new ninja kiwi game. Pop as many bloons as possible with the darts you are given each level.



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By Floyd Norris
Published: January 17, 2009 International Herald Tribune Weekend Business

World trade, a booming source of growth for most of the past five years, is suddenly shriveling, with exports declining in almost every country as the world endures a recession.

The decline in trade, which began last summer, accelerated after Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September. In the aftermath, credit became harder to obtain for importers and confidence waned among would-be buyers of many products.

That exports are down in almost every country shows both the international nature of the recession and the fact that it has been impossible for any country to export its way out of trouble. Nonetheless, there may be protectionist efforts in a number of countries this year, aimed at improving each country's trade position at the expense of others.

China, the largest exporter in the world, reported in the past week that its December exports of $105.7 billion were down 3 percent from that month in 2007, following a 2 percent decline in November. Before that, China's official export figures had shown double-digit percentage gains in every month since March 2002.

The United States, the second-largest exporter, said its November exports of $98.1 billion were down 4 percent from a year earlier. Germany, the third-biggest exporter, reported its exports in November were off 21 percent at $96.1 billion.

For the United States, it was the first year-over-year decline in exports since 2003. For Germany, it was the largest year-over-year fall since 1993.

The figures are all in dollars and are seasonally adjusted. They are not adjusted for inflation, and some of the decline for some countries reflects lower prices for many commodities, including oil, rather than decreasing quantities of exports.

None of the eight major exporters shown in the accompanying graphic, however, get a significant proportion of their exports from oil. The declines reflect a sudden weakening of orders.

Over all, November trade figures were available for 43 countries. That is not the entire world, because some countries do not report trade in dollars and others, like Italy, Spain and Russia, have not yet reported November figures. Figures for most of the major oil exporters were not available.

Of those 43, only three reported higher exports in November than a year earlier. They were Australia, Brazil and Lithuania. The only one of those to have reported December numbers, Brazil, showed a decline that month.

Overall, the total reported exports from those 43 countries peaked in July, at $1.03 trillion. By November, the figure was down 26 percent to $766 billion. Since the figures are seasonally adjusted, the monthly figures should be comparable.

Some of the worst-hit exporters have heavy exposure to industries that are suffering. Taiwan has built a strong business in computer components. Germany is a major exporters of both cars and machine tools. South Korea also has been a substantial exporter of cars and technology products.
World trade, a booming source of growth for most of the past five years, is suddenly shriveling, with exports declining in almost every country as the world endures a recession.

The decline in trade, which began last summer, accelerated after Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September. In the aftermath, credit became harder to obtain for importers and confidence waned among would-be buyers of many products.

That exports are down in almost every country shows both the international nature of the recession and the fact that it has been impossible for any country to export its way out of trouble. Nonetheless, there may be protectionist efforts in a number of countries this year, aimed at improving each country's trade position at the expense of others.

China, the largest exporter in the world, reported in the past week that its December exports of $105.7 billion were down 3 percent from that month in 2007, following a 2 percent decline in November. Before that, China's official export figures had shown double-digit percentage gains in every month since March 2002.

The United States, the second-largest exporter, said its November exports of $98.1 billion were down 4 percent from a year earlier. Germany, the third-biggest exporter, reported its exports in November were off 21 percent at $96.1 billion.

For the United States, it was the first year-over-year decline in exports since 2003. For Germany, it was the largest year-over-year fall since 1993.

The figures are all in dollars and are seasonally adjusted. They are not adjusted for inflation, and some of the decline for some countries reflects lower prices for many commodities, including oil, rather than decreasing quantities of exports.

None of the eight major exporters shown in the accompanying graphic, however, get a significant proportion of their exports from oil. The declines reflect a sudden weakening of orders.

Over all, November trade figures were available for 43 countries. That is not the entire world, because some countries do not report trade in dollars and others, like Italy, Spain and Russia, have not yet reported November figures. Figures for most of the major oil exporters were not available.

Of those 43, only three reported higher exports in November than a year earlier. They were Australia, Brazil and Lithuania. The only one of those to have reported December numbers, Brazil, showed a decline that month.

Overall, the total reported exports from those 43 countries peaked in July, at $1.03 trillion. By November, the figure was down 26 percent to $766 billion. Since the figures are seasonally adjusted, the monthly figures should be comparable.

Some of the worst-hit exporters have heavy exposure to industries that are suffering. Taiwan has built a strong business in computer components. Germany is a major exporters of both cars and machine tools. South Korea also has been a substantial exporter of cars and technology products.


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