As the year 2010 draws to a close, lets see how am I going to remember this year. I want to document this because days will turn into months and months will turn into years and I can open up my diary and look back on the concluding year of the first decade in 21st century!

I will divide this post in couple of headers- Political, Economics, Finance, Technological, Entertainment, Geo Political and Climate. So let us get started:

Political- This was the year when we saw Obama slipping in approval ratings, Democrats losing Congress and the emergence of Tea Party in the national politics. What it means is , although Obama has done commendable work in dealing with this great recession, people in general are disillusioned with the pace of progress, particularly with unemployment still at 9.8%. Clearly Mr. Obama needs to get his act together and work with a vigor if he wants to get reelected in 2012 and seems like White House has already started a major overhaul in its administration.

Economics- This was the year which added a new word to our daily vocabulary – QE2 or the second coming of Quantitative Easing. So far it seems to have worked, as the stock markets close near 2 year highs. Does that mean economy is out of the wood? Not by a far shot, the unemployment is still close to 10%, the seven million jobs lost in recession have not been recovered and are probably not going to come back in near future either, the GDP although growing, it is pretty anemic like 1%. Corporate profit has registered some 20% year over year gain this year , but the outlook for 2011 is still murky. The deficit is only ballooning and with the recent extension of Bush era tax cuts, is only set to get worst. The extension of tax cut at a price tag of whopping $858 billion, although looks good short term, seems more like a sign of desperation in the fiscal policy think tank of the country.

Finance- This has been a crazy year for the markets and I would think the feds QE2 policy may have played a role. Here are some numbers in terms of price increases we saw this year(Source FT.com).
Silver : 72%, Gold:28%, Crude Oil:22%, Corn:52%, Wheat 48%, Cotton- 103%, Lumber- 46%, Coffee- 60%…the list goes on. Although the readers of this blog know that I am a Gold bull for a long time, but this rapid price increase in essential commodities is really worrying trends for the common man. I hope in 2011 Central Bankers around the world will stay guard for inflation to rear its ugly head.

Technology- Of course Mark Zuckerberg got Person of the Year recognition from Time magazine for his obscenely successful brainchild Facebook. The other notable trends are Cloud Computing really becoming main stream.Ebay, US department of Agriculture and other such big entities have moved to cloud services, picking Microsoft’s Azure as platform of choice. Read somewhere that the US Government is planning to consolidate its 800 data centers and moving to cloud. The iPad form Apple marked the arrival of tablets in a big way and the Smart Phone adoption continued its surge.

Entertainment- We broke some records this year in Hollywood and also the gaming industry. The epic tale “Avatar” really blew me away with its grandeur , extravaganza and the message itself by director James Cameron. I had truly never seen a movie quite like that in my life, the money spent on 3D IMAX seemed quite worth it. I later picked the Blue Ray disc as well just to find out what the Director had to say about his experiences making this film. There is something about these extraordinary successes, and it all starts with great thinking and here’s a quote from the genius Cameron himself “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s successes”. Avatar has been the biggest grossing movie ever, with $4 billion in revenue and counting.The other notable success of the year was the video game- Call of Duty, black Ops, this may have set a new record in gaming too, with total sales already crossing the billion dollar mark!

Geo Political The year is closing with tension between North Korea and South Korea, we need to see what is in store for 2011. This year was also notable for leaking of sensitive US government document by Wikileaks. The founder of Wikileaks , Julian Assange , was the most popular choice for becoming person of the year online poll by Time magazine, he ended up becoming the runner up. The leaks have created embarrassing situation for US government which now has some explaining to do to its partner countries….and i know that’s an understatement…there’s lot more to it, probably deserves a separate blog post in itself.

Climate This year we saw devastating flooding in Pakistan, and the catastrophe in Haiti by the 7.0 magnitude earth quake which killed some quarter million people in minutes. Lessons, humans are but at the mercy of mother nature…let’s take good care of it otherwise the day of reckoning is not far away

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As the year 2010 draws to a close, lets see how am I going to remember this year. I want to document this because days will turn into months and months will turn into years and I can open up my diary and look back on the concluding year of the first decade in 21st century!

I will divide this post in couple of headers- Political, Economics, Finance, Technological, Entertainment, Geo Political and Climate. So let us get started:

Political- This was the year when we saw Obama slipping in approval ratings, Democrats losing Congress and the emergence of Tea Party in the national politics. What it means is , although Obama has done commendable work in dealing with this great recession, people in general are disillusioned with the pace of progress, particularly with unemployment still at 9.8%. Clearly Mr. Obama needs to get his act together and work with a vigor if he wants to get reelected in 2012 and seems like White House has already started a major overhaul in its administration.

Economics- This was the year which added a new word to our daily vocabulary – QE2 or the second coming of Quantitative Easing. So far it seems to have worked, as the stock markets close near 2 year highs. Does that mean economy is out of the wood? Not by a far shot, the unemployment is still close to 10%, the seven million jobs lost in recession have not been recovered and are probably not going to come back in near future either, the GDP although growing, it is pretty anemic like 1%. Corporate profit has registered some 20% year over year gain this year , but the outlook for 2011 is still murky. The deficit is only ballooning and with the recent extension of Bush era tax cuts, is only set to get worst. The extension of tax cut at a price tag of whopping $858 billion, although looks good short term, seems more like a sign of desperation in the fiscal policy think tank of the country.

Finance- This has been a crazy year for the markets and I would think the feds QE2 policy may have played a role. Here are some numbers in terms of price increases we saw this year(Source FT.com).
Silver : 72%, Gold:28%, Crude Oil:22%, Corn:52%, Wheat 48%, Cotton- 103%, Lumber- 46%, Coffee- 60%…the list goes on. Although the readers of this blog know that I am a Gold bull for a long time, but this rapid price increase in essential commodities is really worrying trends for the common man. I hope in 2011 Central Bankers around the world will stay guard for inflation to rear its ugly head.

Technology- Of course Mark Zuckerberg got Person of the Year recognition from Time magazine for his obscenely successful brainchild Facebook. The other notable trends are Cloud Computing really becoming main stream.Ebay, US department of Agriculture and other such big entities have moved to cloud services, picking Microsoft’s Azure as platform of choice. Read somewhere that the US Government is planning to consolidate its 800 data centers and moving to cloud. The iPad form Apple marked the arrival of tablets in a big way and the Smart Phone adoption continued its surge.

Entertainment- We broke some records this year in Hollywood and also the gaming industry. The epic tale “Avatar” really blew me away with its grandeur , extravaganza and the message itself by director James Cameron. I had truly never seen a movie quite like that in my life, the money spent on 3D IMAX seemed quite worth it. I later picked the Blue Ray disc as well just to find out what the Director had to say about his experiences making this film. There is something about these extraordinary successes, and it all starts with great thinking and here’s a quote from the genius Cameron himself “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s successes”. Avatar has been the biggest grossing movie ever, with $4 billion in revenue and counting.The other notable success of the year was the video game- Call of Duty, black Ops, this may have set a new record in gaming too, with total sales already crossing the billion dollar mark!

Geo Political The year is closing with tension between North Korea and South Korea, we need to see what is in store for 2011. This year was also notable for leaking of sensitive US government document by Wikileaks. The founder of Wikileaks , Julian Assange , was the most popular choice for becoming person of the year online poll by Time magazine, he ended up becoming the runner up. The leaks have created embarrassing situation for US government which now has some explaining to do to its partner countries….and i know that’s an understatement…there’s lot more to it, probably deserves a separate blog post in itself.

Climate This year we saw devastating flooding in Pakistan, and the catastrophe in Haiti by the 7.0 magnitude earth quake which killed some quarter million people in minutes. Lessons, humans are but at the mercy of mother nature…let’s take good care of it otherwise the day of reckoning is not far away

Deewali is great festival of India which celebrates win of good over evil. The festival has universal appeal and is celebrated across this diverse country including Hindu’s and Sikhs. Deewali is the festival of light when Lord Rama returned to his kingdom after spending 14 years in exile and conquering the evil ruler of Lanka called Ravana. This is all according to Hindu mythology and is celebrated to this date with all the enthusiasms. The last few years I have seen White House celebrating this festival,this year was no different with President Obama inaugrating the Deewali celebration in White House. This speaks of the growing influence Indians are having in US politics. You can watch Obama’s Deewali message here.

Deewali brings up fond memories of my childhood. I grew up in coal mines where my dad would head coal mines with 1000s of people working under his leadership. we would have three days of non stop festivities, one day for orchestra , the other day for what is called Kawwali and a third day of Kavi Sammelan or something similar. The night would light up with fireworks, happiness in the air everywhere. I do plan to go to India one of these Deewali’s , may be next year..it’s been a while…really..over 13 years now and celebrate it with mom and dad!!!

Deewali is great festival of India which celebrates win of good over evil. The festival has universal appeal and is celebrated across this diverse country including Hindu’s and Sikhs. Deewali is the festival of light when Lord Rama returned to his kingdom after spending 14 years in exile and conquering the evil ruler of Lanka called Ravana. This is all according to Hindu mythology and is celebrated to this date with all the enthusiasms. The last few years I have seen White House celebrating this festival,this year was no different with President Obama inaugrating the Deewali celebration in White House. This speaks of the growing influence Indians are having in US politics. You can watch Obama’s Deewali message here.

Deewali brings up fond memories of my childhood. I grew up in coal mines where my dad would head coal mines with 1000s of people working under his leadership. we would have three days of non stop festivities, one day for orchestra , the other day for what is called Kawwali and a third day of Kavi Sammelan or something similar. The night would light up with fireworks, happiness in the air everywhere. I do plan to go to India one of these Deewali’s , may be next year..it’s been a while…really..over 13 years now and celebrate it with mom and dad!!!

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Deewali is great festival of India which celebrates win of good over evil. The festival has universal appeal and is celebrated across this diverse country including Hindu’s and Sikhs. Deewali is the festival of light when Lord Rama returned to his kingdom after spending 14 years in exile and conquering the evil ruler of Lanka called Ravana. This is all according to Hindu mythology and is celebrated to this date with all the enthusiasms. The last few years I have seen White House celebrating this festival,this year was no different with President Obama inaugrating the Deewali celebration in White House. This speaks of the growing influence Indians are having in US politics. You can watch Obama’s Deewali message here.

Deewali brings up fond memories of my childhood. I grew up in coal mines where my dad would head coal mines with 1000s of people working under his leadership. we would have three days of non stop festivities, one day for orchestra , the other day for what is called Kawwali and a third day of Kavi Sammelan or something similar. The night would light up with fireworks, happiness in the air everywhere. I do plan to go to India one of these Deewali’s , may be next year..it’s been a while…really..over 13 years now and celebrate it with mom and dad!!!

The White House saw four people join over a beer last evening – Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Officer Crowley and Professor Gates. The meeting was meant to cool anger over the racial tensions that have been going on the past couple of days.

This was a highly emotional episode, the details can be obtained here. The controversy was in part triggered by Obama who initially took side in the favor of the black scholar Gates. It was only fit for him to make amends, given one unthought of remark and the whole nation can get in turmoil.

Post Beer Summit, the Commander in Chief (Obama) made a very potent comment which sort of lingered with me for a long time “I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”

Hmmm..what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart, yep we are all in this together, there is nothing to fear but fear itself! I hope this message gets understood by the world maniacs, willing to kill each other over ideologies. I fail to understand where all this hatred comes from, I sincerely hope their hearts get filled with forgiveness and love. Only then, the world has a fighting chance of a peaceful existence. I hope we all get a teachable moment out of this experience and realize the every day risk prejudice , racial profiling and stereotype represents to the humanity. There’s an old saying “live and let live”, lets try to find the goodness in the other party and in the spirit of forgiveness, live and let live.

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The White House saw four people join over a beer last evening – Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Officer Crowley and Professor Gates. The meeting was meant to cool anger over the racial tensions that have been going on the past couple of days.

This was a highly emotional episode, the details can be obtained here. The controversy was in part triggered by Obama who initially took side in the favor of the black scholar Gates. It was only fit for him to make amends, given one unthought of remark and the whole nation can get in turmoil.

Post Beer Summit, the Commander in Chief (Obama) made a very potent comment which sort of lingered with me for a long time “I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”

Hmmm..what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart, yep we are all in this together, there is nothing to fear but fear itself! I hope this message gets understood by the world maniacs, willing to kill each other over ideologies. I fail to understand where all this hatred comes from, I sincerely hope their hearts get filled with forgiveness and love. Only then, the world has a fighting chance of a peaceful existence. I hope we all get a teachable moment out of this experience and realize the every day risk prejudice , racial profiling and stereotype represents to the humanity. There’s an old saying “live and let live”, lets try to find the goodness in the other party and in the spirit of forgiveness, live and let live.

This weekend I woke up to media coverage of father’s day celebrations. A day we celebrate the most important person in our lives. I am blessed to have a very loving dad, without whose caring help I may have not done anything meaningful in life..although he may have spoiled me little bit, by being a little too soft on me

Obama had a powerful message for all American dads, he told them to be there for the their kids, responsibility does not end after the kid is born. Of course he has a very powerful story of his own, his father was not there for him when he was growing up. He is trying to be to his daughters what he missed from his dad. You can read the details of the days event here.

“Gates on Gates” is also an interesting read where Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates talk candidly about father-son relationship- Bill’s parents pushed him to do activities outside his comfort zone-like swimming, football, soccer which helped him get leadership abilities, similarly Gates Sr talks about how to never demean your child- I couldn’t have agreed more. Read or watch it here.

Also an interesting Trivia on father-son duo in the same line of work, I knew dads have great influence in shaping the career of their kids, nice to see some famous examples. I never really knew that Ben Stiller is the son of comedian Jerry Stiller who I saw on numerous episodes of Seinfeld and “King of Queens”. Turns out Ben Stiller had comedy in his genes ( just saw his latest blockbuster- Night at the Museum 2 and shared laughter with my kids!).

It was not just Obama who recounted memories of his father, I heard his deputy Biden talking about what it means to be a dad and then TV actor Alec Baldwin recounted memories of his father who died of cancer in 80s. It was so touching…. and realizing his dad is no more ..I feel a million time blessed , my dad is still around, very much in my life, my guide and my conscience keeper..here’s wishing a happy fathers day to all the fathers of this world!!

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This weekend I woke up to media coverage of father’s day celebrations. A day we celebrate the most important person in our lives. I am blessed to have a very loving dad, without whose caring help I may have not done anything meaningful in life..although he may have spoiled me little bit, by being a little too soft on me

Obama had a powerful message for all American dads, he told them to be there for the their kids, responsibility does not end after the kid is born. Of course he has a very powerful story of his own, his father was not there for him when he was growing up. He is trying to be to his daughters what he missed from his dad. You can read the details of the days event here.

“Gates on Gates” is also an interesting read where Bill Gates Sr. and Bill Gates talk candidly about father-son relationship- Bill’s parents pushed him to do activities outside his comfort zone-like swimming, football, soccer which helped him get leadership abilities, similarly Gates Sr talks about how to never demean your child- I couldn’t have agreed more. Read or watch it here.

Also an interesting Trivia on father-son duo in the same line of work, I knew dads have great influence in shaping the career of their kids, nice to see some famous examples. I never really knew that Ben Stiller is the son of comedian Jerry Stiller who I saw on numerous episodes of Seinfeld and “King of Queens”. Turns out Ben Stiller had comedy in his genes ( just saw his latest blockbuster- Night at the Museum 2 and shared laughter with my kids!).

It was not just Obama who recounted memories of his father, I heard his deputy Biden talking about what it means to be a dad and then TV actor Alec Baldwin recounted memories of his father who died of cancer in 80s. It was so touching…. and realizing his dad is no more ..I feel a million time blessed , my dad is still around, very much in my life, my guide and my conscience keeper..here’s wishing a happy fathers day to all the fathers of this world!!

Seems like India has found its own Barack Obama in the young Rahul Gandhi. Actually not exactly, there are similarities but stark differences as well, first and foremost – Rahul being a product of India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and second he is no “black” in India. I have always been opposed to dynasty rule , more so in a country of billion plus population where you would think there’s no dearth of talent . When Rahul Gandhi started making news couple of months ago, my first inclination was to brush him aside, he is a kid ( although not exactly at 38-39), what can he do..I wondered.

As the Indian elections started drawing closer and more and more of my friends begin talking about it, my curiosity found me visiting political news pages of Indian dailies like Times of India and Hindustan Times more so often. To my surprise I see Oped columns on how Rahul Gandhi is aggressively campaigning across India and about to change electoral map in UP, a state bigger than Britain and France combined. This novice had started making some serious dent on a state dominated by casteist politics and regional parties like SP and BSP.

Rahul seems to have borrowed a page from Obama’s winning strategy- appeal to the youth, appeal to the poor and avoid divisive and negative politics (of religion and caste so prevalent in India). I am no political analyst but it sounded like he had a solid strategy in going after big prized state like UP ( just like Obama targeted big states like Texas , Ohio and Florida – California was already democratic leaning so wasn’t that tough winning it over).

I wonder how Rahul Gandhi engineered his strategies. Obama had a solid team of political strategist like David Alexrod and Bill Burton and a strong support from liberal leaning new media outlets like huffingtonpost.com, moveon.org and the traditional media also had somewhat favorable bias for him (other than Fox news of course!). I did not see any such supporting factor in favor of the younger scion of Gandhi family. Web 2.0 style campaigning pioneered by Obama obviously wouldn’t have worked for India either, given the low penetration of internet in rural India. This makes his achievement even more commendable.

What do I think of the overall election results. Obviously I am happy, not because Congress won or BJP lost, but because in this clear mandate for Congress we can look forward to a stable government less susceptible to black mail of coalition politics. I had started to think that for India the days of a single party majority are gone and the coalition government is the new reality where getting anything done is always a big challenge. I am glad that Indian democracy is alive and kicking , which can humble the old and complacent and bring new leaders to the forefront. It is yet to be seen how the three troika of Congress party- Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress party General Secretary Rahul Gandhi use their new found political capital.

Rahul may be the change India was looking for or he may turn out to be a damp squib- miserably failing to live up to his larger than life image, only time can tell. For now, he has proved his skeptics wrong, including me , and I congratulate him for his outstanding victory. Today is his day in the sun…and a testimony to the power of youth! I have already started feeling good and happy to be on the right side of history..of rooting for whoever challenges the status quo..whoever makes a sincere effort for a better tomorrow..be it Obama or Rahul Gandhi.