Which is your favorite cell phone with Camera, Mona?



So here I am after all the wait.  I behold - the Mona Lisa!! Of course like the hordes clicking away in the picture I too took her pictures.  But then I thought what must Ms Lisa must be thinking right now?  Whose phone is better than others! By the way I used a real camera and not a cellphone.



Van Gogh (Self Portrait)



Van Gogh self portrait (Musee d'Orsay, Paris, Feb 2009)
This was the second VG's self portrait that I have seen.  The first one I saw in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.  They, err, look quite the same! I am quite an admirer of the VG paintings.  Would love to visit the VG museum in Amsterdam.  But Musee d'Orsay does have a lot of works by him and of course his close pal, Gaguin.



Paris Pictures (Feb 2009)

Beggar (s) at St. Germain
I was in Paris in early February and by every yardstick it was cold.  Found these guys huddling together.

This is how you visit Paris!!! (UPDATED Dec. 17, 2010)

June 28, 2009
Frugal Paris
By MATT GROSS
WELL before midsummer, the sun sets late over Paris. Even at 9 p.m., you can sit on the banks of the Canal St.-Martin in the 10th Arrondissement, and see in the still water the reflection of the sky, a blue mottled with thin clouds, and the low pale buildings with their amber lights just turned on, and the ruffled, fractal edge of the trees in full green bloom. Night seems as if it will never come.

By the water, there is a small pink dot of a helium balloon, bobbing in the intermittent breeze. The balloon is key. It was given to you by Pink Flamingo, a pizza parlor down the nearby Rue Bichat, whose bicycle deliveryman will use it as a beacon to locate you and present the five pies you’ve ordered (10.50 to 16 euros each). They’re not all for you, of course — you’ve got friends to help eat the pizza and drink the four bottles of red wine (40 euros) you picked up from Le Verre Volé, a wine bar across the canal.

You’ll love the pizza’s quirky toppings — the Poulidor’s goat cheese and sliced duck breast, the bacon-and-pineapple Obama — and the earthy pinot noir. But finally it will be dark and you’ll be more than tipsy and your friends will be heading home by Métro, by Vespa and by Vélib’, the city’s rental bicycle system.

And you, you’ll take off on foot, up along the canal toward Belleville, where Asian, Arab and African immigrants live alongside artists and yuppies and bobos. And you’ll climb the stairs at the Hipotel Paris Belleville and collapse into the single bed of your spartan room, not caring that the toilet is in a smelly closet down the hall, because the sheets are clean, the rate is dirt cheap and you’ve just experienced the most wonderful, traditional and frugal activity in the City of Light — the picnic.

The picnic is the great democratizing institution of summer, when Parisians spill onto riverbanks and bridges and into parks and gardens, chasing away the memories of winter and rain with baguettes and bottles, sandals and sundresses. For the wealthy, picnics are a lark, for the less wealthy an escape, and for this Frugal Traveler, who spent nine days in Paris at the end of May and early June, proof that classic Parisian indulgence doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

In fact, this idea that Paris is expensive has always struck me as odd. Of course, it can be, if your conception of Paris is built on haute couture and Michelin stars. But Paris — the physical as well as the cultural — is the creation less of the moneyed nobility than of the strivers, schemers, hustlers, freeloaders and starving artists who roam its streets, sing chansons on its subways and make tiny cups of coffee last hours at zinc counters. When I imagine Paris, I think of Émile Zola, the 19th-century novelist whose based-in-reality characters — from ambitious laundresses to real-estate speculators — are, in their own way, just as responsible as Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann for transforming it into the grand, boulevarded city we know today.

I also think of Ernest Hemingway, whose “A Moveable Feast”— a “restored” version is being published this summer by Scribner — is the ur-text of rose-tinted Parisian poverty, a collage of scenes in which the young novelist starves for his art in a cold-water apartment, yet somehow manages to enjoy ski trips to Austria, bottles of good white Mâcon and platters of oysters.

Of course, Hemingway didn’t spend the rest of his life in a dingy garret (hello, Key West!), and neither would I. In the spirit of Parisian strivers past and present, my plan was to switch hotels every few days, starting with cheapest but (I hoped) still recommendable bed I could find, and moving my way up to grander and fancier digs — while, of course, staying well under 100 euros a night. In a twisted kind of way, I wanted to develop a bit of Baudelairean “nostalgie de la boue,” or nostalgia for the gutter — a romantic vision of poverty that can only really be embraced after climbing out of privation.

My descent into Paris’s lower rungs began at the allegedly two-star Hipotel, which I found through my trusty European hotel guide, EuroCheapo.com. The photos were sharp, the location decent and the price (32 euros a night, or about $44 at $1.41 to the euro) terrific, and the poor reviews on TripAdvisor only fed my dream of finding the ideal, undiscovered hovel. Dream on. When I arrived around 11 a.m., there was no one at the front desk and the hallways were just clean enough to dissuade complaint. After lugging my suitcase up a flight of stairs (what, did I expect an elevator?), I found the corridor dark, the light switches dangling on exposed wires.

The room was, in the French description, a “simple.” I had a desk, a bed, a sink, mismatched hangers and a single window that let in some welcome daylight. The only towels were hand towels, and the shower was down the hall, in a locked, windowless closet whose key I had to request at the front desk. It was bad, but neither hilariously bad nor charmingly bad. At least I was well situated, around the corner from the Colonel Fabien Métro stop and walking distance from other neighborhoods.

Because of this, I spent little time in Belleville. Instead, as always seems to happen, I wound up wandering the Marais, the former Jewish quarter that straddles the Third and Fourth Arrondissements and has, in the past 15 years, become home to innumerable galleries and fashionable boutiques. It’s also one of the few neighborhoods relatively untouched by Haussmannian urban planning. The streets remain narrow and chaotic, and feel more so because of the masses of tourists bumbling about.

But though it now defines the beaten path, the Marais still holds, if not secrets, then overlooked — and inexpensive — delights. Chief among them is the Carnavalet, one of 14 free museums run by the city, this one focusing on the history of Paris itself. In a conjoined pair of opulent 16th- and 17th-century mansions, dozens of exhibitions track the city’s evolution, from prehistory (represented by fossilized canoes) to the Middle Ages to relatively modern times (a niche containing Proust’s bedchamber). I was captivated by an 1890 painting of the Canal St.-Martin, looking almost as it does today, mirroring the lights of buildings at night, but also by a 16th-century painting of an anti-Henri IV march by soldiers and priests at the Place de Grève. All around them, everyday city life thrives — men cut wood, repair boats and fight over a pig.

AS I visited museums, I even tried skipping lunch à la Hemingway, who claimed fasting helped him concentrate on the Cézannes in the Musée du Luxembourg — “to see truly how he made landscapes.” My hunger, meanwhile, let me focus not on Cézanne but on the Museum of Hunting and Nature, free the first Sunday of every month. (The Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and others offer the same deal, which President Obama took advantage of at the Pompidou.) My stomach empty, I explored this strange collection of taxidermied animals, read arcane lore (in late medieval France, I learned, deer had to be hunted nobly, but you could catch wolves deviously) and admired works of contemporary art — like a Jeff Koons puppy — among the stuffed relics.

Two nights in the garret, however, was enough — I was ready to upgrade my Paris life. I moved into the Hôtel des Arts Bastille, a fine old seven-story building with a mansard roof, Juliet balconies, an elevator and, what I was most excited by, ensuite bathrooms. I’d found it through Kayak.com and picked it for its looks (rooms with jaunty orange highlights), location (close enough to Bastille to be accessible, but far enough from the noisy bars) and, above all, its price: 60 euros a night, if I booked for three nights. Compared with the Hipotel, it felt like a five-star.

After checking in, I cracked open the tall double windows that looked down on the quiet street and breathed deeply. The air did not smell like a toilet. There was no hammering from next door. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this place — but maybe nothing truly special, either.

Once I settled into these plusher surroundings, I felt ready to indulge in a slightly better life. The sandwiches au jambon I’d been buying for a few euros from nameless street vendors were great, as were the half-dozen fines de claire oysters I’d consumed at a stand outside the Montgallet Métro (8 euros, including bread, butter and wine), but I’d been dying for a traditional French bistro meal.

Thanks to one of my Twitter followers, @webcowgirl, I found Bistrot Victoires, about halfway between the Louvre and Opéra. The décor was classic — zinc bar, huge mirrors, wood paneling, brass trim — and so was the food. My grilled rib-eye (11 euros) came topped with burning thyme, the embers glowing red, the smoke a haunting perfume. The Côtes du Rhône (13.75 euros a bottle, shared with my three lunch mates) paired nicely, and the crème brûlée (5 euros) was, as the French say (and are than happy with), correct.

My craving sated, I worked up the courage to go shopping. The flea markets provided many bargains (which I’ll describe in detail this Wednesday on my blog), but I found other options, too.

À Chacun Son Image, for example, was a trove of anonymous found photographs (5 euros and up) of midcentury beachgoers, World War I veterans, dinner parties where half the attendees have their eyes closed — all regular people contributing to a romantic, black-and-white image of Paris past.

Paris past also turned up at Native Kingdom, a newly opened vintage children’s clothing store in the upper Marais, where I bought my daughter a striped Petit Bateau bikini bottom (only 4 euros!), and the shop’s owner, Ema Caillon, wrapped it up in pink tissue paper held together with a pretty toy bird clip.

More slightly outdated fashions were available at the A.P.C. surplus store in Montmartre. A.P.C. virtually defines a certain type of fashionable Parisian — equal parts sharp tailoring and street style — but six months after the clothes hit stores, if they haven’t sold they move up to the Montmartre outlet and go on sale at 50 percent off. Eighty euros still isn’t cheap for a hooded windbreaker, but definitely more tempting than the original price.

When evening began to fall, hunger became an issue again. I’d stave it off a bit with a drink at Le Baron Rouge, a bar in an old working-class neighborhood where most of the nearly 50 wines cost less than 3.50 euros, or at Chez Georges, the kind of ancient dive that’s been sustaining impoverished drinkers for decades. (“I used to go there when I was 18!” wrote one friend, now 39, in response to my e-mail invitation.) It’s easy to see why. Beers are 2 euros, kirs 2.50, and all are welcome, from old-timers who wander in and out, to hip kids who groove to the D.J.’s turntables under the stone arches in the basement. In my mind, I saw it as an assommoir, or gin mill, from one of Zola’s novels.

But eventually, I had to eat, and though I loved the picnics — say, on the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine west of the Pont Neuf — occasionally I wanted to sit down in an actual chair. Well, Churrsaqueira Galo, a Portuguese restaurant on a forlorn stretch of the Ninth Arrondissement, recommended by the Paris-based American cookbook author David Lebovitz, had chairs. And tables. And that was about it: there was no décor to speak of, just white walls and, in one room, a steel rotisserie. But it also had beyond-hearty helpings of roast chicken, pork ribs, steaks, lamb, rice, fries, salad and an herb-flecked hot sauce, most for 10 euros or less. It was the kind of place where, if I lived in the neighborhood, I’d feel guilty for going there so often. (Maybe.)

The décor at Spring, one of the hottest tables in the city, was pared down as well, but in a far fancier and more expensive way. Opened two and a half years ago by Daniel Rose, a 32-year-old American chef who has already become a Paris legend, it featured a 48-euro menu (gray-shrimp marmalade, sole beignets), just 16 seats and a monthlong waiting list for reservations. How did the Frugal Traveler get in? On a no-reservations Saturday, when Mr. Rose serves a discount menu of lobster rolls (23 to 28 euros, depending on the market price) and duck-fat French fries (5 euros).

Champagne, wine and macvin (a wine fortified with grappa from the Jura) flowed long after Spring should have closed, but Mr. Rose’s friends and customers kept strolling in, including one stunning woman in evening dress who clutched her nonexistent potbelly and declared, mixing French and English, “Je suis full!” So was I. (Spring is in flux right now as Mr. Rose is shifting it to a new location in January.)

And so it went most nights. A good, inexpensive meal with friends, maybe a visit afterward to a wine bar like Le Garde Robe, where the bartender suggested one of my all-time favorite bottles, the rough and punchy 2001 Domaine Maria Fita (24 euros), and plunked down a baguette and a slab of gnarly terrine. And then I’d walk through the empty streets — watching the occasional Vélib’ rider cruise past, or dodging the raindrops that dripped through the trees — to whichever hotel I was staying in that night.

That stroll was, my last two nights, particularly joyful, as I was heading for the 40-room, family-owned Les Chansonniers. After holding my nose at the Hipotel, and feeling simply satisfied at the Hôtel des Arts, I was ready for a dose of Parisian luxury (okay, affordable luxury). I’d found Les Chansonniers — off in far-flung but Métro-accessible Ménilmontant, between Belleville and the Père-Lachaise Cemetery — through EuroCheapo, and I’d fallen for its beauty, its affordability (my room, one of the hotel’s best, cost 82 euros a night) and its theme: the great French singers of old, almost all of whom were, at one point or another, starving artists.

I dragged my old rolling duffel there from the Hôtel des Arts as a light rain beginning to fall. I checked in (the clerk even complimented my French!) and climbed the stairs to my room, the Mistinguett, named for the singer who started out selling flowers on the street and a couple decades later was insuring her legs for 500,000 francs.

When I walked in the door, I felt suddenly, weirdly out of place. The bed was big and soft, covered in a thick, tastefully pink duvet. Rose-patterned toile de Jouy wallpaper added to the romance, and in the huge bathroom I spied a whirlpool tub. (Towels, too!) After a week of striving, I’d hit the big time, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. I almost felt as if I couldn’t simply relax there — as if this was someone else’s room and I didn’t want to mess it up. One afternoon, I brought home a merguez sandwich (4.50 euros) and ate it carefully, afraid of what the housekeepers might think if they found crumbs in the sheets.

It wasn’t until my last morning in Paris that I put that whirlpool bathtub to its proper use. There, with the hot water whooshing around me, I examined the intricate details of the tiled wall and felt what I imagine Hemingway, Piaf and every other striver who made it felt — that despite the challenges of poverty, self-imposed or circumstantial, the days of denial had made this final indulgence that much sweeter (especially, in my case, since I still wasn’t spending much). Life in Paris on a low budget could be tough, could be frustrating, could involve long walks, bad meals, rudeness and discomfort. It was certainly no picnic — except, of course, when it was.

IF YOU GO

HOW TO GET THERE

Many airlines fly nonstop between New York City and Paris. A recent Web search found Air France flights from Kennedy Airport into Charles de Gaulle from $900 in July.

HOW TO GET AROUND

The Vélib’ bicycle-rental system has become exceedingly popular. Rental stations are located all around the city, and a one-hour rental costs only 1 euro.

The Métro is the best alternative (besides walking). Tickets are 1.60 euros each, but can be bought in packets of 10 (un carnet) for 11.40 euros, about $16 at $1.41 to the euro. If you’re going to be in Paris from Monday through Sunday, or plan to ride the Métro frequently, invest in a swipable Navigo card. The card itself costs 5 euros, and a weeklong unlimited credit is 16.80 euros. Hold on to the card when the week is up — you can use it on your next visit.

WHERE TO STAY

Hipotel Paris Belleville, 21, rue Vicq d’Azir, (33-1) 4208-0670; singles from 32 euros.

Hôtel des Arts Bastille, 2, rue Godefroy Cavaignac; (33-1) 4379-7257, www.paris-hotel-desarts.com; doubles from 59 euros.

Les Chansonniers, 113, boulevard de Ménilmontant; (33-1) 4357-0058, doubles with shared bathroom from 46 euros, with ensuite bathroom from 59 euros.

WHAT TO SEE

Musée Carnavalet, 23, rue de Sévigné;(33-1) 4459-5858; www.carnavalet.paris.fr, free admission.

Musée Cognacq-Jay, 8, rue Elzévir; (33-1) 4027-0721; www.cognacq-jay.paris.fr., free admission.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, 62, rue des Archives; (33-1) 5301-9240, www.chassenature.org; admission 6 euros, free the first Sunday of every month.

WHERE TO EAT & DRINK

Pink Flamingo, 67, rue Bichat; (33-1) 4202-3170; www.pinkflamingopizza.com

Le Verre Volé, 67, rue de Lancry; (33-1) 4803-1734; www.leverrevole.fr.

Bistrot Victoires, 6, rue de la Vrillière; (33-1) 4261-4378.

Chez Georges, 11, rue des Canettes; (33-1) 4326-7915.

Le Baron Rouge, 1, rue Théophile-Roussel, (33-1) 4343-1432.

Churrasqueira Galo, 69, rue de Dunkerque, (33-1) 4874-4940

Le Garde Robe, 41, rue de l’Arbre Sec, (33-1) 4926-9060.

Le Cul de Poule, 53, rue des Martyrs, (33-1) 5316-1307, is super-playful from its name (literally, chicken butt; figuratively, double-boiler) to its décor (orange chairs, bed-like banquette). But the cooking is serious, precise, creative and affordable, with two courses 23 euros, and three for 26.

Le Bar à Soupes, 33, rue de Charonne; (33-1) 4357-5379; www.lebarasoupes.com, offers an excellent lunch deal: a fresh market soup, two types of cheese, bread and a glass of wine for 9.90 euros.

WHERE TO SHOP

À Chacun Son Image, 35-37, rue Charlot, (33-665) 2395-0300; achacunsonimage.wordpress.com.

Native Kingdom, 24, rue de Poitou

A.P.C. Surplus, 20, rue Andre del Sarte; (33-1) 4262-1088; www.apc.fr.

MATT GROSS writes the Frugal Traveler blog at nytimes.com/travel.

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December 16, 2010


36 Hours in ParisBy GISELA WILLIAMS

HAS Paris lost its edge? Mais non! The city’s bohemians are just harder to find. The artsy denizens and creative tastemakers, always on the hunt for cheaper rents, have migrated to the city’s fringes, like Belleville and the former red-light district of Pigalle. There are even fashion-forward hangouts in the postcard-perfect center — a pop-up restaurant here, a taxidermy-stuffed speakeasy there. And, of course, a modern take on the classic Parisian bistro or boulangerie will never go out of style.

Friday

4 p.m.

1) GALLERY GHETTO
The ghosts of Paris’s master artists are everywhere, but if you want to dive into the city’s contemporary art scene, head to Belleville, where the steep hilltop streets are dotted with upstart galleries and cozy wine bars. Among the earliest galleries was Bugada & Cargnel (7-9, rue de l’Équerre; 33-1-42-71-72-73; bugadacargnel.com), which specializes in both French and international emerging artists. Newer arrivals include Gaudel de Stampa (3, rue de Vaucouleurs; 33-1-40-21-37-38; gaudeldestampa.fr) and Marcelle Alix (4, rue Jouye-Rouve; 33-9-50-04-16-80; marcellealix.com). For a mix of art and fashion, swing by Andrea Crews (25, rue de Vaucouleurs; 33-1-45-26-36-68; andreacrews.com), where vintage duds are transformed into fast fashion.

6 p.m.

2) LA BOHèME WINE BAR

Perched above the Belleville park, Le Baratin (3, rue Jouye-Rouve; 33-1-43-49-39-70 ) is an unpretentious and intimate wine bar with antique tile floors and worn wood tables. Despite the local buzz, it has managed to stay low-key, so it’s still possible to walk in at an odd hour, sans reservations, and join the bohemian crowd as they sample the dozen or so small-production wines, scratched on the chalkboard.


8:30 p.m.

3) CHIC BISTRONOMIQUE

Here’s the trick to getting a table at always-packed Le Chateaubriand (129, avenue Parmentier; 33-1-43-57-45-95). Park yourself at the bar around 8:30 p.m. the day of, and fortify yourself with wine and snacks — and people watching — while you wait for a table. It’s first come first served for the 9:30 seating. (Otherwise, you have to make reservations at least two weeks in advance for the 7:30 seating.) The young Basque chef, Iñaki Aizpitarte, serves a five-course menu that changes daily. Recent meals included a foie gras served in miso soup, and a sea bass served with red chicory and lemon crème fraîche. Prix fixe: only 50 euros, or $65 at $1.31 to the euro.

Midnight

4) RED LIGHT SPECIAL

In recent years, the area around Pigalle has drawn Parisian tastemakers looking for a good time — with their clothes on. Start with a drink at Hôtel Amour (8, rue de Navarin; 33-1-48-78-31-80; hotelamourparis.fr), an artsy hotel decorated with disco balls and Terry Richardson photographs that is partly owned by the reigning king of Paris night life, André Saraiva. Then continue to Chez Moune (54, rue Jean Baptiste Pigalle; 33-1-45-26-64-64; chezmoune.fr), a former lesbian cabaret that is now a popular hangout for the city’s polysexual fashionistas.

Saturday
11 a.m.

5) WHERE LADY GAGA SHOPS

By now, you can pretty much find those Lanvin flats and Céline bags back home. But Bambi-shaped shoes? Or a Kermit the Frog jacket? The aristocrat fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has a new boutique in St.-Germain (61, rue des St.-Pères; 33-9-64-48-48-54; jc-de-castelbajac.com) where fashion inspiration comes from unexpected places, like “Paradise Lost” and Donald Duck.


Noon

6) POP-UP BISTRO
Even jaded Parisians have waited weeks for one of the 12 seats at the pop-up restaurant Nomiya (13, avenue du Président Wilson; online reservations at art-home-electrolux.com), a glass box that floats on the rooftop of the Palais de Tokyo. Instead of dinner, come for lunch, when seatings are easier to come by, and the views are more spectacular. The five-course meal cooked up by Gilles Stassart might include foie gras with eggplant confit and scorpion fish served with a vegetable medley (80 euros for lunch and 100 euros for dinner). Nomiya’s run has been extended until spring 2011.

2 p.m.

7) SHOP THE CANAL
On sunny weekends, stylish young families and boho-chic couples stroll the gentrified Canal St.-Martin — fast becoming a charming little shopping hood of indie boutiques. Dupleks (83, quai de Valmy; 33-1-42-06-15-08; dupleks.fr) sells eco-friendly fashions, Espace Beaurepaire (28, rue Beaurepaire; 33-1-42-45-59-64; espacebeaurepaire.com) carries street-art prints, and La Piñata (25, rue des Vinaigriers; 33-1-40-35-01-45; lapinata.fr) has wooden children’s toys. Style hounds especially like Sweat Shop (13, rue Lucien Sampaix; 33-9-52-85-47-41; sweatshopparis.com) , a funky D.I.Y. collective and cafe with sewing machines to rent by the hour.

4 p.m.

8) SAVORY AND SWEET
One bite, and you’ll understand why there’s a long line outside Du Pain et Des Idées (34, rue Yves Toudic; 33-1-42-40-44-52; dupainetdesidees.com), a cultish boulangerie in the Canal St.-Martin neighborhood. The escargot chocolat-pistache, a snail-shaped pastry filled with chocolate and pistachio, will shatter the will of any dieter. So will the mini-pavés, savory knots stuffed with spinach and goat cheese.

8 p.m.

9) AMERICAN TRANSPLANTS

Paris-obsessed food bloggers will roll their eyes, but Spring (6 Rue Bailleul; 33-1-45-96-05-72; springparis.blogspot.com), an intimate restaurant that moved this summer to the First Arrondissement, deserves the hype. The French-trained American chef Daniel Rose takes something as simple as eggplant and prepares it four eye-opening ways. Dinner prix-fixe menu: 64 euros. If you can’t make reservations months ahead of time, head to the newly revamped Minipalais (Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill; 33-1-42-56-42-42; minipalais.com), a loft-like brasserie with an American-friendly menu that includes a terrific duck burger with foie gras. Or try the new Ralph’s (173, boulevard St.-Germain; 33-1-44-77-76-00; ralphlaurenstgermain.com), owned by Ralph Lauren in St.-Germain, which, believe it or not, is fashionable with a young Parisian crowd.

Midnight

10) LE CHIC ET LE GEEK

Ever since the legendary Le Montana reopened during last spring’s fashion week, le party hasn’t stopped. Resurrected by André Saraiva (yes, him again) and Olivier Zahm, Le Montana (28, rue St.-Benoît) draws an A-list crowd of models and actors. But be warned: getting past the bouncer is harder than squeezing into jeggings. Fortunately, a 20-minute walk away is the geeky hot spot Curio Parlor (16, rue des Bernardins; 33-1-44-07-12-47; curioparlor.com), a speakeasy-style lounge popular with a chic Parisian crowd that sips single malt whiskey.


Sunday

11 a.m.

11) GRASS IS GREENER

Since the historic dance hall and watering hole Rosa Bonheur reopened in 2008 (2, allée de la Cascade, in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont; 33-1-42-00-00-45; rosabonheur.fr), it has brought the city’s party crowd to the great outdoors. By day, middle-aged hippies strum guitars alongside hungover clubkids. By night, it turns into a full-fledged party complete with velvet rope and D.J. This winter the party continues inside with the restaurant Mimi Cantine overseen by the Michelin-starred chef Armand Arnal.

1 p.m.

12) FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Blame it on Wes Anderson movies or an obsession with the cult taxidermy shop Deyrolle, but nothing gets a Parisian bohemian more excited than a room filled with stuffed animals. Get your fix at the Musée de la Maison de la Chasse et de la Nature (62, rue des Archives; 33-1-53-01-92-40), a quirky museum with an eccentric collection of taxidermy and antique weaponry. There is also a room dedicated to unicorns, which adds just the right amount of je ne sais quoi to the intentionally musty space.

IF YOU GO

Give Philippe Starck two years, a jaw-dropping budget and a grand Parisian shell, and you get the new Raffles Royal Monceau (37, avenue Hoche; 33-1-42-99-88-00; leroyalmonceau.com). Steps from the Arc de Triomphe, the 85-room hotel leaves no detail too small to escape the designer’s touch, with rates from 780 euros, or $1,000.


For a taste of the seedy-cool district of Pigalle, book a room at the Hôtel Amour (8, rue Navarin; 33-1-48-78-31-80; hotelamourparis.fr), the brainchild of the graffiti artist turned nightclub entrepreneur André Saraiva and Thierry Costes of the Costes family. Rooms start at 100 euros.

The year-old Hotel Banke (20, rue La Fayette; 33-1-55-33-22-22; derbyhotels.com/banke-hotel-paris), near the Place Vendôme, combines Belle Époque-style architecture with not overly trendy touches, with 94 rooms starting at 260 euros in December.

Why College Towns Are Looking Smart

MARCH 24, 2009, 2:32 P.M. ET Why College Towns Are Looking Smart Article

By KELLY EVANS
Looking for a job? Try a college town.

Morgantown, W.Va., home to West Virginia University, has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the U.S. -- just 3.9% -- and the university itself has about 260 job openings, from nurses to professors to programmers.

"We're hurting for people, especially to fill our computer and technical positions," says Margaret Phillips, vice president for human relations at WVU.

Of the six metropolitan areas with unemployment below 4% as of January, three of them are considered college towns. One is Morgantown. The other two are Logan, Utah, home of Utah State University, and Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State University. Both have just 3.8% unemployment, based on Labor Department figures that are not seasonally adjusted.

The pattern holds true for many other big college towns, such as Gainesville, Fla., Ann Arbor, Mich., Manhattan, Kan., and Boulder, Colo. In stark contrast, the unadjusted national unemployment rate is 8.5%.

While college towns have long been considered recession-resistant, their ability to avoid the depths of the financial crisis shaking the rest of the nation is noteworthy. The ones faring the best right now are not only major education centers; they also are regional health-care hubs that draw people into the city and benefit from a stable, educated, highly skilled work force.

The big question hanging over these communities is whether their formula for success can outlast the nation's nastiest recession in at least a quarter-century. Amid investment losses and state budget woes, many college cities are starting to see their unemployment rates rise, even though they're still lower than the national average. The longer the recession drags on, the more likely college towns are to catch up with their harder-hit peers.

They already have felt the impact of the recession. WVU saw its endowment fall by nearly a quarter in the second half of 2008, and its hospitals are reducing 401(k) matching contributions and delaying $20 million in capital spending, though its state funding has remained intact.

State Funding Cuts
Utah State University has seen nearly 10% of its state funding cut in the past six months, and in response has laid off about 20 employees and imposed a mandatory weeklong furlough for its employees during spring break to save costs. Iowa State, facing a 9% reduction in state appropriations, just received approval to begin an early-retirement program.

But for now, at least, job seekers who act quickly -- and are willing to relocate -- could well fare better in places like Morgantown, which is about 70 miles south of Pittsburgh near the Pennsylvania border. College towns like Morgantown have a distinct advantage over many other cities: They enjoy a constant stream of graduates, some who stay put and others who return years later -- and each year brings a new crop of students and potential residents to the area.

"I could go almost anywhere and get a job right now," says Shane Cruse, a senior in the WVU school of nursing who graduates in May, citing the shortage of nurses nationwide. But come June 1, he'll be starting as a registered nurse at WVU's Ruby Memorial Hospital.

"I love it here," Mr. Cruse says. "It's a large-enough city that there's plenty to do. But you still leave your house and feel like it's your hometown."

WVU has a current enrollment of nearly 29,000, about the same size as the city of Morgantown, though the metro population is now about 115,000 and draws thousands more daily from the surrounding region for health care, shopping and WVU athletic events.

Today, the university and its hospital system together employ nearly 12,500 people -- the largest employer in the whole state. Job growth in the Morgantown metropolitan area averaged 3.2% a year from 2002-07, according to the university's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, compared to growth of just 1.1% nationally and 0.7% in West Virginia. The university system in total has an estimated annual economic impact of about $3.9 billion statewide.

Highly Skilled Work Force
Economists credit a highly skilled work force for the resilience of college towns. Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard University, has demonstrated that as the share of the adult population with college degrees in a city increases by 10%, wages correspondingly rise by about 7.8%.

"Apart from weather, human capital has been the best long-run predictor of urban success in the last century," Mr. Glaeser says.

Nikki Bowman, a 1992 graduate of WVU, is the kind of person economists have in mind when they speak of "human capital." She spent years in the magazine industry in places like Chicago and Washington, D.C., before returning last year to start her own magazine, WV Living, which was launched in November.

"It was my dream to come back, and I knew I could make it work," says Ms. Bowman, 37. "Part of why I wanted to be here was to pull from the journalism school and I have a lot of great interns as a result," which helps keep her payroll costs down.

WVU graduate Lindsay Williams, 29, started work as a real-estate broker with Howard Hanna's Morgantown office shortly after leaving WVU while waiting for her then-boyfriend -- now her husband -- to finish his degree. She now serves as president of the Morgantown Board of Realtors.

Another factor helping college towns: "communiversity," the current term for partnerships between universities and their home cities, such as joint economic development projects. The trend also reflects a shift in education to increasingly emphasize out-of-classroom learning, such as internships and volunteer work, that by definition engages the community, according to Sal Rinella, president of the Society for College and University Planning in Los Angeles.

"We could actually call these town-gown partnerships a kind of new movement in American higher education," he says. "In the last 20 years or so, the boundaries between the cities and the universities have really begun to crumble."

Planning experts point to the successful relationships between the University of Pennsylvania and downtown Philadelphia, and Johns Hopkins University's multimillion-dollar partnership with the East Baltimore Development Corp. But the college-town effect has its greatest impact in places like Morgantown.

The close relationship between Morgantown and WVU was partly borne out of desperation. In 1991, a young, reform-minded group including Ron Justice, who is now the mayor, was elected to the city council at a pivotal moment; the decades-long decline of railroad and heavy industry in Morgantown meant the city urgently needed to find a new engine of growth.

The council hired a city manager to oversee municipal finances, and began working more closely with the WVU administration in a joint effort to turn the town around. They started out small, with road-paving projects and public safety. In 2001, the university relocated a major new administration building in the city's blighted Wharf District instead of its downtown campus.

Catalyst for Redevelopment
The new building became a catalyst for redevelopment of the whole waterfront. A new hotel, restaurants and a $28 million event center have since been built, and the old railroad tracks are now miles of jogging and biking trails.

The university has continued to upgrade its downtown campus and added new facilities like a $34 million student recreation center with two pools, a climbing wall and a café to its campus a few miles north of town. Construction is now under way on an 88-acre research park near the hospital and a $50 million commercial development featuring a Hilton Garden Inn.

At the same time, WVU president David Hardesty's aggressive expansion of the university's student body -- which has grown 50% since 1995 -- and program offerings in the 1990s, including a world-renowned forensics and biometrics program, helped raise the caliber of the city's work force.

Jason Donahue graduated from WVU in 1993 and followed a career in commercial real-estate development to a job with ECDC Realty in Charleston, S.C., whose primary business is site selection and development for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. He moved back to Morgantown in 2007 to handle development in the Pennsylvania region. "My wife would tell you I picked our house so we could be within walking distance to the football games," he said with a chuckle. They are now season-ticket holders.

His wife, a registered nurse, quickly found work at one of the city's senior centers. Their 7-year-old daughter was in a community play last weekend sponsored by WVU -- a production of "Alice in Wonderland." "She was Gardener No. 7 with two speaking lines, and she did great," Mr. Donahue says.

Holi Celebrations! (2009)

Priya and her bunch of Holi revellers in full form. A festival tailormade for kids!!

As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists (New York Times)

March 13, 2009

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
NEW DELHI — Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.
China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent. Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and intellectual growth for a lifetime.
There are no simple explanations. Economists and public health experts say stubborn malnutrition rates point to a central failing in this democracy of the poor. Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize-winning economist, lamented that hunger was not enough of a political priority here. India’s public expenditure on health remains low, and in some places, financing for child nutrition programs remains unspent.
Yet several democracies have all but eradicated hunger. And ignoring the needs of the poor altogether does spell political peril in India, helping to topple parties in the last elections.
Others point to the efficiency of an authoritarian state like China. India’s sluggish and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy has only haltingly put in place relatively simple solutions — iodizing salt, for instance, or making sure all children are immunized against preventable diseases — to say nothing of its progress on the harder tasks, like changing what and how parents feed their children.
But as China itself has grown more prosperous, it has had its own struggles with health care, as the government safety net has shredded with its adoption of a more market-driven economy.
While India runs the largest child feeding program in the world, experts agree it is inadequately designed, and has made barely a dent in the ranks of sick children in the past 10 years.
The $1.3 billion Integrated Child Development Services program, India’s primary effort to combat malnutrition, finances a network of soup kitchens in urban slums and villages.
But most experts agree that providing adequate nutrition to pregnant women and children under 2 years old is crucial — and the Indian program has not homed in on them adequately. Nor has it succeeded in sufficiently changing child feeding and hygiene practices. Many women here remain in ill health and are ill fed; they are prone to giving birth to low-weight babies and tend not to be aware of how best to feed them.
A tour of Jahangirpuri, a slum in this richest of Indian cities, put the challenge on stark display. Shortly after daybreak, in a rented room along a narrow alley, an all-female crew prepared giant vats of savory rice and lentil porridge.
Purnima Menon, a public health researcher with the International Food Policy Research Institute, was relieved to see it was not just starch; there were even flecks of carrots thrown in. The porridge was loaded onto bicycle carts and ferried to nurseries that vet and help at-risk children and their mothers throughout the neighborhood.
So far, so good. Except that at one nursery — known in Hindi as an anganwadi — the teacher was a no-show. At another, there were no children; instead, a few adults sauntered up with their lunch pails. At a third, the nursery worker, Brij Bala, said that 13 children and 13 lactating mothers had already come to claim their servings, and that now she would have to fill the bowls of whoever came along, neighborhood aunties and all. “They say, ‘Give us some more,’ so we have to,” Ms. Bala confessed. “Otherwise, they will curse us.”
None of the centers had a working scale to weigh children and to identify the vulnerable ones, a crucial part of the nutrition program.
Most important from Ms. Menon’s point of view, the nurseries were largely missing the needs of those most at risk: children under 2, for whom the feeding centers offered a dry ration of flour and ground lentils, containing none of the micronutrients a vulnerable infant needs.
In a memorandum prepared in February, the Ministry of Women and Child Development acknowledged that while the program had yielded some gains in the past 30 years, “its impact on physical growth and development has been rather slow.” The report recommended fortifying food with micronutrients and educating parents on how to better feed their babies.
A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its Global Hunger Index.
Childhood anemia, a barometer of poor nutrition in a lactating mother’s breast milk, is three times higher in India than in China, according to a 2007 research paper from the institute.
The latest Global Hunger Index described hunger in Madhya Pradesh, a destitute state in central India, as “extremely alarming,” ranking the state somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia.
More surprising, though, it found that “serious” rates of hunger persisted across Indian states that had posted enviable rates of economic growth in recent years, including Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Here in the capital, which has the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2 percent of children under 5 are stunted, or too short for their age, and 26 percent are underweight. A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.
Back in Jahangirpuri, a dead rat lay in the courtyard in front of Ms. Bala’s nursery. The narrow lanes were lined with scum from the drains. Malaria and respiratory illness, which can be crippling for weak, undernourished children, were rampant. Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.
In another alley, Ms. Menon met a young mother named Jannu, a migrant from the northern town of Lucknow. Jannu said she found it difficult to produce enough milk for the baby in her arms, around 6 months old. His green, watery waste dripped down his mother’s arms. He often has diarrhea, Jannu said, casually rinsing her arm with a tumbler of water.
Ms. Menon could not help but notice how small Jannu was, like so many of Jahangirpuri’s mothers. At 5 feet 2 inches tall, Ms. Menon towered over them. Children who were roughly the same age as her own daughter were easily a foot shorter. Stunted children are so prevalent here, she observed, it makes malnutrition invisible.
“I see a system failing,” Ms. Menon said. “It is doing something, but it is not solving the problem.”

stop complaining

• MARCH 4, 2009

From Attitude to Gratitude: This Is No Time for Complaining

By JEFFREY ZASLOW

David Hirsch hasn't forgotten the unhappy phone calls he used to get from clients back in 1998 and 1999. A director at Credit Suisse Private Banking USA in Chicago, he was carefully investing clients' money in blue-chip stocks, earning them 15% to 20% in annual returns.

But that was a time when some investors were earning 50% or even 100% returns in tech portfolios. Some of Mr. Hirsch's clients pulled their money, grousing that he wasn't serving them well.

John Segal

Today, though his clients' portfolios are down 35% or more, "I'm not getting complaints," Mr. Hirsch says. "People aren't asking, 'What did you do to my portfolio?' They're asking, 'What do we do from here?' "

There may be a positive byproduct of our troubled times: a decrease in the urge to complain. People who still have jobs are finding reasons to be appreciative. (It feels unseemly to complain about not getting a raise when your neighbor is unemployed.) Homeowners are unhappy that home values have fallen, but it's a relief to avoid foreclosure. And yes, our portfolios have plummeted, but most of us can say that at least we didn't invest with Bernie Madoff.

Even if grumbling is only on hiatus, it's clear that in many quarters, we're seeing a return to Depression-era stoicism and an appreciation of simpler things.

Job satisfaction is actually up, according to a December 2008 survey by Yahoo! HotJobs. Almost 38% of respondents said they were "very satisfied" with their jobs, compared with 28% in 2007, a likely sign that people are grateful they're still employed. And every week now, we hear reports of workers accepting pay cuts or furloughs without complaint -- some of them acts of solidarity to protect jobs elsewhere in their companies.

There is also a growing "noncomplaining" movement that touts the belief that whining doesn't work as a strategy, and that happiness can be found through rituals such as writing in "gratitude journals."

Will Bowen, a minister in Kansas City, Mo., is on a mission. His nonprofit organization, A Complaint Free World Inc., has distributed almost six million purple bracelets emblazoned with the group's name. When wearers find themselves complaining, they're asked to switch bracelets to their other wrists. The goal is to go 21 days without having to switch.

Granted, it's not easy for many of us to fully shake the all-American inclination to complain. Stereotypes are rooted in truth. A lot of young people grumble due to a sense of entitlement. A lot of older people are crotchety because they've been complaining all their lives. (Down in Florida, my mother describes condo-association bickering as "nitpicking in paradise.")

But Rev. Bowen believes the bad economy may be the antidote we need to re-evaluate our lives. "In good times, people often take for granted what they have, and whine about what they don't have," he says. "Bad times make people more grateful."

Rev. Bowen is sponsoring a complaint-free cruise in April, and is also taking 30 congregants to Tanzania this summer to help rebuild a birthing center. "We'll be meeting people who are so happy with so little," he says. "It can't help but reframe our perspective."

Jon Gordon, a leadership trainer and author of "The No Complaining Rule," has collected research showing that gratitude reduces stress and improves health. Every morning, he takes a gratitude walk and thinks positive thoughts. He offers seminars to help people "change a complaining voice to an appreciative heart."

Some people today may be smartly cutting back on complaining because they recognize it can be detrimental to their careers, says Sherene McHenry, a professor of counseling at Central Michigan University. "It isn't safe or wise to complain at work these days. When determining who to let go, nonunionized companies first get rid of complainers and those who are difficult to be around."

Ultimately, you can't control the economy or whether you're laid off. And it's easy for the experts to rhapsodize about gratitude. But there are merits to tempering your complaints.

Dr. McHenry encourages us to write down three things we're grateful for every day -- no matter how simple they might seem. "Some days," she says, "the list might be as basic as oxygen, food and shelter."

The Taj I remember

I shifted to Bombay some two years back from Delhi. Like any other dilliwala, Taj Mahal Hotel was something you just instinctively associated with anything Bombayite, be it the Gateway, the varied background shots of the Taj from innumerable Hindi films and the fact that everyday from my office perch in Fort I could clearly see its dome and the upper floors only served to reinforce the sense that Taj was as much part of the mesmeric landscape here as was the Gateway of India or indeed the Arabian sea itself. So early this year when I actually got a chance to stay in the heritage wing for a week as part of an international conference, it was as luxurious an adventure as possible. Of course, I was not in any of the super opulent suites but roaming around the silent wooden corridors, the magnificent spiral staircase, gazing away somewhat embarrassingly at the dome above it, and having breakfast in the verandah connecting the Palace wing to the Shamiana restaurant was opulent enough for me.

Witnessing the cold blooded murder of those dear memories over the past 60 hours has been tortuous to say the least, it is indescribable. Every benumbing second I spent in front of the television, it was impossible to get away from it; in my mind I kept revisiting the Taj. One day during the conference having gotten up early I decided to venture out through door flanked by the quaint wooden horses and the sky was overcast. But the façade was just as majestic even in the soft light of the dawn. And then, it started to turn a reddish golden as if a million multicolored floodlights had been switched on. I clambered up the spiral staircase and went and sat in the Sea Lounge, the restaurant on the first floor overlooking the sea. The clouds had vanished and the sun appeared to be acknowledging the mute greetings of the scores of boats of all shapes and sizes bobbing up and down in the waters around the Gateway of India. Today from what the media tells us, the spiral staircase leading almost up to the dome is gone and as one can see, the façade has suffered serious damage.

The main lobby that connects the Old Taj to the Tower side is probably the liveliest part of the whole complex, day or night. The thirty meter passage is flanked by bars and restaurants and of course exclusive outlets of luxurious brands. It also show cases old black and white pictures of the legions of Indian and foreign celebrities who have stayed in the Taj in the past. During my stay I saw hordes of giggling foreigners, some dressed up in ethnic Indian costumes, posing for pictures like excited kids in Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The point is that the whole ambience is such that it transports you to another era. I realised this is why these people booked a room here in the first place, to experience the India of the regal past, of the opulent maharajahs and the khidmatgari that made you feel like a royal even if you probably were on a business visit to close a deal for a outsourcing medical transcription services! I shudder to think what has become of that passage and those b&w photographs.

There are scores of other delicate memories that keep floating in and out of my vision. And how can one forget the excellent service provided by the Taj staff. During my week there I made numerous completely unreasonable requests, ranging from asking for a high end Mercedes at 3 am in the morning, or a meal at an equally unearthly hour. But there is one memory I will cherish the most. One time we got a request late in the night from a very distinguished person who was going to address our conference the following morning at 7 am for a lapel microphone when we in fact had made arrangements for a podium. So I call up my event manager at midnight asking him if he can arrange it. I can, he says after some serious cajoling, only if the Taj people let me get in at 6 am. Next, with some trepidation, I call up my contact person at the Taj, a lady who probably thought I was insane. “It would be taken care of, Sir”, she signs off with just a touch of coldness in her voice. Next morning I rushed to the meeting room expecting to see serious electrical work in progress with cables trailing all over the place. But lo! the room was spic and span with the sound mechanics doing a final discreet check and it was just 6 am!
Dear Taj and staff members, I pray that you all recover from this tragedy and I am sure you will.

All Fall Down By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (New York Times)

November 26, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

All Fall Down

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I spent Sunday afternoon brooding over a great piece of Times reporting by Eric Dash and Julie Creswell about Citigroup. Maybe brooding isn’t the right word. The front-page article, entitled “Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk,” actually left me totally disgusted.

Why? Because in searing detail it exposed — using Citigroup as Exhibit A — how some of our country’s best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasn’t only the bankers. This financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility, government regulation and financial ethics.

So many people were in on it: People who had no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years; people who had no business pushing such mortgages, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties, as if they were AAA bonds, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business rating those loans as AAA, but made a fortunes doing so; and people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so.

Citigroup was involved in, and made money from, almost every link in that chain. And the bank’s executives, including, sad to see, the former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, were clueless about the reckless financial instruments they were creating, or were so ensnared by the cronyism between the bank’s risk managers and risk takers (and so bought off by their bonuses) that they had no interest in stopping it.

These are the people whom taxpayers bailed out on Monday to the tune of what could be more than $300 billion. We probably had no choice. Just letting Citigroup melt down could have been catastrophic. But when the government throws together a bailout that could end up being hundreds of billions of dollars in 48 hours, you can bet there will be unintended consequences — many, many, many.

Also check out Michael Lewis’s superb essay, “The End of Wall Street’s Boom,” on Portfolio.com. Lewis, who first chronicled Wall Street’s excesses in “Liar’s Poker,” profiles some of the decent people on Wall Street who tried to expose the credit binge — including Meredith Whitney, a little known banking analyst who declared, over a year ago, that “Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust,” wrote Lewis.

“This woman wasn’t saying that Wall Street bankers were corrupt,” he added. “She was saying they were stupid. Her message was clear. If you want to know what these Wall Street firms are really worth, take a hard look at the crappy assets they bought with huge sums of borrowed money, and imagine what they’d fetch in a fire sale... For better than a year now, Whitney has responded to the claims by bankers and brokers that they had put their problems behind them with this write-down or that capital raise with a claim of her own: You’re wrong. You’re still not facing up to how badly you have mismanaged your business.”

Lewis also tracked down Steve Eisman, the hedge fund investor who early on saw through the subprime mortgages and shorted the companies engaged in them, like Long Beach Financial, owned by Washington Mutual.

“Long Beach Financial,” wrote Lewis, “was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking homeowners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, Calif., a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.”

Lewis continued: Eisman knew that subprime lenders could be disreputable. “What he underestimated was the total unabashed complicity of the upper class of American capitalism... ‘We always asked the same question,’ says Eisman. ‘Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I’d always get the same reaction. It was a smirk.’ He called Standard & Poor’s and asked what would happen to default rates if real estate prices fell. The man at S.& P. couldn’t say; its model for home prices had no ability to accept a negative number. ‘They were just assuming home prices would keep going up,’ Eisman says.”

That’s how we got here — a near total breakdown of responsibility at every link in our financial chain, and now we either bail out the people who brought us here or risk a total systemic crash. These are the wages of our sins. I used to say our kids will pay dearly for this. But actually, it’s our problem. For the next few years we’re all going to be working harder for less money and fewer government services — if we’re lucky.

2 A.M., November 27, '08-BOMBAY's BLACKEST DAY

All,

Some 4 hours ago commenced what we would come to term India's most deadly terrorist attack. It is 2 am now and we have been watching live a complete unraveling of India's security claims. More than 80 including foreigners are confirmed dead and as one reporter pointed out this is going to be the longest night in Mumbai. 3 very senior police officers have been killed in the encounters...and the dead count continues.

No words to describe the extreme sense of dull pain and a feeling of total helplessness!

When would Indians ever learn?

The Financial Markets MAD

(From WSJ of Oct. 10, 2008: Would this weekend , the G7 meeting, give some hope to the mindless bloodletting going on the world financial markets? I am using this post to serve as a reference point for the future-Sid)

OCTOBER 10, 2008, 2:38 P.M. ET

Dow Continues Historic Slide

By PETER A. MCKAY

Stocks' relentless slide continued Friday, leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average poised to register the bloodiest weekly drop in its 112-year history.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 600 points shortly after the opening bell, sliding below the 8000 mark intraday for the first time since April 1, 2003. Blue chips quickly moved off those levels, and at one point managed to climb into positive territory. But in recent trade, the Dow was off about 480 points at around 8100.

The S&P 500 Index was down about 58 points at around 851, with energy and consumer-discretionary stocks seeing sharp losses. Industrials stocks were also hammered. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost about 87 points to trade around 1557.

An early rebound in financial stocks played a part in moving the market off its opening lows. But banks saw their shares sink back into negative ground after the initial results for an auction of credit-default swaps tied to Lehman Brothers bonds. The auction set the recovery rate on the firm's senior debt at 8.625 cents on the dollar, suggesting hefty losses for holders of the swaps.

The recent freeze-up in the CDS market has hurt many hedge funds, said David Kotok, president of Cumberland Advisors in Vineland, N.J. He said that much of the recent stock selloff has come as hedge funds unwound a popular trading strategy in which they would buy a company's stock and then buy credit-default protection on the same company, since that protection would tend to go up in value as the stock or index went down.

But as CDS paper has become ever more difficult to value -- or fallen in value in cases where a price can be set amid doubts that the sellers of the insurance-like contracts can make good on their commitments -- many funds have been forced to raise cash to meet margin calls. To do that, they sell stock, which is easy to unload on a public exchange compared to opaque, privately negotiated CDS trades.

"As all this is going on, you have average Joe investors who are getting more nervous as they watch on the sidelines, they don't quite understand the trade, and so they just pile on and sell their stock as well," intensifying the market's slide, said Mr. Kotok. "It's just feeding on itself."

The Dow is threatening to extend a seven-day losing streak during which it has shed nearly 21%. Heading into Friday, the average was down 17% this week. The stock market has so far avoided a one-day plunge of 10%, the traditional definition of a crash. But even in the two instances when such a single-day drop did happen, in 1929 and 1987, the full-week bloodletting was not as bad.

"In some ways, this is worse than '87," said James D. Baer, a managing member at Uhlmann Price Securities, a Chicago brokerage. Alluding to the previous session's 678-point drop, he added: "Going down 600 points a day adds up, but you're not getting a one-day purge," to shake sellers out of the market and pave the way for a renewed rally.

Mr. Baer, who was a Treasury-futures trader on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1987, said, "I've never seen a credit market like this one. The fear has gotten way ahead of the fundamentals," including an unprecedented round of coordinated central-bank rate cuts this week that would normally prompt banks to increase their lending to one another.

Tony Saliba, chief executive of the Chicago options brokerage LiquidPoint, said the market's recent slide "has been anticipated to some extent, since you had the market at records without much behind it fundamentally."

"Coming into this move, you've had a lot of people buying options for protection" against unexpected declines in their stock portfolios, said Mr. Saliba. "You have a lot more buying now, but anyone who's doing that is coming late to the game."

The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index surged 16% on Friday, climbing above 74 for the first time.

Many Wall Street veterans believe the roots of the selloff lie in the interbank lending market, where tensions aren't easing. Three-month Libor, a key lending benchmark for loans of U.S. dollars, climbed to 4.81875% Friday, the highest in nearly 10 months, up from 4.75% a day earlier. The jump overshadowed a sharp drop in the overnight rate.

The losses for U.S. stocks followed a plunge Friday in international markets, which itself came after a late-day rout Thursday in the U.S. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei Index dropped 881.06 points, or 9.6%, to 8276.43, its lowest level since May 2003. Since the start of this week, the benchmark index has lost 24% of its value.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index plunged 7.2% after falling by more than 9.5% intraday. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 ended down 8.3%, in its biggest one-day percentage loss ever. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 Index fell 8.4%.

This week has seen an unprecedented coordinated rate cut by six central banks, a comprehensive bailout plan for U.K. banks and a move by the U.S. Federal Reserve to lend directly to borrowers in the commercial paper market. And yet markets have continued to plunge.

"Despite the innovative and, in our view, comprehensive actions taken by the UK government and central banks, the sell-off in equity markets continues apace as relief in pricings of various credit and money markets have failed to materialise," says Robert Quinn, equity strategist at Standard & Poor's in London.

After a late-Thursday warning from Moody's on the credit ratings of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, shares of the banks fell. Morgan Stanley recently slid 41% while Goldman dropped 19%.

Crude-oil futures continued a months-long slump, falling below $78 a barrel, and commodities generally suffered a broad-based selloff Friday.

"The oil market is in the same carnage and liquidation that we have seen in other markets," said Peter Donovan, vice president with Vantage Trading, who was speaking from the trading floor at the New York Mercantile Exchange. "Everyday, we see the Dow Jones industrial get crushed, we are getting crushed," he said. Oil traders have ignored the news of OPEC's call for an emergency meeting on November 18.

"There's such a herd mentality in every market, once the selling tide and wave starts, it's really hard to stop it," he said. While many believe the selloff in commodities is overdone, traders are still waiting on the sideline and reluctant to get back into the market as the general trend is pointing downward.

—Carolyn Cui and Jeannie Clarke contributed to this article

(Mine) Who will inherit the Earth?

(NYT, Oct. 4, 2008)
By Judith Warner

October 2, 2008, 10:02 pm

Waiting for Schadenfreude

A couple of years ago, at the height of the boom, a friend in New York publishing described to me the indignities of being a five-figure employee commuting daily from suburban New Jersey on trains packed with traders, stock brokers and hedge-fund types.

“These were the guys who, in college, I used to step over on Sunday mornings when they were lying in a pool of their own vomit,” he said. “And now they’re earning millions and millions – in bonuses alone.”

The image, as you might imagine, stuck in my mind. For it summed up so well a certain kind of resentment and sense of injustice that a particular class of non-monied professionals in the New York area came to feel sometime in the late 1990s.

The feeling of injustice wasn’t just about money, though it was partly about being more than solidly middle class and still struggling to pay the bills, as New York writer Vince Passaro captured so well in his “Reflections on the Art of Going Broke” (“Who’ll Stop the Drain?”) in Harper’s in 1998.

It was, rather, about a sense that the wrong people had inherited the earth.

They had taken over everything. Their salaries (and bonuses in particular) had pushed real estate costs and living expenses sky-high. Their values had permeated every aspect of life. And their choices seemed to have become the only acceptable — even viable — ones possible.

In the 1970s, even in New York, it had been financially possible for a middle class family to survive if parents — even one parent — built a professional life around something other than purely making money. In the 1980s — even in the “greed is good” (which was of course meant to be a damning phrase) 1980s — it seemed respectable, honorable and, dare I say, valuable to do things other than make a lot of money. But by the late 1990s, in New York, if you weren’t in the financial industry, it was hard to survive.

And so it went, in a more general way, throughout the country, in the whole winner-take-all-era ushered in by the boom years of the late 1990s. The model for success narrowed. The goal posts marking success grew more out of reach. For all the people who did something with their lives other than doggedly, single-mindedly — and successfully — pursuing wealth (“You mean, some people’s jobs are just about making money?” Julia once asked me in the course of one of our “What the World is About” conversations), life got harder and scarier and more confusing.

Many of us who’d proudly decided, in our twenties, to pursue edifying or creative, or “helping” professions, woke up to realize, once we had families, that we’d perhaps been irresponsible. We couldn’t save for college. We could barely save for retirement. If we set up a “family-friendly” lifestyle, we threw our financial futures down the drain.

So, like just about everyone, we worked hard and treaded water, but felt we were entitled to do better than that. And if we lived in the New York area, or another similarly wealthy area where the spoils of the new Gilded Age were constantly thrust in our faces, we felt, like my friend on the train, a little something more: we knew that we were losers.

(“The Big L,” a friend, an art school grad turned design consultant, declared last week, calling me in tears after her stockbroker told her how little she cared about her modest portfolio. “Why not just brand it right on my forehead and be done with it?”)

This financial crisis is supposed to be a big moment of reckoning. “666-Mark of the Beast” and “Root of all Evil” the End-of-World Web sites are shouting, quoting prominent economists on the demise of the American banking system. “Wall Street, R.I.P.”, a headline in The Times proclaimed last weekend. “The Master of the Universe Era is over,” New York magazine chimed in.

For those of us who have hated this period — the wealth worship, the wealth gap, the elevation of everything suspiciously shiny and irrationally bubbly and stupidly ebullient, there should be some feeling of vindication. But it just isn’t coming. A great emptiness — and a gnawing kind of fear — has taken its place.

After 9/11, psychologists said that the tragedy and trauma would magnify whatever emotional state people were already experiencing. Depressed people would become much more depressed. Anxious people would become much more anxious.

The current financial crisis has, I think, proven to be a similar sort of emotional Rorschach test. People who felt impotent feel even more powerless. Those who felt lied to see new levels of conspiracy. Demagogues are engaging in even more demagoguery.

And those of us who felt, well, like losers, are feeling like even bigger losers, as we shove our unopened 401K or (if we’re double-loser freelancers) SEP-IRA statements into bottom desk drawers and wait for a cathartic burst of schadenfreude that simply refuses to come.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

The very wealthiest are, as always, likely to do just fine. Real, hard-core Wall Street, as Tom Wolfe reminded us last weekend, long ago decamped for the hedge funds of Greenwich. The political leaders who allowed this mess to develop have turned into the great defenders of “Main Street.” (If I have to hear the juxtaposition of “Main Street” and “Wall Street” one more time, I will be the one drowning in a pool of vomit.). It’s a whole host of other people — vulnerable middle class homeowners and small business owners and, now, universities unable to make payroll — who are hurting.

I called my friend in publishing yesterday to ask him how things were going on the train.

“There’s a lot of rueful chuckling. There’s a lot of talk about riding this out, about maintaining,” is all he had to say.

It was 23 years ago that Tom Wolfe introduced us to the Masters of the Universe. They were curiosities then — remote, very rich, and decidedly not like you and me. But now, the world of Wall Street has become our world; there is no outside to it, there is no other option than to pay and play. Our fortunes rise and fall together to a degree like never before, and our values are enmeshed like never before. The language of Wall Street — of cost-cutting and efficiency, self-interest, using each situation to maximize profit, is the language of everyday life and social interaction.

We’re all losers now. There’s no pleasure to it.

US in Recession: A new definition

This post on WSJ blogs caught my attention.

August 18, 2008, 5:13 pm
UCLA Professor Says U.S. Is Still Far From Recession

Though U.S. economic activity remains subpar, it is still well above recession thresholds thanks to resilient industrial production that has offset a recession-like rise in unemployment, according to a UCLA forecaster in a National Bureau of Economic Research paper.

In his paper, Edward Leamer created an algorithm of three economic indicators — payroll employment, the unemployment rate and industrial production — that he said “nearly perfectly reproduces the NBER official peak and trough dates.”

“Bottom line: things have to get much worse to pass the recession threshold,” Leamer wrote.
The NBER, an academic association, is considered the official arbiter of whether the U.S. is in recession, a determination it usually makes many months after the fact. There have been nine NBER recessions since 1950 — the last one being from March 2001 to November 2001.

Leamer isn’t a member of the NBER business cycle committee.

NBER bases its determination on monthly indicators including personal income less transfer payments, employment, industrial production and manufacturing sales volume. According to NBER’s Web site, “there is no fixed rule about which other measures contribute information to the process.”

Leamer said the purpose of his model “is to take the guesswork out of the recession definition.” The thresholds include falling industrial production for six months at a rate of at least 6% per year; declining payroll employment for six months at a minimum 1% rate per year; and a six-month rise in the unemployment rate of at least 0.8 percentage point.

“Every recession since World War II has included months that satisfied all three of these limits. And there has never been a time in the expansions during which all three of these limits were satisfied,” Leamer wrote.
The one instance when Leamer’s algorithm didn’t line up with NBER was in the early 1970s. NBER had a recession starting November 1973. Leamer’s model had it beginning later in 1974.

As for 2008, the unemployment rate satisfies the recession threshold, but the decline in payrolls hasn’t hit the recession cutoff yet, while “the problems in industrial production are nowhere close to the limit,” Leamer wrote.
His paper examined data through June. In an email, Leamer said those trends hold even including July data released since his paper was written. –Brian Blackstone

What I am reading now!

Two books, but actually just one- "The New Paradigm of Financial Markets" by George Soros. Why Soros? Well, first of all this is my first introduction to the famous investor beyond his sound bites on business television. Second, He doesn't write bad at all and last (after I read in the book itself) that he too in a way is a WWII Jewish victim and I am quite interested in the period's history and that of the holocaust. But lest I suggest anything, Soros is certainly not a holocaust victim. Coming back to the book, its a short piece about how the current international financial order begets creating a new paradigm to understand it better and to prevent any future financial apocalypses!

Soros talks about his "life's work"-his "Theory of Reflexivity" that is the impact of human behavior on social situations, like the financial markets for instance. His chief hypothesis being that humans tend to imbibe knowledge from their environment (Cognitive function) and attempt to use it to their advantage (Manipulative function) but in the process end up injecting their biases and beliefs in to their intended actions. The final result is that the expected outcome deviates from the actual outcome and this results in a feedback loop which as usually is the case in human affairs turns out to be vicious. I will come back to this after I finish the book.

And the second book! Leo Tolstoy's collections of short stories. Why? Simply because I have to narrate a new story (repetitions are rarely permitted) to Priya every night and LT's stories have just the right amount of emotion and drama to satisfy her and induce sleep.

Amitava Ghosh-Sea of Poppies

First of all, the new blog picture belongs to Amitava Ghosh, one of India's foremost contemporary writers and certainly destined to be included in the list of all time greats who write in English. His latest work, "Sea of Poppies" a novel set in the 1830s-1840s is something I would recommend to all.

Blog Picture

I had initially posted my mugshot but the limited feedback was less than gratifying and then I thought why not use the picture space to remember some of the favourite authors, their works or their characters. At the moment it is Cervantes's Don Quixote and his faithful servant Sancho, both of whom, whenever I remember them, make me feel lighter!!

Posting pictures is easy as everything is online these days. Just hope I am not violating any copyrights...cheers

A Son is born!!

God blessed us with a son at quarter past noon on May 6, 2008. Baby (birth weight 3 kg) was actually due a fortnight later but both he and Dipti are doing fine as of now. The arrival of the second child means a much more busy daily routine but since my mother in law is currently with us, she is bearing the brunt of the strain. We are still thinking of a name for the baby (Saumitra, Somanshu, Shivam, Satyam, Prajval are some of the names on the shortlist).

My elder child (just writing 'elder' gives me the heebee jeebees!) Priya is showing some signs of sulking but overall she is quite pleased to have a brother even though just a night before the birth she was quite clear that she wanted a sister as otherwise we would have no use for all her barbie and other girl things and would throw them away. All said and done, betoo (that's how we call her most of the time) is very special to us as she has been the focus of our lives over the last 5 years, during all the traveling and living overseas and in a way she is my lucky charm. But now that the second one has come, he too would receive the same love from us.

Pictures follow soon!

New job role

I am now a part of the crazy world of forex trading. Sounds cool? It is! But there are more things to learn than just candlesticks and Fibonacci's retracements.....the atmosphere in the dealing room is quite vertiginous to say the least!!

I am only 3 months old in the business so shall keep you posted.

Mediterranean Blue