A finance ministry official says "If foreigners are allowed to invest directly in India, volatility will go down in Indian markets". I am completely unable to understand this.

Like I cannot understand what is wrong with Intra day or Intra month volatility! Markets have always been volatile — the question is how volatile that is all. We should also stop this excessive 'foreign' syndrome. The hangover of the gora just refuses to go away.

Let us look at FDI in retail. We allowed FDI in banking — we now have only  foreign banks in India — other than the PSU banks that is. Has it helped in banking? We have had FDI in mutual funds — at least for the past 20 years — has it helped in penetrating the rural markets? We have FDI in life and general insurance….same answer is it not? L O L.

Then we thought we need FDI in retail (I guess this was a ploy to hold the real estate price high) — but somebody said it was to tackle the runaway valuation of the US dollars!!

Now imagine the foreigner wanting

The Sensex may have given 19% returns over 33 years, however, it may not have given 19% in any particular year! This is fairly simple — the standard deviation is quite high, and good years are followed by bad years. Simple.

In the year 2011 the Sensex's performance looked bad because of the poor performance of Reliance, L&T, Infosys, ICICI, SBI while HUL, ITC stocks did well.

Unfortunately, for Sensex watchers Reliance and Infosys — both very good P/E managers — and perhaps EPS (earning per share) managers too — seem to be in their mid life or descent. This means that even with all their media management, the market's respect for these companies (read PE) is not likely to increase in the near future. Infosys is in a mature industry with not too many entry barriers and Reliance, well, is Reliance!

ICICI bank does not have a single promoter — this means there is no single person 'managing' the P/E and its EPS is not really respected. The NPA (non performing assets) of ICICI bank and SBI

Petrol prices are likely to be hiked again, first time this new year. The government will take the final call after today's meeting with nationalised oil companies. It could go up to Rs. 2 per litre. However, experts feel that the oil companies would be under political pressure against the price hike as five Indian states get ready for state legislative assembly elections.

The nationalised oil companies review prices every fortnight on the basis of average profits. Accordingly, the new petrol price should have been declared on Sunday night. As it didn't happen, there is a chance of the price being declared on Monday.

If petrol price increases at this rate, the price of petrol in Kolkata would be Rs.72.15 per liter. New Delhi would buy petrol at Rs. 67.77, and Mumbai at Rs.72.78 per liter. The political sector would also be keeping an eye on whether these states agree to the increased price.

Oil firms had, at the last review on December 15/16, decided not to burden the consumers with

Hiring in the retail sector has dropped sharply. It needs fewer people and is also becoming more discriminating. High inflation, which has led to a drop in consumer demand, is certainly a factor. "This industry is driven by consumer sentiment," says E. Balaji, Managing Director and CEO, Ma Foi Randstad, an HR firm. "When consumers are unsure of their salaries, they will postpone big-ticket purchases. This automatically has an effect on retail sales and through it on hiring."

But with fewer openings to fill, retail companies are also getting choosy. Industry insiders claim many aspiring to join the sector are unaware of the roles and responsibilities it entails. "Companies are now raising the bar while recruiting," says Thomas Varghese, Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry & National Council of Retail. He is also Managing Director, Retail, Aditya Birla Group.

V. Suresh, Executive Vice President and National Head, Sales, naukri.com, a job portal, maintains employer scepticism

As the topic of getting more women on boards gets hotter and hotter, it can deflect attention from the harder task of getting more women into the C-suite, which is often a prerequisite for being seen as "board ready."

Boards are strategically important but directors advise, they do not have operational responsibility. This crucial difference between executive and director roles makes a diverse range of board member profiles attractive, while our views about what it takes to be "CEO material" remain restricted.

When INSEAD colleagues Morten Hansen, Urs Peyer and I studied the leadership of 2,000 of the world's top performing companies, we found only 29 (1.5%) of those CEOs were women.. Only one woman, Meg Whitman, as former CEO of eBay, made it to the top 100 of our rankings. Even more telling, the few women CEOs on our global list were nearly twice as likely as men to have been appointed to the job from outside the company - even though our analysis clearly shows that inside-CEO

2011 would be best forgotten by the Indian markets. Stocks have fallen around 25%, making it the second worst year in market history, after 2008's drop of 52%.

The rupee has fallen another 20% against the dollar. Petrol prices are so high that pumps now sell it in ink droppers. The government has, with little prompting, carefully applied egg on its own face. Corporate profits are dropping dramatically, and RBI continues to hold interest rates high, because honestly that's the only thing that's they can keep high in this country.

Europe has decided that each country will take its turn being in the news, so after we were bored of Greece, Portugal and Spain, Italy took centrestage. The concept of what actually happened is so complicated that if we unravel it in a single article, your computer will explode. What it means in the end is that when you mention " is in trouble", very smart and sophisticated people in the financial industry will nod their head and

On December 19, 1961, Goa woke up to the sounds of freedom. Operation Vijay that lasted less than 48 hours overthrew the last vestige of colonial power on the subcontinent. Half a century later, Goa is still doing what it does best, but not everybody is convinced that there's much to celebrate.

More than 50 years of measured mining and disciplined trade ended as operators mined unscrupulously to make quick money in 2007 when the prices of iron ore jumped almost three times, tarnishing the image of the state.

Goa has emerged the latest epicentre of links between political corruption and mining violations, drawing the inevitable comparisons with Bellary.

A report by the Goa legislative assembly's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), chaired by Leader of Opposition Manohar Parrikar, probing the state's illegal mining is indicative of the involvement of politicians in the scam on the basis of 'reasonable doubt' and pegs the quantum of illegal mining in the state at Rs.1,200 crore.

An expose by

The Rupee has breached new lows while the dollar continues to strengthen to Rs 54 and more. Indeed, the December quarter has already seen a drop of more than 10%, after another 10% fall in the previous quarter. But what has caused the rupee to fall?

The "Current Account" deficit

That's what you hear about. We import things. We export other things. Our beloved NRIs send money home ("remittances"). We pay interest on borrowings from abroad. If you sum these up, you get a "current account" balance which is, for India, usually negative.

From April to November 2011, India exported $192.7 billion worth of goods, while imports were $309 billion. The trade deficit is thus more than $116 billion. Adding transfer payments and software services, the "current account deficit" is about $70 billion for the first seven months of the year.

Much of the deficit is fuel — we have already imported $70 billion worth of oil this year (we import 2/3^rd of what we use).

The fact that we run a current account