WSJ confirms, the "Face of Freedom" is Hairy

Facial hair is a subject dear to my heart. So I enjoyed reading an insightful article from the Wall St Journal which cites beard-growth as a new unemployment indicator. I definitely let the beard go after my departure from suit-land back in the spring and am starting to test the waters here in India regarding acceptable-facial-hair-in-the-workplace. Apparently also testing the limits on excessive-hyphen-usage.

Growth Area: Beards on Laid-Off Executives

Read the whole article and view the celebrity-beard-slideshow here. Some favorite observations made:

"For most office workers, the [beard] look remained too daring -- until they had nothing left to lose."

"Carrissa Turley, a hair stylist at Rudy's Barbershop in trendy West Hollywood, Calif., says she began to see an uptick in beard requests in mid-October."

"Ms. Duggin says her bewhiskered clients often associate facial hair with power and rugged masculinity."

"Within the Amish sect, a long, full beard may denote mature stability, but on an unemployed financial planner, it suggests rather the opposite."

"For many men, growing that unemployment beard is akin to a tame dance at a bachelor party -- a momentary freedom enjoyed while the rules are suspended. Many of today's beards may be as short-lived as the holidays."

Now that I think about it, Adam Smith and Karl Marx were probably just writing philosophies that would be most amenable to their facial hair preferences (I doubt I'm the first to reach this conclusion)...


All the Best,
Peter

Just watch.

If it doesn't play, go here: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=5kxysX4MmOU

And here's an excerpt from a reasearch report making the same claim. This was written by the same woman who authored Goldman Sachs' "Dreaming with the BRICs" report which is considered one of the best pieces of research written on the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, Indian, and China (BRIC).

Rain in Chennai, Horror in Mumbai, and I'm old.

The past week has been a surreal experience living in Chennai. Although the monsoon season is over for most of India, southern India (e.g. Chennai) gets hit by the "returning monsoon" or essentially the rain storms as they make their way out to the Bay of Bengal. At least that's how it's been explained. This past Mon-Fri has been the heaviest rainfall in Chennai since I've arrived and much of the city is still under quite a bit of water...the photo above of my friend shows one of the worst hit parts of the city. The thing is, people here don't even dare call this "flooding"...it's just "water logging." I'm pretty sure "flooding" by Indian standards involves the displacement of a population.

My co-workers and I were advised to work from home the latter half of the week given the dangerous travel conditions around the city. So when the horrible terrorist attacks began in Mumbai on the evening of Wednesday Nov 26th, I was struggling to remember who from our office might be in Mumbai, since I hadn't seen anyone earlier that day. Thankfully there were only a few folks I knew who were there and no one I know of was directly harmed. That being said, the attack was disturbing for many obvious reasons and the fact that it was so widespread throughout busiest parts of the city, lasted for so many days, and partially targeted at US/British/Israeli citizens does make me a little less excited for my next trip to Mumbai. We haven't had a normal day at the office since the attacks started so it's been an extra bizarre feeling being fairly homebound by the rain and out of normal contact with people here.

By Saturday most of the rain had slowed, so a few friends were kind enough to join me in celebrating my 26th birthday over some Italian food, Chennai-style.

Photos of the wet city, a belated Thanksgiving dinner, and other recent travels/events can be seen in various new Web-albums here. I've also added the rest of the pictures from Rachel's visit (one video below is from Shimla - a beautiful town in the foothills of the Himalayas, full of aggressive monkeys).

Monkeys in Shimla ("Look at the baby!...They're going to remember us.")


All the best,
Peter

Gimme the Sub-Sub Prime

In college, I wrote my senior thesis on microfinance. Simply put, microfinance means providing financial services to people who do not have access to credit, savings, insurance, etc...typically in "micro" sizes.

As I sat in my seat on the Bear Stearns equity trading floor last March and watched our stock cut in half one Friday, and then over the weekend become JP Morgan's newest real estate asset, I decided, "This microfinance stuff is looking pretty cool right now...I want to get in." So in between a few other interviews, I started cold-calling people within the microfinance world for ideas how to find my way in. I also attended any microfinance lectures/events in NY at the time, including one conference in particular at Columbia University hosted by the "Microlumbia Fund" -- love that name. The keynote speaker was the former President of Women's World Banking and she delivered an amazing speech. I had attended many microfinance events over the past 3 years and read a few hundred articles, but this was the least sugar-coated and most intellectually honest speech on microfinance I had heard to date.

Approaching her afterward I bluntly said, "I'm at Bear...you know I'm serious about doing something new...can you help me find an interesting opportunity?" A couple days later she presented me with 11 MFIs (microfinance institutions) around the world where she could at least help me get an internship. Fortunately, as I heard the words "internship" I also recalled the words I heard a few days prior from my boss at Bear: "If you do what you love, the money will take care of itself." Of the 11 choices, the one that stood out was a company in India recently started by some of the top bankers in the country, who I had actually read about during my thesis research two years prior. Their new venture was started in late 2007 and is solely focused on bringing financial services to individuals AND enterprises in under-served regions of the country, using the latest technology and financial creativity. Fortunately they were looking for more than interns and here I am.

So that's my personal connection to microfinance. In light of the financial world's on-going implosion, caused primarily by irresponsible origination, I wanted to share these 2 recent articles about how "sub-sub prime" is holding up and currently rapidly growing the world...

Poverty: Cheap Loans at Insanely High Rates? Give us More.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/160074
"What the world needs right now is more subprime lending—a lot more of it. Yes, I know that in the public imagination, subprime lending is the scourge responsible for crippling the U.S. financial system. The massive extension of credit to people who lacked extensive credit histories and documented wages seems, in hindsight, supremely stupid. But far from the madding, depressed crowds of Wall Street, billions of people are starving for credit..."


Micro-Lending Seen Expanding Despite Credit Mess
http://www.symbiotics.ch/en/latest_news.asp?id=b1270
"...We don't see any slowdown in interest in microfinance, on the contrary," said Ivan Pictet, a senior managing partner at one of Switzerland's largest private banks, the Geneva-based Pictet & Cie. Many of the borrowers are women, and the default rates are only 1 to 2 percent. "We have a lot of lessons to learn from that," Pictet told journalists during a World Microfinance Forum meeting in Geneva."

[Emphasis added by me]

This second article is a bit too rosy in my opinion since while the end borrowers aren't slowing down in their demand for loans/services, some MFIs (microfinance institutions) particularly in India, are having greater trouble accessing affordable funding themselves. India faces both the global tightening in credit plus inflation. The result has been MFIs face very steep interest rates to obtain cash to then lend. This of course means even higher rates to the end borrower.

One of the businesses our is getting into is the securitization (a 4-letter word in most the world) of microloans to offer MFIs access to debt at a lower interest rate. Unlike with the securitizations of sub-prime and even prime mortages in the US, the underlying assets here (i.e. the $250 loans taken by women in rural India) actually have some worth to them.

It's just my hope that the financial paradigm shift we're witnessing worldwide will serve as a cautious lesson for those like myself and my company who are currently seeking to find ways to meet the financial needs of the 4 billion people in developing countries without access to financial services.

Pictures and Special Guests...

I setup a Picasa Web Album so if you want to see my photos just use this link...

My Pictures

Here are a few examples below. About 300 pictures up on the site so far, mostly from the first 6 weeks here. If I had been taking many pictures in September you would've seen exotic places such as New York City, Frankfurt, and my office...not too much India travel recently.

But that will change this month with the arrival of Miss Rachel McKenny on Wednesday! I need to show Rachel the beauty of India in all her greatness and demonstrate why living in this country rocks. Wish me luck.


All the Best,
Peter

What's India been upto?

I'm not doing such a good job keeping the blog updated with what I've been upto, so in the meantime I wanted to at least share "what India has been upto"...in pictures...which I didn't take.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/scenes_from_india.html

I continue to find it difficult to comprehend (and even more difficult to articulate) the massive scale of this country but maybe after viewing the above link, my following observation can give you a sense: As the pictures show, in the past 2 months India has witnessed devastating floods; large scale religious violence/persectutions between Hindus, Christians and Muslims; huge regional festivals; bombings in 4 different cities; continued military conflict along the Kashmir/Pakistan border; the near removal of the Prime Minister and then allegations linking him to a money-for-votes scandal (which I'm guessing are bogus); over 3 months of riots regarding an overly politicized land dispute between a Hindu trust and an entire region's populous...and more.

But in reality, I would've had NO IDEA that any of these things were even happening if I hadn't been reading the news or watching television. I cannot think of a single way that my life or the life of anyone I know here has been directly affected by any of these events. Even though I'm in the 4th largest city in the country, there weren't any kinds of "security alerts" that I noticed, or any other local signs that milions of the 1.2 billion people in this country were in a great state of unrest.

A number of you have sent me emails to check, "Were you near those bombings?" or "Are you near the places where Christians are getting attacked?" and my typical response has been "Nope, that's all in the north -- I'm in the far south fortunately." With the exception of the bombings in Bangalore, and the devastating floods and murder of a Catholic priest in Andhra Pradesh (state just north of me), all of these events have occured very far north from where I live. I think it's just too hot for people to fight with each other here. Maybe not though.

In my next post I will say what I've actually been upto, but wanted to share these amazing photos with you in the meantime, and let you know I'm still alive...just an inept blogger.

All the Best,

Peter

City driving and country driving.

Chennai Train Station

Tamil, Hindi, and English. 3 of the 122+ languages spoken in India

So this is what an Indian blog looks like.

After 7+ weeks of living in Southern India, a lot of "big talk" on my part, and in response to public humiliation by family members, I am finally doing the blog thing. It seems pretty simple so I really have no excuse . I hope to post pictures frequently and share a few stories about different interesting encounters, travels, adventures in cuisine, and other parts of everyday-ordinary-life in Chennai, India. Since my purpose for posting is to keep you (my friends and family) updated on what in the world I'm doing over here, please feel free to tell me what YOU want to see or hear about - I'll do my best.

Oh, and regarding the name of the blog...it was an easy choice really. After about 2 weeks in India I could barely keep track of how many times I encountered the phrase "All the best"...at the end of conversations, on billboards, on baked cakes, when someone bumped into me, and constantly on television. It's everywhere. But what I find really fascinating is that I'm yet to find anyone who has the same observation...locals and ex-pats both look at me blankly when I ask, "Isn't it crazy how much people love saying 'All the best' here?" After a recent fruitless attempt to convey my point to a friend, I glanced outside our car window and of course there's a giant sign advertising cell phones with a picture of a "cool guy" holding a phone and the only words printed in large text: "All the Best". I don't get it.

So instead of choosing to fight the colloquialism that has haunted me thus far, I'm making it my own.

All the Best.
-Peter