What could the US rating cut mean

1. Probably an additional yearly interest payment of $100 billion by US Govt.

2. Some apprehensions of what could be next in store for foreign lenders holding $ 4.55 Trillion US Treasury bonds. (China's holding at $1.159 trillion at end of May, 2011)

It costs Rs 1 lac per day in the ICU of Corporate hospitals in Delhi

1.      Being admitted in the ICU for around 55 days resulted in a  bill of Rs 45 lacs (no surgical procedures, only cost of facilities, doctors fee, medicines). There is hence an opportunity for an innovative insurance solution whereby the  middle class gets coverage to cover current costs.

 

2.       Hospitals then of course want to have more critical care beds. But the problem is also elsewhere. If it costs on an average  Rs 1 lac per day in the ICU they should be making sizable profits, while on the contrary many of the newer  Corporate hospitals are running in losses. Not only is there a mismatch currently between value the hospital are delivering vs. billing but also between hospital costs vs billings. What if one of them finds a model which also aligns costs with value and costs with billing? Hence there is an opportunity for Hospital Admn.

 

3.       Hospital Admn at Corporate hospitals have access to the best facilities, viz. Surgeons, Doctors & health workers, Infrastructure, finance, marketing & best management advise. So  why cannot they fix it? And how to fix it?

Work ethics in Bollywood

With Ashwarya Rai Bachhan expecting  the debate is on whether there should be a no-pregnancy clause in film signing agreements with actresses.

Diesel hike

The diesel hike of Rs. 3 is causing a 10 per cent hike on lorry hire charges.
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Directorate of income Tax (Criminal Investigation)

This new Directorate - DCI is aimed at investigating any criminal matters having any financial implication which is punishable as an offence under any Direct Tax Law. The focus presumably is towards financial transfers relating to criminal activities accross borders.
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Exercising Professional sceptism

Last week I called up the credit card company as I had not made payments for last
 month and they had levied late fee and interest charges of Rs 1250, hoping that they
would wave off these charges. To my surprise the customer service officer instantly
agreed saying that I had a good payment track record. Then offered me a loan at 17%
interest which I was not interested and finally the call went into an automatic mode
requesting for a feedback. Normally one avoids doing this but because of this positive
experience I took the option and obviously had good ratings to give to the credit card
company and the customer service officer. Reflecting back I found this experience
rather unusual because there is usually a prolonged discussion for a write back. Also a
thought came to my mind that if employee ratings are improved by positive customer
feedback, a sharp employee could be doling out write backs just to improve his/her
ratings and get a faster bonus/promotion. Also what Audit procedures to carry out in
case an Audit was to be done on Customer relationship management.  I tried to check
myself to see the positive aspect as an excellent experience with the credit card
company and that the company was moving forward. Somehow because of the overall
business environment which is getting increasingly fraud prone I could not get over my
scepticism. 

Auditors are trained to exercise Professional scepticism in reviewing transactions.
I never understood the meaning of it till now  

Your important list may be inaccurate too

An inaccurate list of names has lately been a source of much embarrasment to the Indian Adminstartaion. Such an error is  being attributable to  the usual reasons as lack of competence, seriousness and rigour. While this may be true, however an important reason could be lack of a common database. As mundane as multiple records available by multiple agencies on the same set of data. I do not hold a brief for the Adminstration, but how many of us who use an ERP which has not been fully implemented end up receiving different excel versions of the same data. Most of us lose track trying to take out accurate information from these files.