Expense Account, Mint
Each time the stock markets hit a new high, retail investors kick themselves for not buying more the previous week; those still deciding when to buy kick themselves for their bad timing. When Indian markets hit a two-year high ealier this week, people wondered: Is it a good time to invest or have the prices run up too much?
Expense Account, Mint
You could not have missed the large ads in the last two weeks, advertising 100% returns over the last year. Are they lying? Is this another scam? It is too good to be true. None of the above.
Expense Account, Mint
Unless the banks can spike it again, from 1 April, we’ll get the 3.5% on our savings bank accounts that we believed we were getting all these years. Of course, post-inflation and tax, we’re losing money every day by leaving it in that terribly convenient, yet purchasing power killer, savings bank deposit. But few knew that the returns were sometimes zero, not the 3.5% that we assumed we were getting. The trick, as in everything financial, is in the detail. I remember learning by rote in an early economics class that savings deposits earn interest on the lowest balance between the 10th and the end of any month.
Expense Account, Mint
It is only when the volume of traffic increases to a certain intensity that the need for a set of road rules is felt by all parts of the system—the users of the roads, the pedestrians, the vehicle manufacturers and the traffic police. Retail financial products are in the same space—the volume of products and consumers is such that most parts of the market (manufacturers, distributors, consumers and regulators) feel the need for some road rules. Those opposing benefit from the current lawlessness as they sit in parts of the market protected by archaic regulations that have no place in the contemporary Indian financial marketplace.
Expense Account, Mint
On 1 March,The Indian Expressnewspaper reported that a government scheme for expecting mothers saw almost one in two Caesarean sections over a nine-month period in one district in Madhya Pradesh. The World Health Organization norm for C-sections is about 10-15 Caesarean deliveries per 100 births. The private clinics accredited with the government got four times more money for a Caesarean surgery. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. This practice, we know anecdotally, is not restricted to one area of Madhya Pradesh.
A study led by S.K. Bhasin and published in theIndian Journal of Community Medicine in 2007 confirmed the correlation of private hospitals and a high C-section figure. The study found 34% C-section rates in east Delhi, with almost 92% of these being reported from private clinics and hospitals.
Monika Halan's blog 