Il 5 novembre, nello Spazio Musica di Pavia, Cisco terrà la data zero del “Mulo Tour”. La tournée segue l’uscita del suo secondo album da solista, Il mulo, pubblicato lo scorso 5 settembre e avrà in scaletta anche brani del passato legato ai Modena City Ramblers. Il tour arriva dopo due mesi di promozione e show case, e vede Cisco affiancato dalla sua band composta da: Burno Bonarrigo (contrabasso), Beppe Mondini (batteria), Marco Giuradei (pianoforte), Simone Copellini (tromba), Patrick Wright (violino), Danilo Di Prizio (chitarra acustica) e Andrea Faccioli (chitarre elettriche e acustiche, banjo slide guitar). Ospite del tour sarà il cantautore Ettore Giuradei. Nella pagina Concerti potete consultare tutte le date a oggi confermate.

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Shaukat Aziz we have already covered in earlier post. At the receiving end of my wrath now is another legacy of Musharraf era, Governor of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Shamshad Akhtar, someone who was unqualified to hold the top post which called for a trained economist whereas she built her career in Operations. Her only qualification was that she worked for a multilateral organization namely Asian Development Bank (ADB).

She seems focused on implementing textbook policies that might have worked in developed economies but are not relevant or effective in Pakistan recent example of which is her instruction to increase the minimum capital requirement (MCR) of banks.

Her latest fiasco is handling of liquidity crisis in banking sector of Pakistan. Banks are running out of cash faster can they can replete their reserves. Two reasons:

1. Depositors had withdrawing a lot of cash during the Eid season
2. With declining value of rupee, whoever can withdraw money has done it and is converting it to foreign currency.

Though as per official statements, the exhange rate is Rs.81/$1 i.e., you can buy 1 dollar for 81 rupees. However, no one will give you dollars at that rate. The actual rate in the kerb market is Rs.83/$1. To think that SBP was actually thinking recently of pegging rupee to the dollar requires wild imagination. Somebody please tell SBP governor that people have started losing faith in SBP. Fixing the exchange rate might solve the problem in economic textbooks but when panic strikes, nobody is going to sell you $ at Rs. 81 whether fixed, managed floating or floating. She might as well peg it at Rs. 75/$1.

Due to the shortage of liquidity overnight interbank call rates (the rate at which banks lend to each other to meet SBP requirements) had shot up. Though SBP had conducted Open Market Operations this week to ease liquidity, whats amazing is that SBP actually went ahead with a Treasury auction (which was rejected due to sufficient bids not received). I mean at one end we are trying to inject liquidity through OMO and on the other hand we try to suck away that liquidity by auctioning treasuries. Mind boggling...

Desperate times call for desperate actions. You don't try to resolve crisis in piece meal reducing cash reserve requirement (CRR) by 1% this month and another 1% after one month. If the 1% is not effective in solving it right now, you cannot wait one month to reduce it further. You will do it right away and that will reduce the credibility of SBP that it doesn't know hot manage the economy (which will not be far from truth).

For those of us who had to taken Econ102 (Macroeconomics) there are two types of inflation. Demand pull and cost push. Monetary policy like increasing interest rates, CRR or draining liquidity from the market through OMOs etc can have some impact on reducing demand pull inflation but it has negligible impact on cost push inflation. Pakistan is facing cost push inflation due to rising fuel and commodity prices and under such circumstances, the only efforts SBP had taken (prior to current crisis) are to increase CRR/SLR and increase interest rates which are totally useless under such circumstances.

Another volteface according to Business Recorder,

Governor said that banks have been advised to launch more aggressive efforts to mobilise deposits including extension of their outreach in rural areas. Offering adequate real returns on deposits would help banks alleviate any bank specific liquidity shortages.

This goes against SBP policy of encouraging consolidation among banks by raising the MCR because then banks will not have any incentive to increase deposit or extend outreach as it becomes marginally unprofitable for large banks to engage in such activities. Does SBP have any idea of its myriad actions/instructions?

I just want to answer some points that she made in the message.

okay. you’ve got to know some things first before you go and start blaming everyone:

I know some things, like where capital letters go.
(1) My Chemical Romance DOES save lives, and they did non ever try to take them from people as you are implying in this blog.

So, you mean Gerard Way has resigned from his position as evil villain in the underground lair, and started lifeguard training? I'd like to see him in some speedos.

I would like, one. Just one example of how My Chemical Romance is directly responsible for saving someones life. Just one.

Honestly, they don't care about you. They don't. So long as you keep on buying their CD's, and buying their shirts, they couldn't care less about you. That's the truth. They're already rich, and have completely devoted fans. Why should they care about you?
(2) To link people that write music that has meaning deeper than anything with a horrible and tragic incident such as SUICIDE would be inhumane and bigotry.

Well, to be fair, I quoted a chorus from a MCR song which basically said 'Go kill yourself'. If you're too stupid to see the italicised quote in the middle of the page, you should not be on the internet. I'm not saying MCR are directly responsible for the death of Hannah Bond, but I'm certainly saying that they had a role to play in it.

That's my huge beef with MCR fans. They point out one stray lyric which may encourage someone not to end their life, but neglect to mention the plentiful lyrics which encourage, or glorify suicide. It's just complete double standards.
(3) My Chemical Romance are NOT a cult, NOT associated with the enjoyment of death, but are an ARMY that protects others from themselves.

So, does that mean that if I become a fan of MCR, you'll stop me from stubbing my toe? That's awful nice of you.

I do think they are a cult. Face it, they encourage complete devotion to the band. Anyone who criticises MCR, like the Daily Mail did are marked out to be picketed and harassed, or ostracised. I mean, journalists who criticised the band for their music were harassed.

Sounds like a cult to me.
(4) You have absolutely no RIGHT to criticize any other person’s statement, let alone their LIFE-CHANGING statement.

Yes I do. Google 'First Amendment Rights'. I have the right to criticise a shit band, like you have the right to comment on my blog.

this just goes to show how ignorant and less-resourced that the public is.

Bailey from California

On a more serious note Bailey, I understand and respect what you have to say, even though it doesn't seem like it, but the fundamental truth is that My Chemical Romance encourage suicide. And I genuinely feel that MCR romanticise the premature ending of ones life. Death is a reoccuring theme in many MCR songs, and I can't honestly believe that their music has had nothing to do with the deaths of people like Hannah Bond.

Warm regards,

Matt

12 Let the Creativity Flows Black
$25

However, as per the latest notification,

Under the existing instructions, the banks/DFIs are required to have the MCR at
Rs 6 billion by December 31, 2009. According to new instructions, the banks will have
to raise their MCR to Rs 10 billion by December 31, 2010, Rs 15 billion by December 31,
2011, Rs 19 billion by December 31, 2012 and finally Rs 23 billion by December 31,
2013.

All newly-licensed banks will henceforth be required to meet the paid
up/assigned capital requirement of Rs 23 billion before commencement of their
operations.

Under the current circumstances, when the economy of Pakistan is under duress and there are no signs of rapid growth in near future, this will lead to consolidation among banks small as well as large resulting in halving the 40 plus banks that currently operate in Pakistan. No shareholder will see a benefit in putting in more money as equity capital as in a stagnant economy, increasing the MCR will result in negative return for equity holders.

AB Shahid, an ex-banker whom I respect a lot, has done a decent analyis of the measure in a recent issue of Dawn,

There is some logic in the move. In the unfolding scenario some small banks must merge to create viable entities, but it also raises some questions: is SBP anticipating rapid economic growth and credit expansion or a big rise in bank risk, or having fewer banks to watch will permit SBP to take on NBFIs as well without increasing its current capacity, or curbing cartelisation by mega banks isn’t a challenge now.

I believe its the latter, that SBP does not have the capacity nor the capability to monitor such large number of banks. So to make its monitoring job easier, it is forcing the banks to merge, a wrong way to achieve its objective.

Higher capital indeed enhances loss-absorbing capacity but avoiding losses — the prime objective — requires improving internal and external institutional arrangements to monitor and control risk i.e. inculcating commitment, prioritising expertise and enforcing stiff regulatory discipline.

This is what has been proven time and again both in western financial sector as well as Pakistan. The largest banks in Pakistan are not necessarily the most loss free. For example, UBL is amongst larger banks for Pakistan. Recently, it had been earning significant profits from consumer banking products and was reporting phenomenal results. However, once the economic growth stagnated, it has suffered huge losses in its consumer banking business. Similarly, Standard Chartered (largest foreign bank) has minimized its consumer banking business after incurring significant losses. Compared to it, losses in relatively smaller banks such as Soneri, Bank AlHabib and even Mybank( a nobody) has been contained as due to their smaller size they had better controls and risk management systems in place.

Evidence suggests that the factor causing these failures is lack of relevant experience among central bankers because most of them have only academic, not practical knowledge of running commercial banks.

Though I am not familiar with bio-data of people running SBP but based on the recent handling of events, I don't have much confidence. However, I would disagree with the author that having an experience of running commercial banks reduces those risks. The recent Treasury Secretary of US is Hank Paulson is a celebrated Investment Banker and under his watch we have seen the end of investment banking as we know it wherein all this time he was in a state of denial.

In a country like Pakistan, smaller banks is what we need as they try to make profit by reaching out to smaller segments of society such as SMEs while helping them to grow. If they consolidate and become big, they will run after the larger corporate where a single transaction can add much more to their top line without the associated costs of having larger branch network.

Having small as well as large banks is what makes the banking sector of Pakistan resilient. All the banks have different target segment, different risk profiles and as such unless they are faced with a systemic risk, a single event will not lead to the collapse of the whole banking sector. But once the banks merge and will become big, they will all modify their exposures to have similar exposure to similar sectors such that if a particular sector fails, it will take down either none or whole of the banking sector.

Once the banks become large, they become bureacratic, they build cartels and are less customer friendly. This is still evident from the rate of returns offered by largest banks to the depositor which in real terms is negative. Smaller banks are customer friendly and offer attractive returns to the customer which induce savings which is what is required in the present circumstances.

Its my belief that SBP despite forcing BASEL II down bank's throats, SBP does not have the capacity to monitor and manage the risk of banks. As such, to make its job easier, it has decided to impose arbitrarty capital increase requirement in hope that this will some how make the banks safer and less prone to failure.

Uazza

(cliccare sulla foto per ingrandirla)

J'écoute MCR. Je suis fâchée...mais elle me parle maintenant. Elle est ma seule amie...même si je ne l'aime pas complètement.

Les gens sont stupides! FUCK THE WORLD.

And bring me back to dreamland, where we ride on carpets of crystal, me and you, the one good soul in the world, who got me...times like this bring you back to me.

20 pcs of "Let's Rock With Music" Tees All SOLD OUT!

other tees selling fast as well... so grab your tees now!

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Here I am.Standing still.

Here I am.Facing your face.

Here I am.Clinging to your words.

Here I am.Saying I don't love you like I did yesterday.

Here I am.Smiling.

And here I am,still standing.

kebanyakan mp3 yg aku dload, lum habis dgr lgi..dload shj, bikin koleksi..the same thing happened wit album MCR yg baru ni..suda bbulan aku simpan dlm PC, sehinggalaa smlm baru aku discovered lagu ni..melodi lagu ni mmg sedih skit[Emo budak skrg bilang]..dan bila aku baca liriknya..hmmm..to be honest, the lyric almost make me wanna cry..x bole mo komen apa2..kamurang baca lirik lagu ni d bwh..

My Chemical Romance - Cancer

Turn away,
If you could get me a drink of water
Cause my lips are chapped and faded
Call my Aunt Marie.
Help me gather all my things,
And bury me in all my favorite colors.
My sisters and my brothers still.
I will not kiss you.
Cause the hardest part of this is leaving you.

Now turn away.
Cause I'm awful just to see.
Cause all my hairs abandoned all my body
All my agony.
Know that I will never marry.
Baby, I'm just soggy from the chemo,
But counting down the days to go.

It just ain't living.
I just hope you know.
That if you say goodbye today.
I'd ask you to be true.

Cause the hardest part of this is leaving you.
Cause the hardest part of this is leaving you..

p/s: lagu ni dituju khas buat pesakit2 kanser yg telah pergi serta mereka yg masi berjuang utk terus hidup..smoga yg baik itu berterusan..Amin..