SAM SWARO: Obama vs. Economy! (Old blog- reposting)

(written in Nov 2008/reposting)
I do not think anyone of us have any disagreement on the historic achievement; when Barack Obama was elected as 44th US President. Even though I was supporting John McCain (me being a big supply-sider: Lower tax leads to prosperity), some where deep inside I am happy about the 'change' Obama is going to bring on the political front. There are two aspects to the change equation; political and business. While I am confident that Obama will be the best American President who will advocate for world peace, green world and better healthcare at the same time I am equally skeptical about his extreme left wing socialistic views.

Don't fix if it ain’t broken! Even though today, Wall Street is broken and Global economy is shaken, I strongly believe that the market will correct itself without any Government regulations. The economic situation in US is bad but is not that bad that it needs any Govt. regulation/intervention. American economy is the most resilient economy in the world. I can understand why Govt. of Iceland and Pakistan is desperate to bring them out of the possible clout of bankruptcy but we are not in that same situation. We are in slight recession and not close to any kind of economic depression or what so ever.

I am scared of couple of things, which the democratic congress and Whitehouse will try to do and will stall the global economy for years to come. Obama, supported by Nancy Pelosi is going to put all possible curb on free trade and increase tariff. On the home front they will increase tax and support labor unions (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122592993592603103.html), increase tax, eliminate capital gain and will not renew Bush Tax Cut policy; which will bankrupt American companies (example GM, Ford) and will further slow down the economy. Dow is down for last two days and Asian Stocks fell for second day (is it due to falling crude oil.. thank God its at $60/barrel or Obama effect?)

US is considered to be the engine of world economy. I am fearful that, due to all these extreme left wing liberal steps to correct the economy, the Rest of World (RoW) might suffer.

If US slows down further, its going to take down RoW with it.

Obama (Big Data) sets the Stage for New age Election Campaign

In the 2012 Presidential election, Nate Silver correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Silver's predictions of U.S. Senate races were correct in 31 of 33 states; he made the wrong prediction in North Dakota and Montana.


Obama proves (once again) that how social media, digital campaign (2008 general election) and data-driven campaign (2012) can play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of the election. He did it during the Democratic nomination (defeating Hillary Clinton) and then Republican John McCain in the general election and now republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 Presidential election.


When we look back at the last 10 months of Presidential election campaign, we cannot ignore to see how smartly Obama worked (compared to Mitt Romney) get into the office for the 2nd term. He used Social analytics, social media and Big Data crunching to run his campaign, raise fund (remember dinner with Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney?).

Below is the analysis of Romney vs. Obama in the social media, which shows how Obama consistently maintained a substantial lead in social media:

Sharing one glaring data point on the impact of on-ground, smart campaign (based on the outcome of data analytics, social media sentiments etc). In Florida, Mitt Romney won pretty much in every county except Hilsborogh (Tampa, St Pete area), Orlando area, entire Southern Florda (Ft Lauderdale and Miami). My heart goes out for Mitt Romney, he must have spent millions of dollars and huge campaign time in ensuring that he covers most part of Florida to get all those rural votes but Obama must have campaigned where the majority of the population (about 50%) of FL are in the Tampa, Orlando and Miami area! So, there you go, even though Mitt Romney spent millions on campaign but that was not targetted enough to ensure that these highly populated cities vote for the republican party. This is just one data point on how Obama's smart campaigning paid off. If we look at all the swing states (Ohio, Nevada etc.), the similar story repeats; most of the highly populated areas went with Obama and rural areas went with Romney.


US demographic is more diverse (in terms of races, sex, age) than ever before (a representative split is shown below):

Black population: 13%
Hispanic population: 10% (and growing)
White population: 73% (and shrinking)
Asian: 4% (and growing)


Women: 155 million
Men: 151 million

Population with age under 20 = 27%
Population with age above 65 = 12%
Median age = 36.9 years

So, Obama understood (long back!) if you have to get (re)elected to the white house then you cannot ignore Hispanic, Black, young and women voters.

Definitely, data-driven decision-making played a big role in 2012 general election. Obama proved the rhetoric - "Work Smart (not Hard) to achieve the same or more". It will be interesting to watch, how the future of election campaigns shape up.



Source:
http://www.campaignpop.com/
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/07/tech/web/obama-campaign-tech-team/index.html
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

President's 2nd term To-Do List

President's 2nd term To-Do List

1. Deficit Reduction
2. Income tax reform (more tax for families making $250K+ per year)
3. Corporate Tax reform
4. Immigration reform
5. Education reform

I will be writing more on these in details.

Week of Halloween 2012 ...

This week was really busy for me; quite an interesting week/

My heart goes out to all the 50+ million people affected by the Super storm Sandy. I guess, no one (including me) expected this to be such a disastrous storm. I was under the impression that Sandy is going to bring lots of rain and there will be flooding and that's it. I read somewhere, that the size of Sandy was the size of continent Europe!

Nothing like coming home!

I was feeling really bad that, this week, I could not spend time with my family to celebrate the Indian festival Kumara Purnima(a harvest festival celebrated on the full moon day of the Hindu lunar month of Ashvin (September–October). It marks the end of monsoon) and obviously Halloween. Bought the pumpkin last week to do the carving with my daughter (on 10/6, she turned 4 years!) but could not do it until this morning.

Today, having a relaxed Saturday morning (trying to forget about Sandy) with my daughter...this morning, we carved the pumpkin/made a happy face :) (Yes a Happy face to forget all about Sandy) while listening to Mumford & Sons (love the song 'Awake my Soul')

Looking forward for an exciting next week. Finally, the Presidential election will be over! I will be teaching in Monte Vista Elementary (Santa Ana CA) on 11/8 :)

HCL cruising through Iowa corn fields!

Sharing few pictures from the RAGBRAI bike event, which we participated last week. We (my colleague Prabu and myself) biked for 2 days. Well, I biked for 1 day and Prabu biked for 2 days! I was not feeling well on the 2nd day, so dropped out last minute!

1st day: We biked for about 50 miles
2nd day: Prabu biked another 70 miles (kudos Prabu)

Definitely, HCL presence is felt in this event. About 7-8 people recognized HCL and stopped by to talk with us. I am sure many more people might have seen HCL participated in this event and tacitly recognized. Approx. 10K bikers participated in this event. People from all over the country came to participate in this event. Another cool thing happened was - we met with a 4th generation farmer his name was Steve Martin, yes! (the wild and funny Steve Martin, if you know Steve Martin then you know what I am talking about)/ apparently, he owns 350 acres of farm land /he invited Prabu on an weekend tour to demonstrate how he does high-end farming/Prabu plans to take few HCLites to his farm soon/what a way to connect with local community!

Started my practice for RAGBRAI cycle event today

Started my practice for RAGBRAI (http://ragbrai.com/) today. Biked 20 miles. Here is the bike route I covered today. Plan to practice at least 4-5 times before the event on 27th July.

Practice Day-1 (July 16):


View Larger Map

Practice Day-2 (July 20):
Today biked 22 miles. Used the new Alton pkwy from Foothill Ranch to Lake Forest.


View Larger Map

Read this article: Future 2.0 (eye-popping vision of life 2100) by Futurologist Micho Kaku

On my way from Cedar Rapids to Orange county in June 2012, read this fantastic article on "The Future 2.0" so thought of sharing few quick points from the article with you all. Definitely would recommend to google on it and read the full article, its very interesting!

1. In-your-face internet (internet on the contact lense)

2. Shopaholics, rejoice (you can simulate 3D shops @ your home and buy things @home)

3. Robo Doc (24x7 doc @home) for ur assistance

4. Cars will drive by themselves (might have see Google car/ its already a reality)

5. Human body shop (except brain, we can buy any other body parts from shop)/ it will be a reality in just abt 20 yrs frm now/no one will die due to organ failure! Well, Spidy-4 (The Amazing Spider-Man)shows how to generate body part

5. Age 30...and holding: our grand kids can just stay @age 30/ by controlling the aging process!!!

7. Telepathy will be a reality/ u just think abt reserving a restaurant and restaurant will be reserved (IBM is working this)

8. Bye-bye computer: in the future, computer power will be everywhere an nowhere, like electricity and running water/the word computer will disappear frm the english language. There will be a time/ when computer chips will cost a penny/ u can talk to things and talk back!

Mind blowing! Right?

Basic principle remains the same everywhere

I should admit, road cycling is pretty new to me (here, I am not considering the bike rides which I did in my teen-life).

As I wrote in one of my earlier blogs, I bike regularly in the Santiago Canyon. Mostly I pass through few mountains during my rides. The gradients in couple of mountains are really steep. Initially, when I was going through these steep grades, I used to look at the whole length of the steep grade and used to get nervous of the difficult ride ahead, I have to paddle through! After few rides in those steep grades, I thought to change my approach in looking at the entire steep route.

Instead of looking for the tough challenging entire slope ahead of me; I started concentrate on just paddling and looking not more than few yards ahead of me and this strategy worked very well for me in climbing the steep road smoothly.

“Divide and conquer” – this principle is the same in every aspect of life. Like in our work life, if we have a long difficult program in hand then we look at immediate or near-term milestones and achieving those (keeping in mind the end result – schedule, cost and quality) and it allows us to manage difficult project efficiently and help us stay focus in our program.

So, there is surprise to see the similarity between applicability of basic principles in our daily life and work life.

During 27th and 28th July 15, 2012, I am going to participate in the RAGBRAI (http://ragbrai.com/) bike event in Cedar Rapids IA and the total distance I will be covering would be little over 100 miles. So, I have to keep in mind (and apply) this simple principle during this long ride!

Updates from John Adams Elementary School

4th grade students of John Adams Elementary School Santa Ana CA completed the their very first Junior Achievement project. This class of 34 students was full of energy and knowledge...

Major US Economic Indices from March, April 2012 reports

CPI = A consumer price index (CPI) measures changes in the price level of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The CPI in the United States is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as "a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services

CCI = The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) is an indicator designed to measure consumer confidence, which is defined as the degree of optimism on the state of the economy that consumers are expressing through their activities of savings and spending.

Expectations Index= A sub-index that measures overall consumer sentiments toward the short-term (6-month) future economic situation, and is used to derive (about 60% of) the Consumer Confidence Index, a widely used economic indicator.

Present Situation Index = A subindex that measures overall consumer sentiments toward the present economic situation and is used to derive (about 40% of) the Consumer Confidence Index, a widely used economic indicator.

ISM Manufacturing Index = an index based on surveys of more than 300 manufacturing firms by the Institute of Supply Management. The ISM Manufacturing Index monitors employment, production inventories, new orders and supplier deliveries. A composite diffusion index is created that monitors conditions in national manufacturing based on the data from these surveys

Sources:
www.cnn.com
www.investopedia.com
www.wiki.com

Gesture based Navigation is real now!

In 2002, when I watched Minority Report, I thought, it's just impossible to navigate the screens the way Tom Cruise was navigating through screens in the movie. In 2008, when the Iron Man came out, I was little convinced that maybe, we have the technology available to make this possible!

4 years later, with the Leap Motions "The Leap" gesture based navigation is a reality now. This device is a tiny candy bar shaped device connects to any computer via USB and emits infrared light that recognizes objects like fingers, hands, pens and even chopsticks - within a distance roughly to arm's-length.

Hollywood proved it once again that it is always ahead of time in setting the technology trends...Hmmm...

"The Leap" will be in market in this winter for just about $70. You can pre-order it now @

https://live.leapmotion.com/order.html

Watch this cool video on YouTube - Demo of the leap!

Plateau Monte Royal experience...

Sometime, you plan to do something but end up doing something completely different, which remains in your memory forever! That's what happened to my last trip to Montreal!

This Tuesday evening, I started from my hotel in Montreal to dine @Au Pied de Cochon (http://www.restaurantaupieddecochon.ca/) in the famous Montreal neighborhood Plateau Monte Royal (http://www.tourisme-montreal.org/Discover-montreal/Neighbourhoods/Plateau-Mont-Royal). This neighborhood reminded me East Seattle - lots of local restaurants, shops, street parking and vibrant people...

I could not get a parking near the Au Pied de Cochon restaurant and finally few blocks away, got a street parking. As I was not sure of the parking, I asked a local guy (Simon!) crossing the street "whether it is OK to park in that spot". We ended up chatting for 15 minutes; Simon was a great guy and he told me a great deal about the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood and he also told me that Au Pied de Cochon is a great restaurant. The food @Au Pied de Cochon is very rich though! Also, he told me about the meaning of 'Au Pied de Cochon' - 'To the Foot of Pig'! Well, by then I was bit unsure whether I should go to this restaurant or not. I started walking towards Au Pied de Cochon, which was 4 blocks away from the parking spot.

On my way, I could not avoid noticing an unique wood framed entrance of an Afghan restaurant. The name of the restaurant was 'Khyber Pass'. Khyber Pass is a mountain pass in Afghanistan, very famous pass, which connects Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/317182/Khyber-Pass

I ended up eating in that place. Food was delicious!

The next day, while discussing my experience with one of my local associates; I came to know that
Au Pied de Cochon is one of the most famous restaurant in Montreal, the cook is very popular for his style and on May 12th (4 days back) David Beckham dined @Au Pied de Cochon !!!

Correlation between 'Birth Rate' or 'Marriage rate' and Performance of a Country's Economy

Just recently, I read an article on Bloomberg "Three Reasons Japan’s Economic Pain Is Getting Worse", which talked about one of the main reason for which Japan's economy has slowed down in the past one and half decade is due to lower birth rate and marriage rate. So, I thought to do little further research on the correlation between marriage and birth rate with a country's performance. I looked at two parameters (GDP growth rate and 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio')to evaluate the performance of a country's economy. 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' measure gives an idea of the ability of a country to make future payments on its debt. If a country were unable to pay its debt, it would default, which could cause a panic in the domestic and international markets. The higher the debt-to-GDP ratio, the less likely the country will pay its debt back, and the higher its risk of default.


When we look at the data (refer the table below); it seems like there is a weak correlation between 'marriage rate' and health of a high performing country (decent GDP growth and low 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio') like Russia, China and USA and there is a strong correlation between 'birth rate' and low performing economies like Japan and Greece. If we look at the data for Australia, Israel South Korea then definitely it looks like there is strong correlation between 'marriage rate; Birth Rate' and it's performance (low 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' and decent GDP growth).

Note: As there was no 'marriage rate' data available for India, I could not derive any conclusion on India.

Russia: Russia has highest marriage rate (8.5) and it's 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' is the lowest (8.7) and GDP rate is 4.3% (rank: 6th).

China: China has 2nd highest marriage rate (7.3) and it's -To-GDP Ratio' is the 6th in the rank (43.5) and GDP rate is 9.9% (rank: 1st)

USA: USA has 3rd highest marriage rate (6.8) and it's 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' is the 15th in the rank (103.0) and GDP rate is 2.3% (rank: 10th). This is where the data is not supporting that there is a strong correlation between marriage rate and health of a country.


I could not see any correlation between birth rate, marriage rate and health of growing country; however, when we look at bottom performers in terms of GDP growth rate and high 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' then definitely there is a strong correlation between birth rate and health of the country.

Japan: Has the highest 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' (208.2), GDP growth rate is 1.8% and it's birth rate is the lowest (7.31) and marriage rate is 5.5, which ranks at 8th in the marriage rate ranking. But the point to note is the concern of declining YoY marriage rate.

Greece: Has the 2nd highest 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio' (165.3), GDP growth rate is the lowest at -4.8% and it's birth rate is the 5th lowest (9.21) and marriage rate is 5.8, which ranks at 8th in the marriage rate ranking. But the point to note is the concern of declining YoY marriage rate.

Top 6 countries with highest marriage rate:

Country Marriage Rate
Russia 8.5
China 7.3
USA 6.8
Israel 6.8
South Korea 6.2
Greece 5.8


Top 6 countries with highest birth rate:
Country Birth Rate
India 20.97
Israel 19.24
Brazil 17.79
Ireland 16.1
USA 13.83
New Zealand 13.68


Top 6 countries with highest GDP growth rate

Country Avg. GDP Growth Rate (2010 and 2011)
China 9.9%
India 9.0%
Brazil 5.1%
South Korea 4.9%
Israel 4.8%
Russia 4.3%


Top 6 countries with lowest 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio'
Country 'Debt-To-GDP Ratio'
Russia 8.7
Australia 30.3
South Korea 33.3
New Zealand 33.7
Switzerland 38.7
China 43.5

Sources:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-25/three-reasons-japan-s-economic-pain-is-getting-worse.html
http://unstats.un.org
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mbs/app/DataSearchTable.aspx
www.indexmundi.com
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG
https://www.cia.gov
http://www.investopedia.com
http://www.unicef.org

Welcome Summer!

It's such a beautiful sunny day in Southern California! Woke up little late this morning. By 8:30 am, it was already in high 60's and wind breeze @6 mph. Went on a quick bike ride in the Santiago Canoyon. Biked for about an hour...

Right after I came back form the bike ride;my 3 years 6 months old daughter, Sanjana (Sani) took a picture of me. She is getting really good in taking pictures!

Everyday, days are getting warmer. Look forward for a hot summer!

Started teaching again...

Today spent about 1 hour with students of John Adams Elementary (Santa Ana CA) 4th grade students. After about a year, I am teaching again! It feels so good to disseminate knowledge. Everyone would agree with me that disseminating your knowledge is more satisfying and important than gaining knowledge! I believe you learn more when you share more.

My class has 34 students, lots of energy; everyone participated and stayed engaged for 1 hour, which is commendable. Couple of really good questions and ideas came up during the discussions...I was totally surprised about the amount of knowledge they have gained at such an early stage of life.

Next week is going to be really hectic for me. I will be on travel from this Sunday till Thursday 5/17. However, I am so excited that I will be teaching next Friday again. Look forward for my next class and meet my new students!

Awesome Slow Jam by Barack Obama and Jimmy Fallon!

One of the greatest moment of President Barack Obama. Students should be really happy about the interest rate not going up this July.

Mahatma Gandhi ....

Just recently, watched this amazing documentary biography of Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi (shared by one of my dear friend) on youtube.



Peace and universal brotherhood - how powerful values are these; it's much easier to think (talk?) about these values than personally believing these values, practicing and influencing a whole country or the world practice these values.

I wish "imagine" all the people become like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, John Lennon...

Here goes one of my all-time favorite song...

Google (Android) is following the path of Microsoft (Windows)...

There is no doubt in anyone's mind that - handheld mobile devices have brought the same revolution as the desktops (Microsoft & Apple) brought to us in 90's. Google and Apple understood it very well! However, it's amazing to see the power of open source and providing an open powerful OS for all the mobile platform developers... Google Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices and any mobile developer can develop their apps on this OS, the OS is available for any OEM (unllike Apple iOS). Android has nearly 50% od market share in the mobile OS world. It has already captured the #1 spot in the OS mobile market and will continue to dominate the mobile market. Don't you think Apple is doing a mistake by not making iOS an open source and making it available to beyond apple products?

State of Our Economy... 5 Years After One Of the Biggest Recession of Our Time

This month, we heard the good news that unemployment dropped to 8.6% from 9.1%. Payroll jobs in Nov advanced a relatively strong 120,000 after gaining a revised 100,000 in October (originally 80,000) and increased a revised 210,000 in September (previously 158,000).

Is it good news? Well, we think so, right? Let's look at few other data:
1. The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had declined in October, improved in November (increased by 15.1 pts)
2. Existing-home sales improved in October while the number of homes on the market continued to decline and spending on construction projects in the U.S. climbed a third straight time in October, yet remained below compared to year-ago levels
3. Black Friday online sales reached $816 million, making it the heaviest spending day on the Internet so far in 2011 (jumped 26 percent this year)
When we look at all these leading indicators, it seems like we are recovering and on our path to a brighter tomorrow.

Now, let's look at few other data, which concerns me:
1. Even though un-employment rate dropped to 8.6% at the same time, jobless claims climb back over 400,000
2. Labor participation in job market is coming down, low wage jobs are getting created, and women are leaving job market
3. 1 in 5 children now in poverty and 40% of African American are in poverty
4. People who are out of job for more than 6 months are still unemployed

We should be adding 350,000 jobs every month (for another 3 years) to bring unemployment rate to below 6% where as we are barely adding 120,000 per month

After 5 years of recession, American middle class is shrinking, lower class and upper middle class and high class growing. In 1969, middle class constituted 53% of the total American population and in 2009 this percentage has reduced to 43.7% and is shrinking every year. Middle class is the backbone of any nation's economy. What should the Government and Central bank do to stop this hour glass society phenomenon? What should we be doing to stop this?


Sources:
www.mam.econoday.com
www.conference-board.org
www.reuters.com
online.wsj.com
CNN Money
money.usnews.com

Note: This blog was originally written in the last quarter of 2011

Planning to start actively blog again..

It's been a long time since I last blogged. Been just so busy (may be just an excuse!) lately...