Author: Ritesh Jain

For many people nowadays, the first port of call upon discovering an unusual rash or feeling a worrying pain is not the doctor, but rather Google. Figures from Eurostat show the countries which are relying the most on medical information from the internet. In Luxembourg, almost three quarters of respondents said that they had turned to the web for health-related information – an increase of 44 percentage points on 2006. Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands are also among the top European countries turning to Google et al for advice.i

I tried looking at the data for india but couldnt find the relevant numbers although the numbers are on rise

Believe it or not, it’s true. There are just as many people living in the small red area as there are living in all the blue areas combined.

Blue region

Red region

In today’s multi-platform world, the smart businesses are tailoring their messages to audiences based on a variety of factors.Of course, there are the benefits and limitations to each platform to be considered – but even more importantly, the audience and activity on each platform can differ considerably. The demographics of Pinterest vary from those of YouTube or Facebook, and content creators need to think about these fundamental differences in order to maximize user engagement.

For example Facebook is predominently female users but youtube reaches more 18-49 then any other cable network in US.

Are Indians going back to cash
Vivek kaul writes that currency with public has been going up post December 2016. Nevertheless, it is still some way away from the pre-demonetisation level. Whether that level is achieved remains to be seen. It depends on whether the government decides to replace the entire currency withdrawn through demonetisation or not. As far as ATM transactions using debit cards go, they have bounced back post demonetisation. In fact, the total number of transactions in January 2017 was more than that in January 2016. Having said that the total number of transactions in January 2017 was still lower than the pre-demonetisation level. The usage of credit cards and debit cards spiked up in the aftermath of demonetisation. But the value of goods bought using credit and debit cards through the point of sale route, fell by 8.4 per cent between December 2016 and January 2017, as more currency became available in the market. If we look at just debit cards, the fall is around 16 per cent. He also highlights that ATM withdrawals in rupee terms went up by around 79 per cent between December 2016 and January 2017. If ever there was a data point that showed that Indians preferred cash to carry out economic transactions, this is it.

Trump Adviser Peter Navarro: Trade Deficits Endanger U.S. National Security
This is getting interesting, a country which has always run trade deficits and stuffed a fiat currency named dollar to all exporters to US since Bretton woods now thinks trade deficit is bad. The director of President Donald Trump’s newly formed National Trade Council said Monday the administration would make the reduction of U.S. trade deficits its top policy focus. Speaking to a conference of business economists, trade adviser Peter Navarro said the U.S. faced a growing economic and potential national security risk from the commercial behaviour of its major trading partners, including China and Germany. “Suppose instead that it is not a benign ally buying up our companies, our technologies, our farmland and our food supply chain, and ultimately controlling much of our defense-industrial base. Rather it is a rapidly militarizing strategic rival intent on hegemony in Asia and perhaps world hegemony,” Mr. Navarro said. He warned the U.S. could lose a “broader cold war…not by shots being fired but by cash registers ringing. Here comes a trade war and the way UN has become toothless expect WTO also to disintegrate into boxing arena

Meet SEDRIC, a bizzare looking ride from volkswagen
The Volkswagen Group has taken us from the Beetle to the Golf and it soon might take us somewhere very, very boring with the new Sedric concept car.The pod-like high-tech vision of future mobility doesn’t even have a steering wheel, thanks to its Level 5 autonomous driving systems, and is the strongest statement yet from Volkswagen’s ‘Together Strategy 2025’ program. The Sedric is crammed full of the thinking Volkswagen believes it will need to transform itself from an engineering-driven car company today into an across-the-board integrated mobility services organization. Shown at a limited-access media presentation prior to the Geneva motor show, the Sedric is a development prototype of a different kind for the Volkswagen Group. Instead of engineering and building new hardware pieces and swapping them in, the idea of the Sedric is to allow all the brands in the Group to explore how their mobility concepts could work in the real world. Sedric brings in speech-controlled driving, with voice commands governing the car’s throttle systems. There are no pedals, nor steering wheel! Beneath the floor, the Sedric uses a lithium-ion battery pack with enough capacity to move the car for around 400km, Volkswagen claims. The Group’s plan is to begin launching driverless cars after 2020.

Death Knell for US retailers
In the US Brick-and-mortar retailers, many of them subject to leveraged buyouts during the LBO boom before the Financial Crisis and now burdened with way too much debt, are keeling over one after the other, in a dense wave of debt restructurings and bankruptcies. And creditors are getting skinned. The crash of brick-and-mortar retail is due to structural causes – including the shift to online retail. These issues will not go away. They will only get worse. Even profitable retailers, like Macy’s, are shuttering stores. They’re all doing it, profitable or in bankruptcy. Nine chain-store retailers that have filed or are considering filing for bankruptcy, or restructuring their debts, so far in 2017, six of them in the last seven days! These are just the largest ones. And the year is barely into its third month. Even Warren Buffett who believes in America’s future seems more doubtful about that of Walmart and other traditional retailers. The billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway sold off about $900 million worth of Wal-Mart Stores stock in the last quarter, or about 90% of what he had left after years of paring his investment in the discount retailer. As recently as last summer, Buffett’s holdings in Walmart were worth $3 billion, and are now down to less than $100 million. The Oracle of Omaha first invested in the company in 2005.

Bill Gross writes ….. Don’t be allured by the Trump mirage of 3-4% growth and the magical benefits of tax cuts and deregulation. The U.S. and indeed the global economy is walking a fine line due to increasing leverage and the potential for too high (or too low) interest rates (i think he is talking only about debt and not equity) to wreak havoc on an increasingly stressed financial system. Be more concerned about the return of your money than the return on your money in 2017 and beyond.

When interest rates are on falling trajectory then it is not difficult for higher amount of debt to be serviced and even more debt to be raised from market because whoever has bought debt ( bonds) see the value of bonds going up hence willing to fund more debt as capital appreciation is gauranteed. it is only when interest rates starts rising ( i still believe only shorter end rates will rise) then the fun starts if all those debt which has been created is not used for creating earning asset and used only for consumption or buybacks (emphasis Mine).

In the U.S., credit of $65 trillion is roughly 350% of annual GDP and the ratio is rising. In China, the ratio has more than doubled in the past decade to nearly 300%.

For reference ,in India our total debt ( private + govt) is 150% of GDP mainly because inflation in India has reduced the value of debt and inflation means increased burden of tax on you and me . And unlike both china and US our growth rates are higher.