21 Days of Inspiration and Daily Challenge

It is still not too late to register for the Chopra Centre's 21 Days of Inspiration online program at http://www.chopra.com/.  Program has already begun on January 15 while registration ends on January 21, 2012 (I believe, U.S. Eastern Standard Time). It is all free.


I have already been inspired by the subject of transformation, gratitude and purification. Each day I will read a bit about the "Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" and ponder on the daily inspiration and explore a new activity.

To quote from today's Daily Inspiration:

As Ayurveda teaches, when we quiet our minds and listen to the wisdom of the body, it will tell us what we need to know. Tune into your innate knowing today and let it guide you.

This, the Daily Challenge (http://www.chopra.com/ ) from the Chopra Centre as well as this inspiring book called Beyond Wealth are giving me lots of new ideas to improve my overall well-being for the New Year, the Year of the Dragon.

Also here is the link for the registration for the 21 Day Meditation Challenge for Winter 2012 which will begin on February 20, 2012.

The Year of Distressed Sovereigns

In our investment process for emerging markets, we'd like to describe typical phases of market development of a country going from distressed, stabilizing, reforming to converging.  An emerging market can move backwards from its current phase too.  Therefore an emerging market may have emerged/converged, but due to bad economic policy or political leadership, the country submerges and goes back to the distressed phase e.g. several of the investment grade-rated Asian countries during the Asian Crisis in 1997-1998 or several of the Baltic countries during the 2008 global financial crisis.

We normally would not apply these dynamic phases of market development to developed markets including the US, Japan and Europe.  But there you have it.  This may look like the year of many developed markets going into the distressed phase.

A recent Bloomberg article calculates that the world leading economies have more than $7.6 trillion of debt maturing in 2012 ($8.8 trillion if interest burden is included) and face rising borrowing costs.