EP 170: Covid flattens in India; Biden finally condemns anti-semitic attacks, MEA India in US & more

Sree Iyer: Namaskar. Today is May 25th Tuesday, 2021, and welcome to the Daily Global Insight with Sri and Sree. This is episode number 170. We start as always with US news.

In US News, DeSantis takes the step and signs the bill that would stop Big Tech censorship of Floridians. Sir, your thoughts.

Sridhar Chityala: There is a first step towards giving the control back to the individuals, away from the tech platforms and, the flimsy approach that the tech platforms have used in arbitrarily banning users, using what they call as the fact verification Checkers, who also seemed to be could use even collaborative with the tech platforms. So, Florida, now States if you decide to ban somebody from your platform. Then that individual has a right to sue and litigate against the platform and claim damages up to $100,000. I think it’s a very positive step. I think the next thing should be to increase this to $250,000 and eventually, raise it to 1 million dollars. So the flimsiness and the arbitrariness that the tech platforms enjoy can be put to an end after that. I think they should be given a penalty imposed on the tech platform in banning advertisements. So I think the only way that you can make sure that tech platforms comply is punitive financial damages. So they have any economic impact both on the revenue side plus there is a market kind of punishment Market dings them on the other side. They have got away with everything that we have seen so far, only because they have taken shelter under what we call an abusive law, which gives undue advantage to the platforms.

Sree Iyer: Mayorkas reveals that his department is working to create tools to help America’s children figure out whether they are being fed disinformation, a little bit more information on this at Mayorkas, what is his responsibility here?

Sridhar Chityala: His responsibility is that the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be having oversight and management and monitoring of activities, which effectively, you know, compromises, the state or push the state at risk. If you recall that there has been a progressive approach in terms of Changing the history and the narrative in the schools, which have been objected to by parents. We talked about the critical race theory that is being propped up, the 1619 project, Etc. So the parents have raised significant objections to this being inculcated and the left-wing mindset, you know, dropping into or coming into the schools. So I think what Mayorkas is saying is he’s going to come up with a set of tools, which helps the students to delineate, between good and bad information. How the Department of Homeland Security can play a part is beyond belief when they have political biases, it does matter whether it’s Republican or Democrat. The DHS is run by the government in power.

Sree Iyer: Sir, just a couple of thoughts, why is this Administration so unsure of its future. It’s like they think they have only a hundred days to do everything and they are doing things and then they are doing things wrongly. Then they walk it back then, flip-flopping. What is the thing that is wrong here? I’m trying to understand. Why are they already accepting that there will not be a majority in the House in 2022, that’s what it seems to be?  Sir, Your thoughts are then we can move on to the next item.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, let me give you my provocative on this. The latest theory that is going around the world, propagated advocated and with a collaborative set of frameworks is called the toolkit. The Word you see the Department of Homeland using the word, then they would give the school kids are toolkit to delineate. So the toolkit model is they frame it in the central architecture or central information and this took it becomes both a propagation vehicle, advocacy vehicle and then prejudiced manner, move them into a specific direction. So this is one more example of this invisible hang or invisible set of people who are using this toolkit approach around the world is advocating and shaping their theories in a self-prophesying manner. I think that’s the structure. We will also see and I think they are pointed out. It’s very strange. Biden says, White House says. Biden Says White House says, so what’s White House? And what’s Biden? Are they two separate sets of people? The answer is no, but this is the new methodology that is coming in, which is the White House is this curating content framework. Biden is the flip-flopping individual messaging that you see either in press conferences or in the events and that is Biden, being Joe, Biden, making a statement and then-White House, issuing a statement almost separating the two personas

Sree Iyer: Joe Biden finally condemns the surge of antisemitic attacks after ignoring Jewish groups. Again, this is the same thing. Now, you will see somebody else coming and saying something nonsensical like somebody did something on 9/11. What nonsense in these progressives want to spew out sir,

Sridhar Chityala: Well, it’s fascinating that you make this observation. Now at last after so many attacks around many metropolitan cities in the United States, ranging from New York to Chicago and so on. Biden wakes up and then condensed, notwithstanding the fact that this has been going on and there have been agitations Etc. So guess what, the progressives led by Bernie Sanders and the famous four gang, you know, initially talked about Hey, you know,  the Israelis are racial and the Palestinians are subjected to apartheid etc. Then, they flipped around yesterday and made a statement, condemning the attacks. So they seem to be again, even on the Progressive side, there is a flip-flopping going on and you are beginning to see prejudices of the specific members who are supposed to represent the United States but representing their own personal beliefs coming in and trying to curate and misdirect the dialogue.

Sree Iyer: We’re also missing Senator Bernie Sander, he has an opinion and view on everything. Last, I checked he was a Jewish-American. I don’t know what he has to say about the final thing Joe Biden has done, sir?

Sridhar Chityala: Basically, he is of the Jewish faith, and he has made a statement, not yesterday. But the day, before yesterday, over the weekend, he has made a statement basically, condemning, the Israeli action on Palestinians.

Sree Iyer: so you have these two Renegade Jews, one is this guy, you know, the other guy is named, initials are G and S. So we have a lot of fun and in front of us, what will we do without all these people?

Sridhar Chityala: Schumer has gone into Hibernation; he has no comments to make and somebody has to remind Sanders the fight is between Hamas and Israel not with Palestinians.

Sree Iyer: Yes, yes, yes. And let’s go on to the next item in Dr Gottlieb now joins Dr Fauci, in his observation that Covid originated in the lab. What is this 1970s Bollywood movie? Where the police comes in the last scene and says don’t move? What nonsense is these guys are saying, everybody has known about it.

Sridhar Chityala: The information suppression that has gone on with regard to Covid. It is all the evidence points to the fact that Covid originated in Wuhan labs, there was a collaboration between PLA and Wuhan in the development of this, whatever you want to call it, your bio germ, or a manufactured germ. There is also in this alleged investigation of information that is leaking from doctors and people who have left, there was also a weaponization program that was being assessed as part of the collaboration between PLA and the specific lab. So now for these guys initially WHO to sit out and be very collusive and collaborative and Chinese dictating the term and WHO listening to it. Slowly, the truth is beginning to emerge that they are no longer suspecting this to be, you know, here, what you call origins anything other than outside a specific lab, it is not a Natural Evolution, that’s what they’re coming to. Why they need to use language along these lines rather than saying, yes, we believe that this is based on all the intelligence that we have seen, the origin seems to be in this specific country. In the meanwhile, China has successfully manoeuvred and talks about the British variant and Indian variant and the South African variant, forgetting for a moment, they are the main culprits in these efforts. Thailand is pointing out the latest information as I stepped into the program that they have the intelligence to prove that this is not something that has that is originated organically and they have done some molecular research and which finds the cell structures as some interesting observations to the Past intelligence.

Sree Iyer: Wow that is mind-boggling that they can pass intelligence, which means that they have fully capable of mutating into other shapes and forms.

Sridhar Chityala: We don’t know sir. So I think that the unless and until they make the NIA national investigative agency report, public on this, we can only continue to speculate and we can basically, you know, pontificate our own theories, but the fact is that the everyday somebody coming up and these two guys are very scot, Gottlieb is the Food and Drug Administration head and you know, Dr Fauci is the head of the CDC program for them to come and make statements of on two days which is consistent with this, not the natural origin but it is somewhere, it has originated is a very striking kind of postulation on the theory of Covid.

Sree Iyer: White House Suggests Biden will drop talks with GOP if spending negotiations falter. PPP loan fraud, ran wild, as billions were doled out. Tell me about it. I will tell you tons and tons in terms of stories about this. So, this is again, one of those things where people don’t seem to know how the money came and how the money went, sir.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, first and foremost, I think just Biden is making no progress because GOP proposed, you know, 568 billion and willing to go up to 700 million. This fellow Biden came back with 1.73 trillion. And basically, the Republican said, show me the numbers because I don’t see any numbers beyond, and they line itemized the infrastructure. And I think, you know, we had some pushback from our own audiences, I have started this I was part of 2008-2009 in a banking effort, this whole jobs act that happened trillion dollars plus went into the doldrums. Absolutely went into the doldrums. When you Dole out, this types of money is going to be in between people who are going to make money out of it. This is notwithstanding the fact that PPP programs even pushed through SBA and through bank loans, through your bank loan system, whenever you dispense it outside of it, you’re going to have a problem. Whenever you, when you make this program, such in a large with loosey-goosey rules, in terms of disbursement, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Republican or whether you’re Democrat fraud is certain.

Sree Iyer: And I had just put up the first slide where Fauci, says, that it may have come from a lab and now let’s move on to Indian news, Indo American Dialogue: Far beyond the realms of irrelevant left-wing Indian National Congress Politics – it is about Deals and realignment – the US needs India more than the other way, sir, who said this thing a little bit more context,

Sridhar Chityala: I said it. So, therefore I see a lot of rhetoric, lots of people sent me information about which ranges from Dr Jaishankar’s dress code to, he is being looked like a servant in the UK being sidelined, you know, not having the Diplomatic attire for him to engage in conduct and what is going to be the situation when he comes into the United States. Is he going to be given to due accordance? So, therefore, this is what you want after the other politicians in India, of course, using the media and advocating, you know, what is going to come out of the dialogue between the United States and India when Jaishankar is here in the US.  Now, I think on his third day in office trip to the United States. So I basically have written which is effective to State notwithstanding this you know the polarizing personal frontal attack on the Minister for External Affairs. Lot has been done.

The question here is why he is here. Here people assume that he has come here to beg for vaccines. He is not come here to beg for vaccines, that’s one of the things that he would be discussing. But, India has got alternative plans and it will move forward with or without the United States. But the fact is that the United States wants India, and Mr Blinken himself is very keen to meet with Mr Jaishankar. And He will complete this meeting and then only go to his Middle Eastern trip, which we will cover on the global side.

Okay, now what else is on the agenda? The agenda is there are quite a few things on the agenda. One is an investment, India crossed close 82 billion dollars of which, 60 billion dollars came via Equity Investments. There’s a lot of capital investment programs that are flowing in from the United States in three, four key sectors. One is Defense, the second is Pharmaceutical, third is Alternative Energy.

Why did Kelly go to India? He went to India because he sees in India an anchor client in advocating the climate agenda. So, therefore, very much investments into the climate sector is one of the big topics that they would discuss. Why did Lloyd Austin go to India? Lloyd Austin went to India because he wants to make sure that there is a Defense partnership. Remember behind the Defense programs. There is a whole bunch of Lobby actively propagating and advocating that India is one big spender, so, the partnership with India is very critical on the defence manufacturing side. So that’s again part of the discussion.

Many Indian pundits do not put up this data. The data is, what is the bilateral trade, especially those in Indian media, who have Chinese advocacy as the main theme. India is one of the largest vehicles that is used by the United States in distilling, the crude in the processing and refining of the raw crude. So that bilateral trade, which is often touted, which excludes crude is close to 155 billion dollars between India and United States. The number and in 2019 was, there are 149 is now around 150-155 more than anyone United States, this revenue is a 100 billion dollars plus revenue from the processed crude that India imports from the United States. And we again advocated the United States is the number two player next to Iraq, as the importer or the supplier of crude. So, India also processes crude, so his range of discussions is not around begging for vaccines, but a set of topics that covers all these specific domains plus, of course, there is this Quad Defense cooperation, and you know, Indo-Pacific anchoring being done by India. So, this is the broad set rather than this, you know, healthy filthy dialogue, or the propagation that takes place in Indian media about his dress codes to this even, Mr Shiv Shankar is, the former, you know, the secretary has made some comments, which is unwarranted with India is capable of multilateral relationship and Mr Shiv Shankar – should be pointed out, that India got close to 180 out of the 190 votes in the United Nations when the Security Council membership came up, and that was a big victory for the Indian Diplomacy. So, there’s a lot of disinformation and that is propagated. So I have taken the stand and made this statement.

Sree Iyer: Delhi police visit Twitter India officers over “Congress toolkit” controversy to serve notice. But this is there was nobody in the building apparently and this is over the Twitter flagging Sambit Patra tweet as “manipulated media”. What is the latest on that sir?

Sridhar Chityala: The latest on that is the Congress spokesperson. I don’t remember. I don’t recall his name. He has written to Twitter, effectively to State, these Eleven ministers have propagated disinformation. And he has the reason why they should be tagged as Advocates of a disinformation campaign, that is the response from the Congress side. But the Delhi police seems to have the word that is used is raided or attended to serve summons etc, which is still very confusing within the context of what exactly happened. But the fact is that there is something going on as it relates to this Twitter war between the two major, political parties and the platform.

Sree Iyer: When you say eleven ministers, eleven Ministers of the congress party or the BJP party?

Sridhar Chityala:  BJP….

Sree Iyer:  Ok. , Lockdowns slow up business resumption, and one could see a potential drop of two percentage points of the GDP growth pegging at 10% instead of 12%. This is as far as India is concerned. Your thoughts Sir.

Sridhar Chityala:  My thoughts are I think that the continued lockdown only hampers the economy does not allow the economy to progress. And there are two schools of thought. One school of thought is that you have the BJP-led states which ones to have isolated control lockdowns and then you know, move to continue to do the business. Then you have the Congress rule states which say here or Non-BJP rule states which seem to say lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, this very much resembles what’s happening in the United States, you have the red states that the blue States. The Blue States would like to have everything, shut down and Dole out money going into people’s hands. The red state says I give incentive for people to work. It is not as bad as people. Think, if you have hygiene and so on, we can get the economy back on Rails.

Sree Iyer:  Sir I have the big boys chart which is going to show it shows that India has joined the likes of the United Kingdom, France and Canada in the three trillion dollar Club as far as the market cap of its companies is concerned. Now, if you would like to share your thoughts on that because the next item that we are talking about is the FDI into Equity that is not jumped 19% to $60 billion for the fiscal year 2021.

Sridhar Chityala: You should go through the chart. I don’t have the benefit of looking at the chart. Effectively, what it says is that India has seen rapid market capitalization consistent with a growing economy. If you have to have a 5 trillion economy or a 10 trillion economy, then you have to have a robust market capitalization and a set of private businesses driving the economic growth. Governments, historically, have not been the vehicles driving economic growth. If you take a look at that chart, Hong Kong stands there. Where does Hong Kong belong to? Hong Kong belongs to China. So, therefore, it is absorbed into China. So, you look at the most powerful economies, the most powerful economies have a very, very efficient market system. It’s very good news. On a parity basis for the first time, after a long time, India’s Market Capitalization is almost equal to the nominal GDP of the country. The nominal GDP of the country is around 3.1 trillion and the market cap is around 3 trillion. Very soon, I think we may see the market cap exceeding the GDP, within maybe the next six months you may see the market cap going past it make it 5 trillion by 2023, well ahead of the 5 trillion nominal GDP that India is aspiring. There are 2 factors which are driving it and I think you have answered one of them. $60 billion of capital went into foreign direct investment into the Indian Equities Market. That’s number one. Number two, the private capital formation. You may not see this data there, this is just breaking news. FY-21, India follows a different calendar year as opposed to the United States. India follows this March 31st financial year. So FY-21, India had $82 billion dollars of FDI – Foreign Direct Investments. So when you look at equities, when you look at the equity flows, and when you look at private Investments, like manufacturing, venture capital private equity alternative investments, what it is saying is the capital formation is coming from the private sector, which is the vehicle for growing the market capitalization of the country. This augurs well because the government cannot infuse this level of capital, it just doesn’t have the balance sheet to do so unless it borrows.

Sree Iyer: Sir, I have the vaccination strategy that Dr Harshvardhan has laid out for India as wave 2 is flattening. I have that graphic in front of me. Viewers, what this shows is a month-wise plan of how many vaccines of various manufacturers are going to be produced and made available in India. For those of you who may not be able to read the font, I’m going to just walk down the chart. Sir with your permission. I just want to walk down the chart. By December, I’m going to the last column, last row, India is going to have 259 crores which should be even assuming that you count first doses one, second doses second one, that should cover the entire population. The plan is to vaccinate all of India including the 18-year-old, perhaps even the 12 to 18 by the end of the year and if all these people deliver, and this is not just Covishield or Covaxin, there is Sputnik, there is Zycov-D, there is Corbevax, HGC09, Covaxin based nasal spray, Jansen, Covavax and so on and so forth. So there are at least 9 vendors who are commissioned to supply the vaccines. I don’t even see Eli Lilly here. That would mean that there will be also some redundancy built-in. It also has one J&J vaccine, 20 million, remember that J&J requires only one shot. So essentially the roadmap that we have been asking for, the government has shared with us. It’s very unfortunate that Indian Media won’t share this data but we do. We say it as we see it. Sridharji, your thoughts, before we go on to the next thing which is the latest data on the covid numbers, sir.

Sridhar Chityala: Well, I think the key message here is people should, even if there is scepticism in the observations of the government data, the fact is even if you assume that you hit 50%, a probability weightage of success at 50%, that’s still a substantial number. There’s one of the charts that Sreeji is going to share which will show where India is relative to the rest of the world. So the number of doses that are given by India is close to 200 million. The country which is above that is the United States which is close to 290 billion doses. These are astronomical numbers. The only difference is in the population column. India has got 1.3 billion people, the United States has got 330 billion people. Then if you go down to the number three, I think either it is Britain or Brazil. What it tells you is with all the nonsense that has been thrown at India, it has substantive progress by way of what India is trying to accomplish in dealing with this pandemic situation by way of vaccines. So in my view, India along with Britain, Israel, the United States, Russia, and of course China are one of the few countries that have not only have an indigenous vaccine program, but also a partnership-based program to build their pace of vaccine manufacturing to deal with this gigantic crisis called covid.

Sree Iyer: Sir, I am just lining up the picture now and viewers, what we are seeing here is the way in which the vaccination process has taken place. This is an independent body that is done this. You can see the URL, it’s called ourworldindata.org, and it is looking at covid vaccinations. If I start this animation, what it shows is how vaccination has been carried out over the period from December 27, 2020, up until today. So, here we go. What Sridharji, just mentioned, you can see that it is the United States, India, United Kingdom. In terms of sheer numbers, that has been the effort. Remember that population-wise there is a big difference, but when you start talking about vaccinations, that is a manual process. More the number of people, more the logistical overhead, more the challenge of making sure that the vaccine doesn’t get spoiled because of weather variations. Remember, India now has high summer. So the things are very, very hot. So there are all sorts of challenges. And yet, India still hasn’t done too badly and you can see that there are two shades there. The first one is people fully vaccinated – the dark one, which is less than the other one, which is one shot. Those are the people who have got one shot. Sridharji, you can take it away, I have given the data now. So let’s go back to our discussion. So there is definitely now a road map, the way I see it. I think I have lost you. You were so still I thought I had lost you.

Sridhar Chityala: No no. I’m just listening very carefully.

Sree Iyer: So the next chart that I would like to show is the current covid chart as to what is the situation as of 24 May and you can see that the total vaccinations shots are 19,60,00,000 and vaccination doses per day before was 9,42,722. You can see that the number of active cases is continuing to go down. You can see the down arrow. For those of you who are not able to see it, I can tell you it is down by 84,683. The deaths are going up but that is an aftereffect. So the whole point here is, the curve has flattened. India has gotten control over this. You now have to let this thing work through the system, and I think I am doing the speaking for you sir, please weigh in.

Sridhar Chityala: So I think the message that Sreeji is giving is there are three essential facets. One is the vaccines and vaccinations. So there is a program that the Indian government has embarked on. That will meet the objectives of the nation in terms of vaccinating the population. I’m not suggesting that there are no problems. We are just reading numbers, there are on-ground issues. But when you talk to a lot of people in India you have both sides. One, they are vaccinated doesn’t matter what the age group. Many have received dual vaccination. Unlike in the United States, there is a minimum time log at 3 to 4 months in India between the first vaccine and second vaccine, whereas in the United States, the mean time lag between the first and second vaccine is a month, maximum a month, you will get either. If it is Pfizer, it’s about three weeks, if it is Moderna, it’s about four weeks. So, there is also a lag in terms of the first and second vaccine in India. The second is, there was this big issue around oxygen. They seem to have been moving well on their way to address those oxygen issues. The three is that, does India have the capacity to deal and, you know, take charge of this? It seems to indicate that they have a well-orchestrated program and it may have its own headwinds, but the fact is that it does have a program, as the numbers indicate, to make its way.

The only question that is left open is, are there going to be more political waves, agitations, and more social non-distancing activities again to provide either provocative or deliberate drivers? Because that’s what India needs to be cautious of. It is one of the reasons why the world has been successful is because of social distancing. Mask, whether you wear a mask or not is a different story. But at least, social distancing is something that one must observe until the community immunization, or herd immunity takes over.

Sree Iyer: Yeah, thank you, sir. And let’s take a quick look at global news. We’re already 31 minutes into this program. So I’m going to kind of zip through this. Perhaps you can give an overall update on this. In Global News, Biden is sending Blinken to West Asia to sort our ties with Israel and reconnect ties with Palestinians. Blinken, time to hear from North Korea on denuclearization. Sir, your thoughts on this and then we’ll quickly go through the rest of the news.

Sridhar Chityala: Basically, I think this is the political fallout that came out over the weekend and Biden stood up and talked about it in support. We again covered yesterday, the Israeli Ambassador making a statement around the right to choose its own course. So he’s sending Anthony Blinken to meet both Israel as well as Palestinians.

Sree Iyer:  Hamas Terror Chief hails enormous support from the West. Japan leverages self-defence forces to start a mass vaccination mission. Remember that Japan has hardly any vaccine so they are starting from zero now. The US urges no travel to Japan as the Olympic countdown ticks on. I don’t see that happening. In fact, Taiwan slams, WHO indifference as it fails to win invite. WHO has not invited Taiwan again for fear of incurring the wrath of China. I guess an Afghan pullout raises fears in the United States of China’s unfettered access. The last two points, sir, if you could touch upon it.

Sridhar Chityala: The last 2 points – Taiwan slams WHO. Well, Taiwan has always had a footprint with WHO, in terms of many programs, while China has come down quite heavily on WHO. It seems to have exerted its influence to make sure Taiwan has no part of it in WHO because then it gives the independence as opposed to being Chinese perceived view, that it is a province extension of mainland China. I think Taiwan has not taken that very lightly. So I think that’s my first observation.

As far as Afghan is concerned, we have already covered this in the DGI last week, if you take a look at Xinjiang province’s re-tooling or the re-modernization of the Xinjiang Province raises questions because it is not bothering with India or it’s not bothering with any other countries, but it is bothering with some of the Russian Republic’s and it seems to be bothering with Afghanistan. What exactly is the intent? So there is a growing fear that whether there is an opportunity for the Chinese Army to walk in.

Sree Iyer: The US and Europe are weighing sanctions after Belarus diverts plane and arrests a journalist. So, the plane was diverted for the sole purpose of arresting the journalist. Wasn’t it?

Sridhar Chityala: Indeed, so this basically is a complete political intervention, it was within the Belarus airspace. When you are within the Belarus airspace, you have the ability to direct the planes because it’s the sovereign airspace of the country. But it is a reflection of the way the communist Belarus regime is considered to be very close to Mr Putin and very sympathetic to the Russian cause. Russia is very proactive in managing Belarus. Some DGI sessions ago, we covered Belarus and protests and how the rogue regime continues to run and notwithstanding the fact that there is no public support. So this is a very provocative act and I think the EU and US may take steps to address this.

Sree Iyer: Sir, you will be surprised to know that a certain chief minister of a certain Southern State of India also tried to divert the plane back to the control tower of the city, which she was ruling from. Anyway, it’s a story for another day. These things happen all the time now. Democracy is a joke for many and as long as the other institutions such as Judiciary and Law and Order don’t act independently without fear, this is going to continue to happen.

Sir, let’s take a quick look at markets. Dow climbs 180 points as led by Tech and reopening stocks. So technology again is back on the way out. So we are around 34,000 points now. And what do you think is going to be the effect of inflation because it is here? Now, for Real, it is here. And the FED is not thinking of raising the interest rates to cool down the thing. What are your thoughts?

Sridhar Chityala: It is very simple. Inflation is at 4.2% which we indicated is a well-known fact. Wage inflation is at 0.7%. PPI – Purchase Price index has gone 7%. So inflation is here is very simple. When inflation is rising, when interest rates are 0% or close to 0.25% and when you say you’re not going to raise the interest rates because inflation is temporary, what is the next consequence? You’re going to see a positive impact flow into the stocks. So you are beginning to see that weigh-in in the rising. So inflation is high, the interest rate is zero, where is the opportunity? The opportunity is in the growth stocks. What’s a growth stock? Technology stocks. So the money has gone in. The economy is reopening. So when the economy reopens people go and spend. There is plenty of cash available through the dole-out that has been given. So the reopening starts and the tech stocks are driving the momentum in the absence of a clear monetary policy on how inflation and interest rates are going to be aligned.

Sree Iyer: I want to temper that with the news that the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett has sold all his holdings in Apple. Does he think that Apple’s prices peaked? We don’t know. We will wait and see who’s going to be right, whether Sridhar Chityalaji’s prediction or the Oracle of Omaha is right. So we will wait and see about that. We will come back and periodically visit these things because see nobody is perfect here. Everybody thinks the market is going to move in a certain direction.

We will see the last item for today, sir. Fed Lael Brainard pushes Digital Dollar as Central Bank Currency race gains momentum. It touched upon this last week. Sir, your thoughts.

Sridhar Chityala: I think that there is a growing sentiment that this crypto or digital Dollar denominator or digital Yuan denominator or digital Yen denominator is a reality. Large volume traits with few transactions, get up can occur. So I think again, I’m probably repeating it the third time, Fed is likely to publish a paper on this as to how it proposes to tackle this specific issue. All this impetus and I think Bitcoin is back at 40,000. Very soon, it probably could get back to 50 or 60. The Omaha of Bitcoin stocks Tommy Lee thinks it will be a hundred thousand by end of the year.

Sir, just to defend myself on Apple, I’m not advocating Apple, I’m just advocating broadly that tech stocks will drive because everything is around tech. The consumptive patterns as you go to digital is huge. That is why when the economy reopens. everything has disruptive transformation, so you’re going to see a lot of tech stocks and you’re beginning to see even in the content consumption, the AT&T discover the deal with I think it’s a Time Warner. Then you have the MGM with Amazon. All this is a reflection of the changing consumptive patterns driven by technology. I think the Apple part of it will stay away and we’ll go by the guidance of Mr Warren Buffett.

Sree Iyer: Well, I was just making it a little bit interesting. I know you did not specifically choose out Apple as a stock to really look for right here, and I just having fun at your expertise, You have set me straight and that is fine here. We’re going to have some banter back and forth.

With that, we bring to an end today’s segment. We had one of the highest viewership today. We would like this to continue. Please, please do subscribe to our Channel if you have not already done. So also consider joining our membership program, don’t worry, you can be a member for one month and then you can, choose to not be a member, the next month, whatever is your appetite for donating to our cause? Please feel free to do so. As always Sridharji, it’s a pleasure having you on this program, You do the bulk of the lifting, I’m just here to bring the third Downs. You are doing the first down in the second down, if this were to be a football game and many of you, I’m sure you understand what I’m saying. If it is Cricket, he is doing Virender Sehwag in full flow and, and I am the remaining 10th Batsman who doesn’t have to do much. So that is what this show is all about. Once again, looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, sir. Thank you and Namaskar.

Sridhar Chityala: Namaskar. Have a wonderful day in the United States and evening and where ever whichever time zone you are in.