Those three letters in the beginning of the title can actually signify a lot of things...let me begin with the simple interpretation—which is: the 21st Greek letter. It can however signify something very interesting. The apocryphal “GOLDEN RATIO”. You must be wondering what it is or what it has to do with finance. For your information the “GOLDEN RATIO” is a ratio which is something similar to the following shown below…read on…
According to the ratio, if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are two variables, where a>b, then (a+b)/a should be equal to a/b. Now here in my case I have taken ‘need’ and ‘greed’ as two variables and it is needless to say that need>greed. But the whole world probably works according to the ratio as shown in the figure below; and aptly so because the simplification of this ratio leads to something very interesting. Let me not discuss it here.
The planet is home to around 1.5 to 2 billion people who really struggle to survive. And a humongous number of that is in my motherland. I mean it is sometimes baffling to me that what would have Darwin postulated had he been alive today. Really, I salute those “fittest” people who overcome the hardships to survive. The world though moves on without the slightest notice. And that is why I wonder about the ratio. Today the balance is heavily tilted towards need but who cares…we are driven by our greed (N.B. my sincere apologies to those who really think that they are somehow not greedy). Whenever the ‘need’ tries to put its head up the cruel world forces it down…the world or our ‘greed’?
Seriously it is time to ask ourselves…that whether we care for the needy or we really go on fulfilling our greed. Today the world is on its knees and the west has never been so humble before, thanks to the worst financial crisis in seven decades. But are banks only to blame for this or is it our individual ‘greed’ which is to be blamed? I know such questions are uncomfortable and they require diplomatic answers. But let me tell you how greed brought down the world on its knees. The banks are run by individuals and individuals are run by God knows what. So in the process these bankers kept selling some financial “INSTRUMENTS” for the simple sake of earning fatter perks. Of course they were driven by beastly greed and you heard it right when some wise men called these “INSTRUMENTS” as weapons of mass destruction. I still wonder what was George Bush searching for in Iraq (read oil; though that I would not discuss here) when the weapons of mass destruction were being developed in his own backyard. Yes, the simple greed of earning fatter perks changed the world forever. Probably it has changed the entire meaning of the phrase ‘financial system’. Instead it has now become synonymous to ‘greedy system’. Such is the situation that even now people are back to the old days. By old days I mean the days of sky-high-greed. The recession is not even over and the same old greedy bankers are laughing all the way to banks with even fatter paychecks. God help us.
When will we understand that the world is actually driven by ‘need’? It is the need that that has given us so many life changing innovations. Can anyone think about spending a day without a cell phone today? I can really think of many such things which have really changed the face of the world. These innovations actually fulfilled our needs in many ways and made our lives a lot simpler. But the need which I actually want to discuss has also changed the face of the world…if not in such an eponymous way as a cell phone (or it actually has) but it definitely has in many other ways. The world should give heed to these needs—the need of a square meal a day, the need of basic healthcare, the need of primary education, and the need of basic transport system for the mass…the list is actually endless. Really can we not think about this on our end? We definitely can, if we can think of the “GOLDEN RATIO”. Had it not been really interesting if we could have achieved a balance between our ‘need’ and ‘greed’? It is really very interesting…if we remember something very simple…need ‘may’ be fulfilled but greed ‘can’ never be fulfilled.
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