The Great Dollar Story

Sometime back I had read about a prince who was out to find his destiny, and met a holy man (the matted hair, bearded, saffron clad, stick surmounted, beneath a huge tree........ meditating sorts) who was in dire need of water. Our prince obliged and was granted a boon, where he could change into any form. The prince asked to be changed into a drop of water (don’t know why the water and that too only a drop !).

Anyways he was granted.

Ding! The drop of water prince was sucked through the roots of the tree, moved within the thick branch , converted to a glistening drop on the leaf, and dripped down to the holy mans sight only to be changed back to his original princely form. Enlightened the prince thanks the holy man and walks away

Well, what was the enlightenment? The moral what goes in comes back out.

And where is the dollar in all of this, you must be thinking.

Now the dollar was a source of tension for Rob (our good old CEO of ABC Inc - A couple of decade old All American Company), and Bob (his wily manager).Rob was worried on how to jack up his companies profit without spending a damm penny on productivity enhancements, training and development and of course without spending any money on business enhancements. (read margin driven top lines)

Bob his wily manager coined the magic solution – Outsourcing.

He sold it as” the act of transferring the non core activities of our businesses to competent third party firms, thus allowing us to focus on core competencies which can help us build a sustainable advantage”

Rob lost his patience and yelled” this isn’t a fancy presentation in your Harvard; this is the real world, cut down the jazz and tell me in simple terms”

Bob, jostled back to reality walks to the board and writes down: -

1. Data management and processing - $ 12 = $5/hr
2. Software Services - $30 = $15/hr
3. Financial - $ 180 = $80/hr

Rob's mind whirred at all those dollars pouring in. How this magic happens, he asked thoughtfully?

Bob said, we can send all this work to India and pay them some dollars. This would be more money than those brown skinned guys would have ever made in their life, they would jump at it. (No doubt about it, even I jumped at it, now I want to run out of it !!)

But if we give them all those dollars, wont they save it all, and eventually we would not have any dollars, Asians are famous at being cheap.


They are cheap only when they come to the US of A sir, at home they suffer from the S –syndrome.

They would spend all of it Levi jeans – the all American symbol, Reebok, Nike and the list is endless.

Rob was still not convinced, eventually Indians (they are smart,  no doubt about it) would realize this con game and their currency would almost have the same power as dollars.

You forget sir, power eventually flows out of the barrel of a gun, and our guns are bigger than theirs. Any attempt at increasing their power in terms of fixing their currency (remember the Chinese forced to float the Yuan), would be met with “global pressure to allow free market forces to shape the market”.

Note – I am not anti American, or pro – communist, I am just seeing the way the dollar/Euro flows.I do hope, though that the new rupee symbol does some magic !!