Here is a tutorial, ten years after, for the completely clueless bollywood person that still thinks slumdog millionaire was an homage to Indian cinema (not!).

Film financing :

Part 1 : The Indian Mafia : Films have always existed in an alternate world  of financing. Hollywood or Bollywood. Traditionally, the Cash intensive nature of the Box Office have attracted people that do cash  business to film financing ..In India that has meant the grey economy (and Indian royals, who hoarded Gold were part of this grey economy). They have also included people from Abroad who have had hard currency to invest in films (dollars, dhirams, gold, drugs) , who were interested in the many charms of the glamorous  and high risk-return indian film industry. This is not because Indian films are particularly more or less unsavory than any other, (Hollywood is the home of unsavory when it comes to all things film) , but because of the low entry barriers for money launderers that get into India in general and the Indian film industry in particular.

The Arab based South Asian Mafia that got its tentacles into Bollywood had no way of differentiating between “clean” crime and religious war. Many of them were also financed by Pakistan’s shady intelligence and counter terror agencies that also had a hand in Afganistan and Kashmir. However, Independant of extremist sources of financing from the Gulf, these crime “dons” were really petty criminals without Glory or honour in the ruling societies of the persian gulf who pursued dreams of Integrating their semetic asses into western societies and buying up property in switzerland and Northern Italy. They saw any involvement in muslim crime as a distraction and an embarrassment(as an aside, they ALSO saw Osama Bin Laden as a distraction and embarrasment).

This was the place Bollywood found itself in, in 2001 was where the Industry’s biggest players were crime syndicate financed(they still , partially, are but the biggest source of financing is more the Hollywood Mafia (big studios) and Big Pictures™.

This was the era when Ram Gopal Verma was producing Paen after Paen to the anti hero Gangster, remember, and a bunch of very nice actors , who had a captive audience the size of europe, to whom it made no difference how big the hits were because, like in a casino, the mob takes it all.

Part  II Austrian Economics and Hollywood : So what is this grey market and what the heck does Austrian economics have to do with it? The Austrian School of economics is, briefly put an Anti central banker school of economics.

Central banking, the world over is based on the assumption that money supply needs to follow economic activity. So if Vinay ki amma makes one roti and sells it for 3 rupees, classic central banking holds that the central bank in vinay’s amma’s country should produce enough liquidity to support someone buying her roti for three rupees. too much coin, and there will be Inflation, and vinay’s amma’s rotis will start to cost more, too little coin and Vinay’s amma will go out of business. Central banking tries to make liquidity a neutral(or non profit) enterprise in regulating the economies it controls.

EXCEPT liquidity is often NOT a non profit enterprise, it’s a LOSS making game. When a government is unable to raise enough money from taxation, the central bank is often asked to print more money. if the government doesn’t repay it’s debt, why! there’s the central bank , of course!. balance of payments problems? depreciate your currency ,central bank! So While a central bank professes the intention to stay neutral in an economy when it prints money, it ALSO tries to take into account a host of factors it has very little control over. including the NON profit neutrality of the political powers that control it.  A central bank , in other words is as untrustworthy as a corrupt cop in matters of money supply.And these are central banks that do what they’re SUPPOSED to do. Let’s not even talk Weimar central banking.

One can say that the power of the Austrian school of economics has been enhanced over time by the waning power of central banks in particular and governments in general. In an interconnected world, the irresistible force has at least as much power as the immovable object. The Austrian school tries to give motive power to the liquidity in the world outside the direct control of central banks.

The Austrian School of thought works on an extreme capitalist mindset. It holds that in an economy the top (say) 80% productive assets (and not financial assets) are what gives it value. At the top of the pyramid of value is Gold, the store of value. Gold price is, thus a barometer of how much value people want to put in the store, and how much they want to give to Vijay’s amma’s chappati. if they think it’s valuable, why! they’s pay Gold for the chappati! Thus, a central bank’s role is a passive one. money should be a profit or loss making tool, held as a constant. if there are more goods demanded, they will then become as valuable as Gold, and the owners of the gold would spend it for the value.

The Austrians thus try to “speak for” “the private enterprise system” to a “government owned/operated” central bank, trying to delegitimize it of its non “free market” roles.

Whether this band of pirate economists should have the power to represent Capitalism is a debate worth having, but where there are no grownups minding the store, like in the times of a Mortgage crisis or a European debt crisis, the voice of the Austrians grows and sounds ominously like self fulfilling prophecies, which they sometimes are, being that the major players CAUSING the crisies are adherents of and missionaries for the Austrian school.

Austrian Economics is to the private sector what the grey economy is to films. In a regulated  and overcontrolled world where a paper could not move from place to place without the SEC the FED and a whole bunch of national and trans national regulators getting wind in two seconds and pretty much destroying the money machine, the liquidity provided by the grey market, often from the adherents of Austrian schools(because of their mistrust, they stayed liquid in international hot money)  was like a shot of doping serum that drove  industry to higher levels of performance. This was the world Big studio Hollywood got its liquidity from, and counted as its idealogical voice. In a post Soviet unipolar world Hollywood was not only tributing its paymasters, it was also talking their language, and that sounded like music to Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs.

Initially big losses were made when such free floating liquidity entered the “organized”  sector ( terrible films , massive losses) but soon the Investment Banker and the Film financier learnt his trade better. Thus , now , as there was Goldman sachs betting soverign debt(and making everybody in it billions)  so Studio financing behemoths were making billion and two billion dollar grosses on basis of the grey market money, which now, effectively was recycled into the kosher market in another country.

Then there was Lagaan.

Aamir Khan’s band of boys getting a break in taxes  and bringing down the public infrastructure of middle class britain Sounded like History according to Carl Menger, to the cabal financing hollywood films. That they did this with the power of free enterprise felt like the Gospel, and the timing of the whole thing felt like that girl in the little black dress who comes in the door and blows me a kiss.

Hollywood money thought Bollywood was inviting Austrian economics in. After all, everything that they had heard about Bollywood told the right story. these were a bunch of (wierd if) talented professionals who learnt the craft the way Soviet black marketers learnt capitalism – by hard knocks and survival of the fittest on the streets of St Petersburgh – and who had no qualms working for the mob- I mean we can’t be as bad as the MOB!

Sounded like Lagaan was inviting them in, saying that , like in many crumbling post Soviet countries, there were no grown ups minding the store, and people could just come and help themselves to the 400 million person strong entertainment market in India and  the traditional markets of Bollywood.

So THAT’s why there was so much glee after Lagaan in Big studio Hollywood.

This was also a period of a large ramp up in volumes. The Lord of the rings trilogy heralded the entry of Invesment financing into billion dollar revenue projects. When films were earlier being made for one to ten million dollars and marketed for about thirty, now the budgets were in the hundred million dollar range, the marketing in three times that much, Revenues of the biggest grossers touched a billion dollars worldwide grosses. Hollywood, in other words was ramping up it’s game. With every one going CGI and Video game , there was real danger that one or two bad projects later Hollywood would be a wasteland of dead spaceships and they would have to rebuild , like after a particularly wild party.

So Shall we start prostituting our sisters already?

Oh no, not quite. Because while the initial confusion about who the players were, in Bollywood ended, Hollywood has started realizing that even though a billion people see it, Bollywood films are small fry being run by the “one Indian store in town valued at less than $ 50,000”. It’s a culturally unique (and sometimes odd ) commercial film industry, but it can not pull off the major scams necessary to produce even ONE > 100 mill (revenue) film. Speilberg’s Ambani adventure has shown that even Indian Billionaires think small. No one is going to give you leadership in grabbing and monetizing the three billion person Audience for Bollywood films.  (there’s me but I ain’t playin’.) Now it’s time for the beast to lose interest and go away….and leave India with a built up infrastructure for producing better films and TV. So you see even this story of greed rape and pillage has a happy ending.

is Minai’s post on JAck cole and “hindu swing”. While cole  quite clearly infused Indian dance elements in his version of Jazz dance, Not only were these influences unacknowledged, but also his successers(Bob fosse,  et al)  Never acknowledged Cole as either BEING their influence , on one hand, and on the other HAVING BEEN influenced by other dancing styles.

Considering how important his contributions were to modern dance(click on link! read!) ..there is a claim that he was the inventor/predecessor of camp, which is the preeminent stylistic movement in western/ American art in the late 20th Century …It is a pity that Jack cole’s (somewhat unsuccessful, but very maturely wrought )Ovure suffers neglect.

My first step in realizing my freedom is to free myself of the 1984 speak of the big people. The police are not “law enforcement” they are the police. They do not “fight crime” heck they usually just take down the details of a crime Im reporting and tell me “they’ll get back to me” they DO however glower menacingly at me if Im taking pictures of perfectly innocent targets in public places. SO the police seem more a “discipline enforcing force for rich people ” than a “crime fighting force” on our behalf.

Given this seismic shift, I shall refuse to acknowledge petty crime in my language. It seems to me that if no one will police the mass criminal, the bank mafiosi, the banks that get bailouts, the Vampire squid whose gangsters make money from looting the governments and the federal reserve, petty crime enforcement is only an effort to keep order on behalf of the mafia bosses. (godfather doesn’t like competition from petty crooks). Thus, “suspects” will be “citizens”. “Felons” and “drug dealers” will be “victims of police abuse”.  and “crime” will be the “poor without political representation” to get them off the hook.

A “police car” will now be an “occupy busting weapon” and when someone is “tough on crime” they will merely be “a prison industry friendly lobbyist”.

Now we can hardly limit this to the police and local law enforcement. the FBI will now hitherto be the “national mafia” and their spying and information collecion appariti(impressive as they are) will be referred to as “smear weapons” for hire to the most politically well connected mafia.

The Army will be “the bomb droppers of the 1%” and “the anti civilian killer vigilantes”. Wars against other countries will hiterto be “profiteering expeditions of our rich masters” veterans will be “poor bastards who did their bidding for whom we need to, now, pay”.

The “flag” shall now be referred to as “the logo of the 1%” and “the country ” shall now be referred to as “your prison”.

“The people ” shall hitherto be referred to as “the poor Bastards”.

Here is the Mic check preceding the event and the wal of shame itself. Thanks Todd Edelman

Dear Asseem Chabbra,

Although I am addressing this letter to you, I am really aiming this at every english language media/showbiz type that has some desi connection in the US. You could be an agent (or an employee of one) or a publicist(or a wannabe publicist) a student or recent graduate from a media institution rubbing your nose against the big buildings in burbank wondering what you need to do to be able to wear a power suit and enter the hallowed studio city pub and bar scene . You could be one of Big Cinema’s chosen ones trying to make your desi popular cinema point in the US .

Whichever you are, my plea is to you, because Asseem chabbra, I know this about you(all). You can be a complete arsehole just because.

I have seen you take and trash Sanjay leela bhansali’s Devdas when it first showed so badly that the reviews didn’t resemble the film. I have seen you write dogmatic attacks on “nehruvian socialism” (just because the flavor of the month was film crit inspired by Austrian economics) against films like Vidhu vinod chopra’s Ekalavya (the royal guard) which , come on wasn’t THAT bad…and I ve seen you cringe (pretty artificially) because Morning raga’s producers decided to submit it (as a small independent film) for the Oscars on their own (the very temerity of this little runt film to stand up against US?! ) . I have seen article after article attacking with boring regularity film after film that the India’s (government owned , NFDC produced, communist, not from privately financed profit oriented Big studio created) art establishments have sent to the oscars without quite understanding the game you, quite obviously know, Asseem chabbra, to play , mumbai mirror smears and all.

The poor (bastards?) in india labor under the illusion , as does the Indian public , that submitting a good film  to the Oscars is the way to win a foreign language oscar. They seem oblivious to the whole “Harvey Weinstein, press junket, Isreal lobby, catch the voter’s attention with a politically (and economically?) correct message” technique of selling foreign language Oscar nominee, pathetically laboring under the delusion that you (yes YOU! Asseem chabbra) the brownskinned pimp in the mean streets of US showbiz will keep their virginal product safe through the lonely Oscar Night.

And they never learn.

After Shwaas (which was in the competition section at cannes as well) , after Harischandrachi factory, after Taare Zameen par..every one a worthy nominee from India, they never learn that you , asseem chabbra, are deeply embarrassed by the country(dare I say YOUR country’s)  choice of films to send to your prom. They never get that you are embarrased that a small sincere well made film is put out there as representing the sixtyfucking four dollar you in your little black dress and designer perfume.

They don’t get that mamma is not supposed to be at this party where you are trying to get laid by the Donald.

So please forgive mamma yet again and spare her of the humiliation of your opinion. I do realize that the more embarrassing thing for you is if the film nominated this time wins. (You’ll feel like a latino star whose illegal housekeeper is being applauded by his peers. ) So Asseem Chabbra, this is my appeal to you. please spare adamnte makan abu(the movie nominated for the oscars from India this year) the benefit of your fucking analysis. we know that you are a hotshot journalist…ad exec…publicist….whatever. We know your analytic skills, now in the pay of some fucking rich person that pays your way , are considerable and focused . We know you are a man of consequence in society, and are a capitalist big swinging dick. Just spare us your opinion and shut the crap up, this time?

Adamnte makan Abu , from all reports is a sincere fresh faced film shot breathtakingly beautifully and with a simple message that creeps up on you and teaches you a thing or two about everything from life to cinema. It can do without advice on how it should be marketed. From where I sit India has done right just nominating this film for the oscars (not because it’s likely to win, it has a small snowflakes chance there, but because its the right thing to do. If a film has to carry a nation’s hopes and dreams, I had rather that it represents THEM when it won, than it represents some Alien outsourced production values, as was the case with Slumdog and A R Rahman).

Don’t even wish the film good luck, Asseem Chabbra, just write about LAdy Ga Ga and shah rukh khan…. or something…..

Sincerely

Ramesh

Post Scriptum:

Mr Chhabra tweeted this to some of his followers in response to my post:” But he’s devoted to a film that he hasn’t seen – I love that!”

My response: I understand that not everyone is blessed with a bright intelligent mind and can necessarily grasp situations (or blog posts) well, but this isn’t about **liking** or ** being devoted** to Adam…abu as much as (like the title says) **allowing the film to have a chance**

Obviously , also, This blog post isn’t about asseem chabbra alone, nescesarily,either….(just as “rush limbaugh is a big fat idiot” was about rush, but more generally about AM radio pundits)

This list is of the top Assholes on fox news. Lets define this: These are people that are either behaving like assholes for rhetorical flourish they are forced to adopt as a price of being employed at fox news or are genuinely assholes from their ideological construction or their being informed by the same sources as the ultracon network. Their “opinion” provides aid and comfort to the enemy(the racist cross national conspiracist that would tear the fabric of America asunder from their single minded racist hate ..members of this tribe include the Australian Rupert Murdoch, the Texans Koch, The Queen of England and the canadian billionaires owning mineral and metal franchises all over the world and others..) , so they can legitimately be construed to be terrorist sympathizers who inspire racist copycats in otherwise suburban America.

1. Charlie Payne: The guy looks and dresses like a black academic from howard college but is reactionarily anti black , anti democratic and (dare I say this) racist(ie white racist  unloading on poor black people, not black racist that hates white people). Someone should tell him to try to drive a week in the deep south and keep his mouth shut, and watch how he gets received by small town law enforcement there. That will cure him. But I also get the feeling that perhaps he;s just being brazenly mercenary, that perhaps if MSNBC gave him a job tomorrow, he would be equally shrilly leftist.

Judge Nepolitano : The good judge is the equivalent on fox to the corrupted judge you see  in  mob films. His principles are not only compromised, but he’s a thoroughly knowledgeable jurist whose talents are in hock to the mafia don (Roger Ailes in this case) . It also feels like the man needs to prove loyalty by bomb throwing at The Obama administration and all the sympathizers, and he does it screechingly and stridently. A close next having to do this to survive is Greta van Sustern, but she’s harmless enough not to have any teeth.

Greg Gutfeld: I hate calling this guy an asshole because he might take it as a compliment, but really, if there was a stereotype of the nazi who enjoyed inflicting his genocidal misdeeds on the er…genocided, it must be modeled on the host of Redeye.  He looks like an ambiguous unouted homophobic gay person with an irritating laugh and an unerring eye for finding the hidden “downtrodden” (jew , in the nazi analogy) to crap all over, he is living proof that a sense of humor is a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of some.

Bob Beckel  :  He’s the “our Asshole in fox” (which doesn’t make him more endearing. It is painful to watch him be patronized on “the five” or any other show where he’s the token democrat) . He behaves like a petulant overbearing pouter who gives up the “secret sleeze of the democrats” because he has to overwork to catch people’s attention. But make no mistakes, he’s an asshole. He wanted julain assange shot, and repeatedly apologies for democrats on the hostile network.

The pretty women assholes: There is a slew of these (and Dana parino, whose a genuine operative doesn’t count) that give fox news a lesson in how to say insensitive assholey things when looking immaculately dolled up.  Andrea tantaros, Ann coulter, Michelle Malkin,  monica crawley, Mary kathrine hamm,…I can’t usually say one from the other for the similarity of message and visual appeal, but they get away with saying breathtakingly assholey things , usually about poor people(they hate them) , Democrats( they have contempt for them) and the Occupy wall streeters (who feel, to them, like the poorer kids that went to school with them) . I often wonder (Malkin excepted) whom they blew to get on the show.

The Humongous Giant elephant butt hole in the room : I have visions of roger ailes being this Giant Jabba the hut linked through electrodes to every part of the fox news empire breathing toxic fumes of disapproval for ideologies he would dictate to his borg minions, while at the same time being the idealogue for the 1% (tax cutting is good, Government is bad, the vienna school of economics rocks!!!) , while at the same time, having a white princess leia chained at her neck splayed at his feet, but its too delicious. I’m sure roger is only one heart attack away from immortality (or charles krauthammer).

As someone that has watched the Obama Administration from the sidelines, I think they have not a mixed but a fairly succesful score card. Am I on crack? no let me make my case.

The top achievements of this administration can be counted as :

Healthcare reform: Something that no democrat came close to getting. Not Carter, Not clinton  and not anyone in congress. It wasn’t a visionary idealistic leftist plan, it wasn’t universal government funded care, it wasn’t comprehensive (no illegal immigrants) but it was real. everyone would get health coverage under Obama’s plan…it thus advanced welfare of America and Americans a few tens of yards.And it didnt hurt that the millenials were completely covered under Obama’s health care plan, employed or not. Obama risked all for this, he incited the big drughand insurance companies to create the tea party  as revenge and got it to within the last 25. Kudos.

Millitary successes: Not only did he helm an administration that killed everyone with a name in Al quaida (Osama bin laden  OSAMA BIN LADEN!!!!, ayman zawahiri, anwar alaqui ,….etc) , He took on pakistani and Isreali neocons with no drama. “these are the facts on the ground, this is what we want…) He also is helming the biggest withdrawal of US troops in history, from Afganistan and Iraq, he is also spearheading the reduction of the US millitary budget by as much as a trillion dollars. Modernizing the fighting force while also reducing spending on the millitary is a huge achievement.

Foreign policy successes:  Apart from being given the Nobel peace prize “for being obama” the 45th president also is well respected all over the world. The Arab spring (egypt and syria excepted) were handled without putting US personnel at risk and in accordance with international law but also achieving US objectives. The US now is on the road to stop being an occupying power , while keeping bases and control strategically everywhere in the world. It is time for the “peace offensive” ofr a Pax Obama  plan for the world.

Economic successes: Successes? aren’t we sliding into economic freefall? nope. Life has been rather good for the US actually, Low interest rates, record financial industry profits, record volumes of corporate cash sitting on the sidelines, all mean that the Obama administration has done rather well for the corporate sector in the US economy. The household sector has sufferred because the corporates have been waging class warfare on the households for supporting the Obama Administration and have held back investment and job creation inside the US economy. with a limeted toolkit of macroeconomic tools, the Obama Fed has done a remarkable job keeping interest rates low and Inflation low. The Auto industry bail out has also proven a demonstrable success and these companies have returned to profitability under receivership.

The Economic failures of the administration have been 1. not enough keynes: the economy can easily handle more keynesian spending. while the Obama Administration had its three houses of congress , they lost the opportunity to get their programs funded and for economy boosting keynesian spending. Its one of those big misses. 2. Misreading/ miscalculating Europe. A Paul volcker central bank would not have allowed the european debt crisis to get to where it is now. The failure of the administration was the misreading of the structure of financial europe(which they thought was similar to the political europe). If they had recognized that with euroclear and  the NYSE integration, the financial systems between europe and the US had effectively merged, they would have opened inter central bank borrowing lines much earlier and swung into coordinated action on sovereign debt before it looked like a crisis. 3. the misreading of china: Just because the chinese talked a sweet sound, the administration seems to have assumed that the chinese were on their side. in reality the chinese were playing the democrats and the republicans against one another for their benefit. to this extent,the president’s naivete in foreign economic policy became evident. also he had a vacuum for a policy on India, which is always a mistake. Fannie and freddie receivership and the continuing weakness of the housing market are very private sector caused problems , which the obama administration inherited, but has done a manful job  in keeping the housing sector from falling off the precipice again.

Domestic successes:  Allowing Gays to serve openly in the millitary(thus making it legal for the ROTC in most colleges), making non felony immigration crimes a low priority, Taking on racist laws in states, the dodd frank bill.

Political successes: 1. Standing up to some entrenched interests in the US. As a representative of the household sector, the President can only do a little at a time to take on the ogres of corporate excess, but having taken on the Insurance and the financial industry, the president has done a great job showing backbone. the healthcare law is signed, Dodd frank is LAW. 2. the tea party is the single biggest achievement of the Obama presidency. If it were not for the tea party, we would all think the republicand were a reasonable group of pols ready to govern the nation. now we know that they are completely in hock to large corporations who would sink the country into class warfare for a 3% tax increase and allow crazed whackjobs that believe creationism and the abolition of the environmental protection agency, and the department of education are the priorities for governing. Now to the centerist…about 60% of America…there is no choice, but the democratic party.

The big setback for the Obama white house has been the citizens united judgement, from a supreme court stacked by the previous administration with such right wing zealots as Roberts, Alito, join the borderline crazy scalia and the silent but rightwing thomas . With nine seats filled, the Obama administration lost a real opportunity to fill the bench with more balance.

Still All this listed have happened in three years of the first term . this list of achievements would be awesome if counted in TWO terms of any other president. There is an unfinished agenda, but Barack Obama has got a tremendous amount achieved in the three years in office, and the groundwork he has laid for his remaining time (one/five years) also indicates a lot of work will be done before Obama is finished with the US. All indications are that he will leave it a better place than he found it, even if the opposition commits hara kiri trying to “prove” othervice.

This post is a follow up on my first paki rock post (here) 

Nishan : noori

EP: Hamesha

Jal: Dil harey

Strings: dur

abrar ul huq: rano

Rage: Akhiyan milana

Zakhm: Silversmoke

Qayaas: Tanha

roxen: sapnay

Ali Azmat & Rahet fateh ali Khan : Garaj Baras

But Innocence, is by definition, lost.

HB Sampooran!

Naam Gum Jaayega

Dil Se re

Naam Ada Likhna

Jhoote  Nain Bole

Tere Bina Zindagi se

Beeti Naa Bityi raina

Aa Jiya Laage naa.