Oil

Oil is Now Half the Price of Bottled Water in India, but Only for Govt

 

bisleri
In my Diary dated January 15, 2016, I had said that I expect the government to increase the excise duty on petrol and diesel soon. On that very evening, the central bureau of excise and customs, which comes under the ministry of finance led by Arun Jaitley, increased the excise duty on both petrol as well as diesel. This after the price of the Indian basket of crude oil had fallen to $26.43 per barrel on January 14, 2016.

This is the eight increase in excise duty on customs and excise since November 2014. The first increase had happened on November 12, 2014. With the latest increase the excise duty on petrol stands at Rs 8.48 per litre. Between November 2014 and now, the excise duty on unbranded petrol has gone up by Rs 7.28 per litre or a whopping 607%.

With the latest increase the excise duty on unbranded diesel stands at Rs 9.83 per litre. Between November 2014 and now, the excise duty on unbranded diesel has gone up by Rs 8.37 per litre or a whopping 573%.

The government has clearly captured in a large chunk of the gain because of lower oil prices. As on January 16, 2016, the price of petrol in Mumbai stood at Rs 66.09 per litre. In November 2014, when the excise duty was raised for the first time, the price of petrol in Mumbai had stood at Rs 71.91 per litre. Hence, for the end consumer, the price of petrol in the city has fallen by 8.1%.

As on January 16, 2016, the price of diesel in Mumbai stood at Rs 51.25 per litre. In November 2014, the price of diesel in Mumbai was at Rs 61.04 per litre. Hence, for the end consumer, the price of diesel in the city has fallen by 16%.

How much has oil fallen by during the same period? As on November 11, 2014 (a day before the excise duty on petrol and diesel was raised by the Narendra Modi government for the first time), the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $79.11 per barrel. By January 14, the price had fallen to $26.43 per barrel or close to 67%.

In rupee terms the price of oil has fallen by close to 64%. But the price of petrol and diesel has fallen by only 8.1% and 16%. In fact, if we look at the price of oil in rupee terms, we can come to a very interesting conclusion.

As on January 14, 2016, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at Rs 1,773.19 per barrel. One oil barrel is basically 159 litres. This means that one litre of the Indian basket of crude oil costs around Rs 11.2 per litre. One litre of bottled water (or what we call Bisleri at the generic level) typically costs Rs 20 per litre. Given this, bottled water in India is now nearly twice as expensive as oil. Or to put it in another way, oil is now half the price of that of bottled water, but only for the government. You and me have missed out on this party.

Of course, these gains haven’t been passed on to the end consumer and have been captured by the government. Interestingly, petrol prices since February 2015, have actually gone up. The price of petrol in Mumbai as on February 4, 2015, was at Rs 63.9 per litre, whereas currently it is at Rs 66.09 per litre. The price of the Indian basket of crude oil was at $54.97 per barrel on February 4, 2015. It has since then fallen by more than 50% to $26.43 per barrel.

One of the points that typically gets made in favour of the government increasing excise duty on petrol and diesel is that these fuels pollute and need to be taxed in order to protect the environment.

Data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy(CMIE) points out that between January and December 2014 a total of 18,385 thousand tonnes of petrol was consumed in the country. Between January and December 2015, a total of 21,089 thousand tonnes of petrol was consumed within the country. This was around 14.7% more.

A major portion of this would have come from an increase in new vehicles which run on petrol. If one takes this into account, then the consumption of petrol during the last one year, has not gone up significantly, and this despite lower prices.

How do things stand with diesel? Between January and December 2014, the total amount of diesel consumed in the country stood at 69,022 thousand tonnes. Between January and December 2015, the total amount of diesel consumed in the country stood at 72,652 thousand tonnes or 5.3% more than the previous year.

Again, if we adjust for newer diesel vehicles and other ways in which diesel is used, the total amount of diesel consumed in the country didn’t go up significantly, despite lower prices. What this tells us is that the increase in consumption of petrol and diesel has happened because of new vehicles and not because of lower prices.

So does this mean that the government will now clamp down on the production of new vehicles or increase taxes on them to make them more expensive for people to buy them and in the process control pollution?

Also, if the government was serious about pollution, why has the price differential between petrol and diesel gone up in the last 15 months? In November 2014, the difference between the price of petrol and diesel was at Rs 10.87 per litre. Now the difference stands at Rs 14.84 per litre. This raises the question that why is the government incentivising diesel, which pollutes more?

Further, the bigger question that no one in government seems to be ready to answer is what happens when oil prices start to go up again? Given that the government hasn’t passed on the bulk of the fall in price of oil to the end consumer, it is only fair that it does not pass on an increase in prices as well, as and when it happens.

In that scenario where will the government get the money for to continue to finance its expenditure? This is something that Arun Jaitley, who I call the excise duty hike minister these days, needs to answer. Or will the government increase the price of petrol and diesel, something the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had majorly protested against when it was in the opposition.
Postscript: In order to understand why the government is increasing the excise duty on petrol and diesel, read this: Happy new year folks: The govt has increased excise duty on petrol and diesel again!

The column originally appeared on the Vivek Kaul Diary on January 19, 2016

Why The Rupee Is Falling Despite The Oil Price Collapse

rupee
As I write this one dollar is worth around Rs 67.1. The last time the rupee went so low against the dollar was sometime in late August 2013. Is this a reason to worry?

In August 2013, the oil prices were at a really high level. The price of the Indian basket of crude oil on August 23, 2013, had stood at $109.16 per barrel. As on December 14, 2015, the price of the Indian basket stood at $34.39 per barrel, down by 68.5% since then.

One of the reasons for the fall of the rupee back then was the high oil price. India imports 80% of the oil that it consumes. Oil is bought and sold internationally in dollars. When Indian oil marketing companies buy oil they pay in dollars. This pushes up the demand for dollars and drives down the value of the rupee against the dollar. This happened between May and August 2013, as the price of oil shot up by close to 11%.

Further, those were the days of high inflation. The consumer price inflation in August 2013 had stood at 9.52%. In order to hedge against this high inflation people had been buying gold. India produces very little gold of its own.

In 2013-2014(April 2013 to March 2014) India produced 1411 kgs of gold. In contrast, the country imported 825 tonnes of gold during 2013. Gold, like oil, is bought and sold internationally in dollars. When Indian importers buy gold, like is the case with oil, it pushes up the demand for dollars and in the process drives down the value of the rupee. This phenomenon also played out in 2013.

Hence, the high price of oil and the demand for gold, drove down the value of the rupee against the dollar, between late May 2013 and late August 2013. But these reasons are not valid anymore. The price of the Indian basket of crude oil is less than $35 per barrel. And the demand for gold is subdued at best.

So what exactly is driving down the value of the rupee against the dollar? In order to understand this, we need to go back to the period between May 2013 and August 2013. While gold and oil played a part in driving down the value of the rupee against the dollar, there was a third factor at work as well. And this was the major factor.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis which started in the September 2008, when the investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust, Western central banks led by the Federal Reserve of the United States, cut their interest rates to close to zero percent. Ben Bernanke, the then Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, was instrumental in this.

The idea was that at low interest rates people will borrow and spend more, and economic growth would return in the process. While that happened, what also happened was that financial institutions borrowed money at low interest rates and invested it in financial markets all over the world.

In May 2013 just a few months before his term as the Chairman of the Fed was coming to an end Bernanke hinted that the “easy money” policy being followed by the Federal Reserve could come to an end. This meant that interest rates would go up in the months to come.

If the interest rates went up, the financial institutions would have had to pay a higher rate of interest on their borrowings. This would mean that the trade of borrowing at low interest rates in the United States and investing across the world, wouldn’t be as profitable as it was in the past.

This led  foreign financial institutions to start selling out of financial markets around the world including India. Between June and August 2013, the foreign institutional investors sold stocks and bonds worth Rs 75,291 crore in the Indian stock market as well as debt market.

They were paid in rupees when they sold their investments in stocks as well as bonds. They had to convert these rupees into dollars. In order to do that they had to sell rupees and buy dollars. When they did that, the demand for the dollar went up. In the process the value of the rupee against the dollar crashed. One dollar was worth around Rs 55 in middle of May 2013. By late August it had almost touched Rs 69.

In the end the Federal Reserve did not raise interest rates, the Reserve Bank of India got its act together and the value of the rupee against the dollar stabilised in the range of Rs 58-62 to a dollar.

What did not happen in May 2013 is likely to happen on December 16, 2015 i.e. tomorrow. It is likely that Janet Yellen, the current Chairperson of the Federal Reserve, will raise interest rates. This means that the financial institutions which have borrowed in the United States and have invested across the world, would have to pay a higher rate of interest on their borrowings. This may make their trades unviable.

Also, financial markets do not wait for central banks to make decisions. They try and guess which way the decision will go and make their investment decisions accordingly. It is now widely expected that the Fed will raise interest rates tomorrow. Given that, the foreign financial investors have been selling out of the Indian financial markets since November. Between November and now, the foreign institutional investors have sold stocks and bonds worth Rs 15,035 crore. In the process of converting this money into dollars, the value of the rupee has been driven down against the dollar.

At the beginning of November, one dollar was worth around Rs 65, now it is worth more than Rs 67. Also, as the rupee loses value, the foreign institutional investors lose money. Let’s say an investment is worth Rs 65 crore. If one dollar is worth Rs 65, then this investment is worth $10 million. If one dollar is worth Rs 67, then this investment is worth only $9.7 million. In order to prevent such losses, bonds investors are selling out of Indian stocks and bonds. And this is pushing down the value of the rupee. So after a point, the rupee loses value because the rupee loses value.

The trouble is that Indian politicians have turned the value of the rupee against the dollar into a prestige issue. But what is worth remembering here is that we live in a word where things are connected and given that the value of a currency is bound to fluctuate. Sometimes the fluctuation will be higher than usual. But that doesn’t mean that things are going wrong.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The column originally appeared on Huffington Post India on December 15, 2015

Why oil prices have fallen below $40 per barrel

light-diesel-oil-250x250A few months back I wrote a series of columns on oil. In these columns, I maintained that it is very difficult to predict the price of oil over the long term, given that there are way too many factors involved, other than just demand for and supply of the commodity. At the same time I said that in the short-term the price of oil will continue to go down. And that is precisely what has happened.

Data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) tells us that as on December 8, 2015, the price of the Indian basket of crude oil stood at $ 37.34 per barrel. In fact, during the course of this week, oil prices have touched a seven year low.

What is happening here? The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), an oil cartel of some of the biggest oil producers in the world, met last Friday on December 4, 2015.

The statement released by OPEC after the meeting as usual was very general in nature. It said: “emphasizing its commitment to ensuring a long-term stable and balanced oil market for both producers and consumers, the Conference [i.e. OPEC] agreed that Member Countries should continue to closely monitor developments in the coming months.”

What does this “really” mean? In the past, the OPEC has adjusted its oil production depending on oil demand. If the demand was high, it increased production so as to ensure that oil prices did not go up too much. This was done in order to ensure that other forms of energy did not become viable. If the demand was low, it cut production in order to ensure that oil prices did not fall too much.

In the last one year, OPEC has abandoned this strategy primarily on account of all the oil that is being produced by the shale oil companies in the United States. As shale oil started to hit the market, the OPEC countries started to lose market share. Hence, they decided not to cut production any further, and try and maintain market share, even if that meant low oil prices.

The major producers within the OPEC (the likes of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq) produce oil at anywhere between $9 to $20 a barrel. It costs anywhere between $29 to $90 per barrel to produce shale oil, as per the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Hence, the idea was to engineer low oil prices and in the process make shale oil unviable and help OPEC countries maintain their market share. Nevertheless, despite low oil prices, the US shale oil industry is not shutting down at the rate it was expected to, when the price of oil started to fall, around a year back.
And this explains why OPEC continues to produce oil full blast. It wants to kill the US shale oil industry. Further, what the OPEC’s statement released last Friday really means is that the cartel will maintain its production at over 31.5 million barrels per day. In fact, members of the OPEC have always known to cheat on the side and produce more than their allocated quotas. Hence, the daily production is likely to be more than 31.5 million barrels per day.

As the newsagency Bloomberg reported: “There’s as much as 2 million barrels of oversupply in the market, and OPEC’s meeting on Friday means “everyone does what they want,” Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said in Vienna on Dec. 4.”

Take a look at the following two charts from the International Energy Agency. One is a chart showing the World Oil Supply. And the other shows World Oil Demand.
world oil supply

 

world oil demand

 

As per the chart, the World Oil Supply during the period July to September 2015 was at 96.9 million barrels per day. The demand on the other hand was lower than the supply at 96.35 million barrels per day.

The OPEC oil supply during the period July to September 2015, went up in comparison to the period April to June 2015. The OPEC production between April to June 2015 was at 31.5 million barrels per day. Over the next three months it jumped to 31.74 million barrels per day. Hence, OPEC contributed significantly to the jump in global oil supply.
opec crude oil supply

In fact, the production of OPEC is likely to increase in the months to come as the sanctions on Iran are lifted and the country is allowed to export more oil.

Over and above this, the global oil inventory is at a record high. As a recent IEA report points out: “Stockpiles of oil at a record 3 billion barrels are providing world markets with a degree of comfort. This massive cushion has inflated even as the global oil market adjusts to $50/bbl oil. Demand growth has risen to a five-year high…with India galloping to its fastest pace in more than a decade. But gains in demand have been outpaced by vigorous production from OPEC and resilient non-OPEC supply – with Russian output at a post-Soviet record and likely to remain robust in 2016 as well. The net result is brimming crude oil stocks that offer an unprecedented buffer against geopolitical shocks or unexpected supply disruption.”

As the report further points out: “The stock overhang that first developed in the US on the back of soaring North American crude production, has now spread across the OECD. Since the second quarter, inventories in Asia Oceania have swollen by more than 20 million barrels. In Europe, record high Russian output and rising deliveries from major Middle East exporters are filling the tanks.”

What this clearly means is that oil prices are likely to stay low over the next few months. Further, the forecast is for a fairly mild winter in Europe as well as North America. This means that the demand for diesel, which is the fuel of choice for heating in Europe as well as North East America, is unlikely to go up at a rapid rate. The stockpiles of diesel are at a five-year high.

The column originally appeared on The Daily Reckoning on December 10, 2015

Mr Modi, bad marketing has its costs and the govt will have to pay for it

narendra_modiVivek Kaul

Over the last one month some speaking engagements have taken me out of Mumbai. While travelling, I have spoken to people from different strata of society—from drivers to waiters to economists to businessmen to investment bankers.
There seems to be a great belief among people that the Narendra Modi government is likely to make some difference in the life of an ordinary Indian over the next few years. I maybe merely stating the obvious here, but it will soon become clear why I am doing that.
The marketing and communication that has accompanied Narendra Modi’s ascent to become the prime minister of India has been brilliant. Also, for the first time the message of economic development has been sold to people. The belief that this marketing and communication has created has stayed even after Modi has been in power for close to nine months.
But along the way some bad marketing has also crept in. Take the case of various leaders of the Bhartiya Janata Party(BJP) even taking the credit for bringing down oil prices. As a recent editorial in the Business Standard pointed out: “The president of the ruling party, Amit Shah, for example, repeatedly took credit on the campaign trail for lower prices, as did the Union home minister, Rajnath Singh. Even the prime minister has mentioned lower fuel prices, though he has specified that it is because of his “luck”.”
In my conversations over the last one month I have realized that many people particularly in the lower strata, seem to believe, that the Modi government has brought down petrol and diesel prices. This is an impact of the bad marketing on part of the BJP. When I put this to a friend who works for a foreign brokerage house, he replied: “you market what sells”. “And if people are believing in it, that means it’s selling.”
Nevertheless that is just one side of the picture. The price of the Indian basket of crude oil on May 26, 2014, the day the Modi government was sworn in, was $ 108.05 per barrel. It fell by around 60% to $43.36 per barrel on January 14, 2015. This was the period when the BJP leaders were busy claiming credit for the fall in oil price, whenever an opportunity presented itself.
What they did not tell people was that only a very small part of this fall in price was passed on to the end consumer through a cut in the price of petrol and diesel. Take the case of price of petrol in Mumbai—the price fell by only 17.05% between end May 2014 and mid January 2015. The price of diesel during the same period fell by around 14.9% in Mumbai.
The primary reason for this discrepancy has been that the government tax collections have not been up to the mark. Take the case of indirect taxes(service tax, customs duty and central excise duty). For the first ten months of the financial year between April 2014 and January 2015, the total amount of indirect taxes collected went up by 7.4%, in comparison to the last financial year. The budget had assumed a 20.3% jump in indirect tax collections. And that hasn’t happened. A little under one third of the indirect tax target still remains to be collected.
This slow growth in indirect tax collections has forced the government to increase the excise duty on petrol and diesel multiple times since October 2014. In the process it hasn’t passed on the total fall in the price of oil to the end consumer.
There is nothing wrong here, a government needs to constantly look at its finances and make decisions accordingly. The trouble is that since mid January oil prices have started going up again. Between January 14 and February 13, 2015, the price of Indian basket of crude oil has gone up by 34.7% to $ 58.43 per barrel.
This increase in price has forced the oil marketing companies to increase the retail price of petro and diesel by 1.45% and 1.3% respectively, since February 16. If the oil price keeps going up, then the oil marketing companies will have to keep increasing the price of petrol and diesel. And this will put the BJP which had been claiming that the Modi government brought down the price of petrol and diesel, in a tough spot.
Those who believed that the government was responsible for bringing down the price of petrol and diesel, will now ask—if the government can bring down the price of petrol and diesel, it can also ensure that their prices do not go up.
If this belief starts to gain hold, then the government can be forced to hold steady the price of petrol and diesel, and in turn compensate the oil marketing companies for the under-recoveries they suffer in the process. This will lead to a lot of other problems, most of which the country has already suffered during the ten years of Congress led UPA rule.
Indian politicians have not marketed economic reforms ( allowing listed companies to sell a commodity at its right price is also economic reform) at all to the citizens of this country. In fact, the spin that they have given to economic reforms has hurt this country.
Instead of claiming credit and saying that the Modi government brought down prices of petrol and diesel, the BJP politicians should have been telling the country why it is important to sell things at their right price. As Mihir S. Sharma writes in his book Restart—The Last Chance for the Indian Economy: “India has paid for politicians unable to talk openly about how economic reform is not just necessary, but beneficial, and not just beneficial, but right.”
Such communication isn’t very easy to dumb down, but that does not mean it cannot be done. It’s just that nobody has bothered to try till now. What makes the process even more difficult is the fact that every time a ruling party loses a state election, it gets blamed on economic reforms or the fact that the other side promised freebies, which the ruling party did not.
Take the case of the recent elections in Delhi, where the BJP was wiped out. Political pundits took no time in saying that the BJP lost because the Aam Aadmi Party promised freebies. As Sharma writes: “From [Narsimha] Rao all politicians have inherited the ability to attribute every electoral reversal to economic reforms.”
What we have seen till now is economic reforms by stealth. What is essentially needed is some proper communication on behalf of the government, where economic reforms can be explained in a simple way to the common man. That is the kind of marketing that is needed. And it would be great if the Modi government can get around to doing that.

The column originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com as a part of The Daily Reckoning, on Feb 17, 2015

Fiscal deficit is not for our grandchildren to repay: Here’s why I agree with Arun Jaitley

Vivek Kaul

In my past columns I have been critical of finance minister Arun Jaitley for saying things that he has. Take the case of people not buying as many homes as they were in the past. Like the real estate industry in India, the finance minister seems to believe that Indians are not buying homes simply because interest rates and EMIs are on the high side. “If you bring down the rates, people will start borrowing from banks to pay for their flats and houses. The EMIs will go down,” Jaitley had said in December 2014.
This as I have explained more than a few times in the past is the wrong argument to make. The EMIs simply don’t matter any more when it comes to buying homes—Indians are not buying homes because homes prices are way beyond what they can afford given their income levels. Figuring this out isn’t exactly rocket science and given this, the finance minister of the country shouldn’t have been making such statements.
Nevertheless, for once I agree with Jaitley. He recently told an industrial gathering: “The whole concept of spending beyond your means and leaving the next generation in debt to repay what we are overspending today is never prudent fiscal policy.”
As Mihir S. Sharma writes in his new book Restart—The Last Chance for the Indian Economy: “Economics has very few real laws. In fact, it only has one, but that one is of iron: you cannot spend more than you earn forever.”
Typically governments spend more than they earn and thus run a fiscal deficit. This deficit is financed through borrowing. When the borrowing keeps piling up, it needs to be repaid by taxes paid by future generations(our children and their children). And that can never be a prudent policy. The fact that Jaitley understands this (or at least says so in the public domain) is a good thing. It will work well for him during the process of formulation of the next budget which is scheduled to be presented on the last day of this month.
It has been suggested that the finance minister should not bother much about the fiscal deficit while presenting the next financial year’s budget. He should unleash a public investment programme in order to ensure that the Indian economy grows at a much faster rate in the years to come, than it currently is.
Leading the increase in public investment charge is  Arvind Subramanian, the Chief Economic Adviser to the ministry of finance. In the Mid Year Economic Analysis released in December 2014, Subramanian wrote: “Over-indebtedness in the corporate sector with median debt-equity ratios at 70 percent is amongst the highest in the world. The ripples from the corporate sector have extended to the banking sector where restructured assets are estimated at about 11-12 percent of total assets. Displaying risk aversion, the banking sector is increasingly unable and unwilling to lend to the real sector.”
This has led to a situation where banks aren’t interested in lending and corporates aren’t interesting in investing. In order to get around this problem Subramanian suggested that: “it seems imperative to consider the case for reviving public investment as one of the key engines of growth going forward, not to replace private investment but to revive and complement it.”
A major reason being offered in favour of the government increasing public investment is the fact that oil prices have crashed. As on February 6, 2015, the Indian basket of crude oil was priced at $$55.62 per barrel. On May 26, 2014, the day the Narendra Modi government took oath of office, the oil price was at $108.05 per barrel. Hence, the price of Indian basket of crude oil has fallen by 48.5% since then.
This fall has ensured that the amount of money that the government would have had to pay out as subsidy to oil marketing companies has come down. Oil companies suffer from under-recoveries while selling kerosene and cooking gas. The government compensates them for a part of this loss. Further, it is being assumed by analysts and economists that oil prices will continue to remain low and this will help the government limit the oil subsidy payout in the next financial year.
With the oil subsidy payout being limited the government can spend more money on public investment is a theory that has been put forward.
As analysts Neelkanth Mishra, Ravi Shankar and Prateek Singh of Credit Suisse write in a research report titled FY16 Budget: From famine to feast and dated January 27, 2015: “We believe that the government can raise capex[capital expenditure] by at least 1.2% of GDP in FY16E. It is pocketing a large part of the gains from the oil price decline, and can spend to generate growth.”
This is a reasonable assumption to make if the current state of affairs continues. But as I have often pointed out in the past forecasting oil prices is a risky business. There are too many variables at play, especially politics. And once politics enters the equation, normal demand-supply analysis goes out of the window.
As Eric Jensen writes in writes in The Absolute Return Letter for January 2015 titled Pie in the Sky: “ “It is now a highly political chess game and, as I have learned over the years, when politics enter the frame, logic goes out the window.” The Saudi Arabia and the OPEC, the United States, Russia and many other countries are players in this political game.
Also, it is worth remembering that budgets of countries that produce oil are not balanced at the current level of oil prices. As Eric Jensen writes in The Absolute Return Letter for February 2015 titled The End Game: “The one additional dynamic to consider is the large fiscal deficits in most oil producing countries which is only made worse the further the price of oil drops. Clearly the biggest risk factor in this context is Russia which needs an oil price of around $105 to balance its budget this year.”
Countries typically borrow money when their expenditure is more than their earnings. But as Jensen puts it: “It is a fact that virtually none of the world’s leading oil producing countries have as easy access to bond markets as we are used to in this part of the world.” Hence, low oil prices are hurting oil producing countries the most.
Given this, it is in their interest to ensure that oil prices start rising again in the days to come. In fact, oil prices have been rising from mid January onwards. The price of the Indian basket of crude oil as on January 14, 2015, was at $43.36 per barrel. Since then it has risen by 28.3% to $55.62 per barrel.
Hence, it is important that Arun Jaitley and his team while making the budget make a conservative estimate for the oil price and not get carried away by the recent low levels.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on Feb 10, 2015