A glitch to worry about - UCO Bank

An article in Indian Express titled "UCO Bank recovers INR 649 crore ‘erroneously credited’ to customers", appeared on November 16. 2023.

What happened:

During the period from November 10 to 13, the bank observed that due to technical issue in IMPS, certain transactions initiated by holders of other banks have resulted in credit to the account holders in UCO Bank without actual receipt of money from these banks, UCO bank said in another filing. Money is instantly transferred in the IMPS system from one account to another account.

The Key part is the bold underlined words, credit to one account without actual receipt of money from other banks.

Uncomfortable thoughts on what if this is other than a plain technical glitch:

1. System allowed credit to one account without debit to other account ignoring the double entry concept, unacceptable.

2. Did this technical glitch is a patch uploaded by hackers to steal money / exploit the weakness,

3. Is this the testing phase of what is going to be how to destabilize the world economy by digital terrorism / theft.

4. Is this going to be a question of excess of anything is a problem i.e. excess digitization will cause similar issues as vulnerabilities in a system will be exposed.

5. Will this spread into UPI where billions of transactions worth trillions of dollars are taking place? When you steal a small amount of INR 10 from select account, users will stop using the UPI in a big manner?

6. Is this an attempt to destabilize India growth by attacking Indian strength i.e. Digitalization of India?

7.  Cyber threat / Network / Software robustness / Third party system control needs to be one which is more important than anything else in the future.

Above are only thoughts with possible conspiracy connection and can be ignored. 

Let this be a technical glitch and nothing more.

Comparing Investment Returns - Avoid

An excellent statement appeared in an article  Comparing Your Portfolio to the S&P 500 Can Be a Losing Game in investing.com by Lance Roberts:

The financial services industry is predicated on upsetting people so that they will move money around in a frenzy. Money in motion creates fees and commissions. The creation of more and more benchmarks, products, and style boxes is nothing more than the creation of more things to COMPARE with. The end result is investors remain in a perpetual state of outrage.

The lesson we want to drive home here is the danger of following Wall Street’s advice of beating some arbitrary index from one year to the next. What most investors are taught to do is to measure portfolio performance over a twelve-month period. However, that is absolutely the worst thing you can do. It is the same as being on a diet and weighing yourself every day.

Worth reminding ourselves everyday.

Source: alphaideas.in

The "Biased" Guardian

The problem with The Guardian newspaper is to spread a story which will earn them more clicks.

Recent article in The Guardian by Barney Ronay on Cricketer M Shami "Mohammed Shami the outsider in full bloom for India’s final World Cup fling"

The author has clearly stated Shami is the outsider. This is ridiculous. Since independence Muslims have played in this game at national level at various capacities. Azharuddin was captain of the cricket team for many years, Kirmani was the main wicketkeeper for many years. Zaheer was the main fast bowler.

Does the author knew about it or deliberately titled it so that a rift can be created and get click for his writing from a particular community. It appears this article is written for a particular section of readers only.

Disgraceful.

Further the article states:

Before this becomes too much of a feelgood story there are two things that stand out. Shami is also India’s most prominent Muslim cricketer, at a time of rising Hindu nationalism. He was abused relentlessly online, called among other things a “Pakistani traitor”, after the T20 World Cup defeat against India’s neighbours last year.

The abuse was so sustained that Virat Kohli was moved to defend his teammate, stating that “attacking someone over their religion is the most pathetic thing that a human being can do”, a significant intervention given Kohli’s profile. This week it felt like a moment of cultural significance to see Narendra Modi of the BJP party posting “well played Shami!” on social media. Sometimes sport actually can send a grappling hook across the divide.

The author does not have knowledge regarding how to address the Prime Minister of a nation. He stated Narendra Modi of the BJP instead of Prime Minister Modi, which he has earned by way of getting elected.

Pathetic writing.

The article is a politically motivated, revengeful and jealous oriented write up and not a sports write up.  

As a Bhartiya, it appears the writer is jealous that England ended at the bottom four of the table and can't digest that fact that India is rising economically and in all spheres.

In India we refer to as a Burnol moment.

The labelling of the article should be Politics, Motivated, Biased , Sports.