Mahamandiche Umbarthyavar (Marathi)

I liked the book for the following reasons:
1. Simple explanations throughout the book
2. Truth is stated all throughout
3. Many questions that I had got resolved after reading this
4. Why there are so many problems in the economy is clear now
5. Even though I am MBA (Finance), still I had so many basic wrong ideas, which I realized only after reading this. I am going to give this book to all my professors also :-).

I was initially worried that the book is too small (100 pages). But after reading it, I did not feel it was small at all. It is packed with lot of original information. I read it in one go. Could not put it down.

I must also say that the book is scary! It tells you the reality which is there in very few other books. After reading this book, you would know what would happen in the next decade or so.

I read it yesterday and noticed that the predictions about Greece and Euro are turning to be very accurate.

If possible, this should also appear in english language for wider readers.

अतुल कहाते यांनी लिहिलेल्या 'महामंदीच्या उंबरठयावर' या पुस्तकामध्ये अजूनही अजिबात हटण्याचं नाव न घेणाऱ्या जागतिक आर्थिक अडचणींची सुंदर कहाणीच आहे. हे पुस्तक वाचत असताना खरं म्हणजे आपल्याला आपण एखादी भयकथाच वाचत आहोत असं वाटायला लागतं. या भयकथेमध्ये भूतं आणि खलनायक नसूनसुध्दा अंगावर काटा येईल अशी परिस्थिती ती निर्माण करते. याचं कारण म्हणजे ही सगळी परिस्थिती आणखी भीषण होत जाईल आणि त्यानंतरच त्यामध्ये सुधारणा व्हायची चिन्हं दिसायला लागतील असं लेखक म्हणतो. काही जण लेखकावर तो फारच निराशावादी असल्याचं आणि घाबरून जाणारी परिस्थिती दिसत असल्याचं वर्णन करत असल्याचा आरोप करतीलही; पण हे पुस्तक प्रकाशित झाल्यापासूनच्या दोन महिन्यांच्या काळातला घटनाक्रम तपासला तर या पुस्तकामधली आपल्याला भीती वाटायला लावणारी भाकितं तंतोतंत खरी ठरत असल्याचा अनुभव येईल.
या पुस्तकाविषयीचा सगळयात महत्त्वाचा मुद्दा म्हणजे अत्यंत सोप्या भाषेत अमेरिका तसंच इतर ठिकाणच्या ऐतिहासिक तसंच राजकीय निर्णयांमुळे ओढवलेल्या आर्थिक परिस्थितीचा मांडलेला तपशील हा आहे. अगदी सर्वसामान्य माणसालासुध्दा समजेल अशा शब्दांमध्ये हे वर्णन करण्यात लेखक पूर्णपणे यशस्वी ठरला आहे. आपल्या रोजच्या आयुष्यातली काही अत्यंत सोपी उदाहरणं घेऊन लेखकानं काही अवघड संकल्पना उत्कृष्टपणे समजावून सांगितल्या आहेत. तसंच यात अतिशयोक्ती टाळण्यातही लेखकाला यश आलं आहे. उदाहरणार्थ सरकारला आर्थिक तुटीचा सामना करावा लागला की सरकार 'पैसे छापतं' असं आपण नेहमी वाचतो. प्रत्यक्षात हा सगळा प्रकार अत्यंत किचकट असतो. पण तो या पुस्तकात अगदी सहजपणे उलगडून दाखवलेला आहे.
- नंदू कुलकर्णी

There is a joke that has been going around on the internet that if you get a call from your bank saying that there are insufficient funds in the account, you have to ask if they mean your account or theirs. Often, reality is reflected in popular humor, and this joke is a reflection of what is happening in the global economy, especially in the Western countries like USA and the Western Europe. Mr. Atul Kahate’s book “Mahamandichyaa Umbarthayavar” is an excellent story about the current global economic crisis. Actually, after reading Mr. Kahate’s book one gets the feeling of having read a horror story because he predicts that things will get much worse before they get better in the global economy. Some people may accuse the author of being too pessimistic and alarmist in his outlook, but the events that have happened in the couple of months after the book was published confirm the grim predictions he has made in the book. Standards and Poor, a global rating agency downgraded the credit rating of the US Government, sending stock markets crashing around the world. MF Global, one of the largest broking companies dealing in financial derivative products fell victim to the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and collapsed, after reporting a quarterly loss of nearly Rs.1,000 crores. MF Global had taken bets on sovereign debt of some of the troubled European countries like Greece and Italy, and when the value of the debt became highly doubtful, it took MF Global down with it. At the time of this writing, the governments of EU countries are negotiating hard with banks on structuring a bailout package for the PIIGS countries. This is going to result in social unrest, strikes and possibly violent demonstrations, as has happened in the past.
The biggest achievement of Mahamandichya Umbarthyavar is that Mr.Kahate has explained in very simple terms that even a layman can relate to, the historical background and political and economic factors in the USA, and more recently, financial manipulations perpetrated by the large investment banks that have led the world into the current economic crisis. He has taken very simple examples from day to day financial transactions to explain some of the concepts, without oversimplifying or trivializing them. For example, the term commonly used is that the government “prints money” to finance its deficits. The misconception that most people have that the government actually prints bank notes in its printing presses and injects them into the economy. Mr.Kahate has explained in very simple terms what “printing money” actually means and the various mechanisms that the government uses to make up for fiscal deficits. He has explained how Richard Nixon, when he was president of the US, repealed the gold standard arrived at in the historic Bretton Woods agreement after the second world war, and delinked the dollar from the gold reserves of the US, thereby giving the governments the leeway to “print” as much money as they needed, which has been partly responsible for the current crisis. He has explained how the “greed is good” culture in the US banks led them to take excessive risks for maximizing profits, and how the structuring of extremely complex financial instruments which sometimes even they themselves did not understand, led to the collapse of some large institutions like Lehman and AIG which were always considered to be too large to fail.
The book left this reader with a couple of deep questions in his mind. If the free market and capitalistic system is bad and has resulted in the current mess, what is the answer? We all know the terrible problems caused by the communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and neighboring countries. In fact, Communism in the original form remains in very few pockets like North Korea and has been replaced with free market systems. Communism remains only in name in China. We have also seen the problems caused by our own experiment with Socialism after independence, which set us back by several decades by creating a massive and wasteful public sector in areas like aviation and mining which is not the business of government.

The book reads like a horror story without ghosts or villains. So the question is, is this the end of the world as we have seen it? In the opinion of this reviewer, this is another huge wave, which will clean up the debris, and the super power economies of the world will be replaced by new ones, until they go through the same process and the next wave replaces them with new players.

In conclusion, Mahamandichya Umbarthyavar is a must read for anyone who is concerned about the happenings in the global economic scene, and wishes to understand what is actually happening.

- Nandu Kulkarni - Ex Senior Vice President - i-flex solutions limited (Oracle Financial Services Software Limited)

अतुल कहाते हा माझा चांगला मित्र आहे हे मी आधीच जाहीर करतो. त्याची परवानगी न घेता मी थेट हा उद्योग करीत आहे. अतुलचे सगळे लेख व पुस्तके आम्ही मित्र वाचतोच. पण या पुस्तकाचे मला विशेष कौतुक वाटते. एवढ्या जटील प्रश्नाचा इतका सखोल अभ्यास करुन त्याने इतक्या कमी पानामध्ये हे सगळे लिहिले आहे ते माझ्यासारख्यालाही समजले म्हणजे नक्कीच सोपे आहे. सगळ्या पेपरांमध्ये या विषयावर खोट्या व चुकीच्या बातम्या देण्याचा पायंडा पडला आहे. असे असताना खरे सांगणे व ते सांगणे पण अगदी साध्या वाचकाला पण समजेल; किती महत्त्वपूर्ण आहे नाही! त्यामुळे माझ्या मित्राचे हे पुस्तक जरुर वाचा. त्याने या पुस्तकाची प्रस्तावना आपल्या वेबसाईटपेजवर दिली आहे ती आधी वाचावी असे मी सुचवेन.

Mahamandichya Umbarthyavar is an excellent book.It has cleared all my concepts of basic economics.Being an Engineering graduate, I could speak on technical stuffs confidently but after reading this book I could be more confident in participating the economical debates related to financial crisis.
Combination of examples and data to explain the terms like GDP,fiscal deficit etc. is very well elaborated.Every layman who talks or thinks about the financial crisis should read this book to understand it and to realize where he or she stands in this critical scenario.

Also, I have read Atul Kahate's "Kahani flu chi" book long back. This demonstrates the author's skill of writing is flexible and can cover any of the domain whether it's economics,IT or medical.

I am amazed with the study which Atul do to gather the information.I congratulate him for his achievements and hope for many more to come from him.