The whole world is under the grip of recession and the markets of all sorts are facing cash crunch, and banks of all sizes are going extra media and marketing miles to make their service takers and clientele confident of what they believe: it is not going to affect our bank in any way, and we have enough liquidity and assets to bank up the shares, deposits and assets of our customers.

The nationalized banks in India, taking cue from the RBI, keeps the Indian liquidity as liquid as possible as to keep the global monetary tsunami off our financial bays. It’s all good from the bankers’ point of view. When it comes to one’s hard earned money and its fate, there needs to be much more to the recession than meets the eye, and the ordinary man has no other way but to keep his bills short, manage whatever he has and whatever is in the pipeline meticulously so that he could lead a life not that different from what he had been going through prior to the recession.

Prices of essential commodities that had been on the rise for quite some time, have started showing signs of slowdown, and even the petroleum products are likely to have a downward spiral in this respect. Global crude price has come down from around 150 to less than 65 dollars per barrels, and the dollar has shown its mettle over rupee and the NRI remittance and all those payments in Indian rupees are cashing in on this recession. But the rupee is getting weaker.

The affluent section of the society, which has always had the last say in determining the prices of the essentials, has started feeling the pinch as the cash flow from across the borders of European and gulf nations has received a jolt over the panic wave caused by the US banking melt down.

The agricultural community in the south Indian state Kerala has been going through a tough market slump over the past three months thanks to the fall in the prices of the raw material they produce. For example the price of rubber fell form around Rs.150 per kilo to Rs. 75 per kilo over a period of three months. Interestingly there is correlation between Indian rubber price and world oil price. When crude was sold for 145 dollars per barrel, Indian rubber was for it equivalent in Indian rupees. Now oil