The government will hold discussions on a proposal to make the high level committee on financial and capital markets (HLCC) - an informal body comprising representatives of all financial regulators - more effective next month.

“The decision to make HLCC more effective would be deliberated on in the second half of November. The discussion is on whether formalisation of HLCC would be more effective or more bureaucratic,” an official source told PTI.

There is a consensus that HLCC needs to be more effective to tackle any problem speedily and with ease as there are many issues in the financial market that require close coordination and acting together by various regulators, the source say.

The RBI announced its Second Quarter Review of Monetary Policy for the Year 2009-10 today and as expected, has left the key rates unchanged. Though the RBI kept key rates unchanged, it hiked Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR), the deposits that commercial banks are to park in government securities, by one percentage points to 25 per cent.

While this should have brought some cheer to the markets, they plunged deeper into the red not only because the RBI looks set to raise interest rates going forward, but also because the central bank has upwardly revised its target inflation by March 2010 end to 6.5% from 5% earlier.

The upward bias in interest rates was apparent from the RBI's move to hike the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) to 25% from 24%. Having said that, whether interest rates in the future rise or not will depend on whether the inflation continues to rise the way it is doing now, and the economic momentum continues to pick up pace.

TheSimpleDollar    reviews Dave Ramsey's "The Total Money Makeover" where this book on debt reduction is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the ninth chapter  by Trent.

Trent writes, "I’m a big believer in the unpredictability of life (in fact, this unpredictability is a major theme in my upcoming book). Life deals you things you don’t expect all the time, from small (like an unexpected wet diaper on your way out the door) to big (a sudden death of a close relative) and from good (finding a $100 bill in a parking lot) to bad (breaking your big toe after dropping something heavy on it)."