Ben Bernanke and Edward Chancellor square off on monetary policy
Central banks in the west, in particular the Federal Reserve have been under attack from critics for keeping interest rates too low for far too long and using unconventional monetary policy tools. In this piece, The Economist reviews too books that represent the views of the critics and the central banks in contrast. First, ‘The […]
Tinder struggles to attract younger users as Gen Z singles look to new apps
In January 2022, we highlighted in 3 Longs & 3 Shorts Jonathan Knee’s book, ‘The Platform Delusion’ – see https://marcellus.in/story/review-of-dr-jonathan-knees-book-the-platform-delusion-who-wins-and-who-loses-in-the-age-of-tech-titans/ .To quote from our Jan ’22 piece: “In specific, here are our key takeaways from this thought-provoking book: Barring Facebook, the FAANGS and other so called “platforms” like Uber and AirBnB don’t seem to benefit significantly from network […]
Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
We were discussing the bizarre situation of an impending recession amidst labour shortages in the west with a bunch of clients recently. Soon the discussion moved to how the world, especially the west will likely move from a minimum wage set-up to a minimum work environment to coax people who have excused themselves out of […]
How Serena Williams dominated tennis and transformed it
For several years now, Menaka Guruswamy, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India, has been writing a superb column in that most readable of India’s newspapers, the Indian Express. In this inspirational piece she celebrates one of the most remarkable sporting icons of the 21st century: Serena Williams. After narrating Serena’s mind-boggling career stats (eg. […]
The Immortal Salman Rushdie
Some of us in Marcellus have spent most of our lives reading endless amounts of books – both fiction and non-fiction. For better or for worse, our reading has made us who we are and, at many levels, reading is what we do to earn a living. Our reading has included most of Salman Rushdie’s […]
In a Post-2022 World, the Dollar will have a Different Meaning
There have been doubts raised about the sustainability of the reserve currency status of the US Dollar over the past decade ever since the Fed started printing money to bail out the economy post the global financial crisis. But geo-political issues of 2022 have only amplified those voices as this article in The Market suggests. “A […]
The endless magic of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”
Off late, Netflix has been burning a lot of cash on content, mostly without much gain – mediocre quality despite the big budgets, unsurprisingly hasn’t made a difference to its subscriber additions. This month, another big budget series ‘The Sandman’, supposedly costing a whopping $15m an episode, was launched to rave reviews. Here’s one from […]
Salman Rushdie and the Power of Words
The day after Salman Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly in western New York, we scanned the Indian media to see if any of our “leaders” had anything to say about this atrocity. We couldn’t find any Indian leader – in politics or beyond – having a point of view on what was in practical terms an […]
The private equity club: how corporate raiders became teams of rivals
Private equity as an asset class has taken off in a big way amongst institutional asset allocators over the past four decades or so, with especially the leveraged buy-outs almost coinciding with the low interest rate regime over the same period. This article traces the evolution of the competitive intensity in the private equity industry […]
I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?
One of the things we try to impress upon the youngsters who join Marcellus is to spend as little as possible in the morning reading the newspapers. We thought that this problem was specific to India where the failing business model of newspapers has made them a shadow of their former selves. However, this piece […]
Review of the ‘The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists’ by Richard Rumelt
Richard Rumelt is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. A decade ago he published ‘Good Strategy/Bad Strategy’ which remains one of the best books on strategy we have read. Earlier this year, Rumelt published ‘The Crux’. Knowing Rumelt’s no-nonsense attitude to practical corporate strategy formulation we hit the ‘Buy’ button on Kindle unhesitatingly. […]
How Multinationals Lost the Plot in India
Despite having access to enough capital and the experience of running financial services businesses for decades globally, foreign players have struggled in India. While the multinationals did not have any dearth of talent, capital, or technology, sustainable growth has eluded them (loan book market share has halved from ~8% in FY2000 to ~4% in FY2021). […]
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