Random thoughts on public companies

Some time ago when I didn't understand Market economics and how public companies worked, I used to believe that if you have a lot of money you are inevitably going to make much more (money attracts money).

I would imagine that worst cast you can just get a lot of interest on that money. Now I see the problems with that thinking.

The companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple etc. have lots of money through public investments in their stocks, but that money isn't very hard to "keep" or "increase" as the investors are very quick to punish you if they don't see growth of your company (their money). 

Turns out just growing doesn't help you have to "beat" expectations which are usually pretty optimistic too. This becomes an issue. These kind of growth expectations usually require companies to either have found a business that is bound to keep growing like Ads or Enterprise or Hardware (with enough efforts for sure) Or keep coming up with new ideas.

The new ideas part is tricky and is basically a big bet. Reading a book on AIG's demise I learned how they came up with certain ideas that basically caused them to go bankrupt when markets crashed in 2007. Tech companies don't usually do something as risky but nonetheless any business is a risk.

So thats the thing, even if you have money you can just sit on it with interest seeking activities, you gotta find ways to grow the money faster than other alternatives which people could instead choice to do with their money themselves. 

Just being a big company with lots of money (through public investments) isn't enough, which also bring another observation previous performance isn't an indication of future.

Indian Elections: The subtle difference between naivety, ignorance and being outright dishonest

I have been meaning to write a post about my view on the ongoing Lok Sabha elections in India. We are in the middle of more than a month long process, so I hoped to give out my thoughts not as a justification of what happened or didn't happen but more about the process of it.

I got compelled to write this post because of many posts by my friends on Facebook/Google+ and various new articles/comments I have been reading. As I figured everyone (including me) has such a strong opinion that arguments didn't really go anywhere, discussions quickly turned in to flamewars and enimity arouse. One of my friend felt so compelled to support his views that on not liking his views he choose to un-friend me. Well good for you.

A quick background on the problem/situation.(skip this and next para if you already know) There is a new party in India called "Aam Admi Party" /AAP (translation: Common man's party) which performed suprizingly well in the State election for state of Delhi, coming out second highest in number and decimating one of the biggest part "Congress" to very low numbers. BJP is the third party which was likely the favorite and did come out to be the largest number party but didn't get enough numbers to form government. So AAP formed the government with help of Congress. This government lasted 49 days after which the Chief Minister Mr. Arvind Kejirwal gave his resignation.

He and his party then started working for a bigger challenge and impact i.e the National elections. Until all this happened it was almost clear that BJP would pretty much win the National elections with big margin because Congress government has done pretty bad over the last few years. Many Indians were looking forward to have Mr. Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister and now with AAP coming into the scene and directly competing against BJP there is a strong rivalry in the supporters of the two party.

Now the disclaimer: Everything I mentioned till now and most things mentioned below will try to factual and not really try to support one party or another but just try to clarify what I feel is wrong information spread by people in the name of intellectual opinions.

Okay, so what is the problem?

As usual many people are expressing their wise thoughts about why Mr. Narendra Modi won't be a good fit. Some of the reasons given:
1) "He favours the rich, gave out cheap land to industrialist etc."
2) "He took land from farmers by force and gave it to industrialist etc."

There are many other reasons but I choose these as they relates to matters which I have done quite a bit of studies our last 2-3 years and feel that they are very complex matters which people seem to have very simple answers to. Just like how every Indian watching a cricket match always knows how each ball should have been played by every player.

People seem to have a very noble notion of helping the poor and common man. When asked for a plan its usually, well these Rich people are so rich why don't we take away some of their money and give it to the poor. Why don't we just tax the rich more. Sell them things (Land/Inputs etc.) at much higher price to make all the money. Seeing these arguments makes me wonder if people are just naive/ignorance or outright dishonest.

Any one who has done some basic studies in economics (some may even just get it from common sense) will understand that things are not as easy as said above. Rich people/companies around the world have many many places they can invest their wealth and governments/countries have to compete for these investments by providing incentives in return for hope of boosting local economy by jobs and infrastructure development which brings money to area through taxes and other indirect measures. If government was to just sell the land to people the only money that could be earned was the current cost of land and some possible interest on that amount. So yes if you just want to give away all the land to poor people to build houses that will not take you too far.

The argument of taxing the rich more is similar, if you tax them too high they move else-where, what is better 40% of nothing or 30% of 1 Billion ? So the tax can't just be arbitrary just as the pricing can't be arbitrary or the production goes offshore and you are left with less revenues and less jobs.

I am all for a state that cares about the poor and provides welfare to people in need, but these things need government to have money to provide them, the revenues come from developing resources/infrastructure and getting investments rather than by scaring the people who can invest into your economy.

One thing people need to understand is that when the economy will grow rich will get richer, that shouldn't be a problem as long as people at all levels are ultimately getting the benefit. It won't happen right away but it will happen if the policies are developed properly. Claiming a policy/state/person to be bad because it/he/she helped rich become richer without seeing overall effects of it is again sign of being naive or being dishonest.