QualiTest acquires TCL

I wanted to congratulate our portfolio company QualiTest on acquiring the UK software testing company TCL.

A core part of the strategy for QualiTest is to become recognised as a major international player in the independent software testing market. 

With the acquisition of TCL not only have they added a great team in the UK with a longstanding reputation in the business, but also through TCL the company now has access to the Indian market. This is a big step on the way to being global, and much more importantly gives us the ability to offer a wider range of services and sourcing, what the CEO Ayal likes to call "right-sourcing."

A word on TCL. I have not been too near the coal face on this transaction (thanks to Ayal and Uri), but  I have spent time with Stewart, TCL's founder. TCL under his leadership is a great example of how to build a business with a very positive culture of focusing on the people as its greatest strength. As we combine TCL and QualiTest together I am sure that this culture will stand the merged company in very good stead!

Best of luck to all!!

For those interested in more detail, here is a link to the announcement - http://tinyurl.com/d5s7nhg

New CEO and Positioning Launch at Infolinks

Infolinks - a Goldrock portfolio company - has recently recruited a top notch CEO to take the company to the next level. His name is Dave Zinman and he is one of the founders of the ad server as the former GM of the display ads division at Yahoo! We are very excited to have him on board.

Dave has hit the ground running with new messaging to the market. Infolinks has subsequently launched its In3 platform (Infolinks Intent Intelligence) - to help website publishers better monetize their properties. The technology can best understand a visitor's intent and present the most relevant advertisements  In addition, since most internet users ignore traditional display ads today, Infolinks ad units are placed in areas that can attract the attention of the visitors without obtrusiveness.

And if you will be in New York for Ad:Tech next week, Infolinks will be there!

Good luck to the team.

Hat-tip To Our PNMsoft Friends

Nice job to be quoted in a recent Infosys blog: How Mobile are your Business Processes?

And here is the quote on PNMsoft - 
"Mobile and BPM being two different worlds each growing with promising possibilities for Business, they need to be complemented each other for innovative solutions. This demands significant upgrades in BPM software to leverage the power of mobile. A classic example to reflect this trend is PNMSoft's recent BPM Suite that comes up HotChange architecture with unparalleled mobile capabilities running on all devices. This new architecture has the ability to write once and run anywhere through the use of a mobile portal for tablets and smartphones with in-memory architecture that allows switching between cloud or on premise storage."

Well done to the team @PNMSoft - look forward to more recognition!

Sage Rumours and a Rising Share Price

After a long period of tracking the TechMark All Share Index, Sage has strongly outperformed recently. Those who know me know that I am not qualified to comment on the reason why shares go up or down, and indeed anytime I tried to make money out of this art I have failed!

Having said that, there are those smarter than me, that are connecting the rise with rumours (for the umpteenth time) that the company is the target for private equity or (less likely) strategic bidders.

Oil has now been added to the fire with a rumour coming from longtime Sage watcher @dahowlett that Sage is considering divesting its US business (hat-tip to @GeorgeO for spotting this). 

Assuming this rumour relates to the whole of the North American business, then we are talking about just under 30% of the business in P&L terms, with slightly less profitability than the European division as a whole, and substantially less than the UK, still the most important driver for profits (by far) for the group.

Why divest and why now?

Whilst it is always stated that Sage competes with Intuit in the US and is the #2 player, from a scale point of view this is an irrelevance. Even if you take out the consumer side of the Intuit business, their B2B side is orders of magnitude larger than Sage, with all the benefits that this brings (See Sage’s domination in the UK and the margins it achieves). Whatever Sage does in the US it will never dominate in the way that it does in some of its other markets. This means that growing the business Stateside will always be an uphill struggle and profitability has no chance of reaching the heights of the UK, perhaps not even the rest of the group.

By selling this part of the business Sage will be instantly liquid from a balance sheet point of view, allowing her two possibilities (and maybe even both). Return of capital to shareholders, never frowned upon in the City of London, and ammunition to be more bold in building a genuine growth strategy for the next decade (either organically or via M&A).

From a timing point of view we are well into the reign of Mr Burryer, who has the difficult job of leading Sage back into growth, without upsetting those folks in the City who love dividends and low risk. Aggressive acquisitions have been hard to come by, and organic growth at a group level is not responding (yet).

Notwithstanding the recent outperformance, over any other period Sage has not outperformed TechMark and whilst it has been a steady performer within the FTSE 100, one wonders whether this is purely on bid premium, rather than fundamentals. A divestment of this scale should increase Group profit margins, if only slightly!

In summary the case for divestment is more focus on market dominant and growth markets, ability to drive shareholder value, and ammunition for the management to go after a more aggressive strategy (which the company can probably afford). It will rightfully establish management credentials on their ability to make important and significant corporate decisions that drive long term shareholder value.

Why might it not happen?

Well firstly this may just be a rumour and therefore far from management’s mind. This is the way of rumours!

Sage have been making money (perhaps not enough) in the US for the best part of two decades. It will be an ENOURMOUS decision for the company and board to take. The make-up of the board is conservative and thus, makes it unlikely that they will encourage such a bold move (my opinion, apologies to the board if I am wrong!).

Sage will no longer be a global company. Have to say that this is the weakest argument I could find, as Sage is not a global company anyway. As I, and many others, have stated in the past, Sage is a very successful federation of companies with very little by way of global integration or synergy (R&D, Sales & Marketing etc).

The point here is that the global question is somewhat of a red herring given the analysis that the company is not global and therefore has nothing to lose by accepting that fact in a major US divestment.

Ironically public companies are affected by near term movements in share price (both up and down). Management do try their best not to take decisions based on this, but it is very hard to be completely divorced from this daily (and sometimes cruel) reality. Given the rally in the shares that we started this blog with, it may seem less “urgent” to take strategic (i.e. long term) decisions about the business.

On balance I think that the possibility of a deal of this kind should be considered, obviously subject to price, but also subject to one other consideration. What would the company do with the proceeds? Can the board and management pull-off the aim of driving growth and preparing Sage for the next decade\s? This is obviously not a question I can answer with authority, but if I were a shareholder I would be asking.

Finally, and as a postscript, whatever the reason for the rise in share price I am confident that it has taken Sage out of the price range of the potential private equity buyers. Doesn’t mean that they do not have their pencils sharpened, they will simply have to wait and see, with the rest of us, whether the company can put growth numbers together to justify a public company rating – we continue to wish them the best of luck!

   

Management Principles from Chairman of Intuit

Management lessons from the Coach's playbook

The Valley guru Bill Campbell (Chairman, Intuit, Board Member Apple) keeps a low profile but his rules for success are a growing legend. Many approach him on a regular basis for advice, and if the companies he is involved with are anything to go by they may be worth listening to - what do you think about these 5 principles?

Think big with talent

Campbell believes startups often hire "early stage" people without thinking about whether they will succeed as the company grows. They should instead hire major players who know how to scale up. Once they're in, Campbell uses a review system that measures four areas: on-the-job performance - the typical quantitative goals; peer group relationships; management/leadership, or how well you develop the people around you; and innovation/best practices.

Be honest - and accountable

"I remember him describing me as a human missile," says Danny Shader, CEO of Jasper Wireless, who at the time was a disgruntled employee at Go Corp. Campbell, the CEO, sat him down, saying, "Here are a bunch of things you need to do to improve yourself and things that I need to do." By talking straight with employees - and committing to helping them succeed - Campbell helps create a team dynamic.

Skip the chief operating officer

Most Campbell-led or -mentored companies (Google and Intuit, for example) have no COO. Campbell thinks the COO often takes over management details that the CEO should be deeply involved in. And COOs often end up isolated, with star managers insisting on reporting to the CEO.

Invest in the future

Campbell believes technology companies should never slack on innovation. "He is a huge advocate of having to be on the leading edge," says Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, Opsware, and Ning. "He was always on us [at Opsware] with the budget about having to invest more in R&D."

Empower the engineer

Campbell thinks engineers are the innovation core of any tech company. Giving engineers the freedom to create, free of marketing dictates, is critical. On Campbell's suggestion, Intuit CEO Brad Smith gave his engineers four hours a week of unstructured time. The result: six new products in the past year.

Brilliant post by Barry Ritholtz

We rarely do this on the Goldrock blog...a place where we try and express our proprietary brilliance and thoughts. But I saw a blog post by a financial commentator from Bloomberg and CNBC - Barry Ritholtz - from my brother - Ben Ram. the post is called Unless & Except. I couldn't have said it better or funnier myself, so here is the text:

Yeah! The Greeks Voted!

For the X^n-th time, important events took place in Europe that either did or did not resolve an impending crisis, one that is either imminent or not.

This was absolutely and unequivocally crucial, unless it didn’t matter at all. Either of which is an equally likely outcome.

Indeed, this past week was absolutely critical, except that it wasn’t. The Greek elections determining their future relationship to the EuroZone was simply of the utmost importance, unless, as it turns out, it was not.

Yes, they did not matter; No, it was quite important. Unless it was the other way around. In which case it did/didn’t was/wasn’t important.

The ‘mother of all central bank interventions’ is going to save Europe, unless it doesn’t, in which case it is back to square one for the EU. Everything has changed, except that nothing is different. Nothing has changed, except for everything. Unless it wasn’t, in which case it was. (Glad I got THAT off my chest).

We also are closely watching the fiscal responsibility issue, which as many of you know is the single most important issue ever, except for the past half century, when it didn’t matter at all. This has been resolved once and for all, permanently and completely, by postponing it yet again.

Then no, not so much.

Here in the States, the upcoming Fiscal Cliff is the most important issue of our time, except it has never mattered and is likely to be resolved without incident. Unless not, in which case, so sorry about that credit outlook downgrade.

Indeed, this is the most important election of our lifetimes, except for all the other ones. They were super important, except not.

This week’s FOMC meeting will reveal whether QE is imminent, which it is, according to those who know. Unless its not, which is equally as likely.

Operation Twist could be extended. Or expanded. Or canceled. Unless not.

The Fed will be releasing their announcement at 2:15 on Wednesday. Unless like last time, they are late, in which case it will be 2:30. Ish.

This will cause another Risk On rally as traders anticipate the Fed’s action, unless it doesn’t, as traders don’t. And if they don’t, or in case the Fed doesn’t. Or won’t. It starts to get fuzzy around this juncture.

The key is not whether they won’t or didn’t, but more importantly, were anticipated to have done of of those, which is of course dependent upon how slavishly you are devoted to the proper usage of past verb tenses. Which as this writing implies, I am not.

More importantly, you must be on the look out for rumors or reports that may or may not be true and do or don’t matter. Or not.

In which case yes, thank you, I will have another.

I hope this clarifies the state of things . . .

Can Dell be Model for Nurturing Innovation?

I read with interest the launch announcement for the Dell Innovators Credit Fund. Dell has set aside $100m in financing to be allocated in $150,000 chunks to qualifying innovation led companies. For more details check it out - http://eir.dell.com/


Some might see this a vendor financing through the back door, and I wonder if the $100m is the street price of the equipment they will be funding or the COG's? It is also worth noting that this is on the back of Dell's continued inability to allocate internally to innovation (stuck at around 1% of turnover).


In any event I wonder what similar initiatives could be created in the UK market to spark much needed innovation.


I quickly figured out the $100m is about 0.5% of Dell's market cap. Given the allocation they are talking about this could potentially expose them to hundreds of new and interesting companies. Many of these companies will not yield any value add to Dell, but I am sure that something of interest will come out of it!


Wouldn't it be great if "UK Tech Ltd" took 0.5% of their value and found creative and sensible ways to foster innovation. Of course each company would have the criteria that might support their wider aims and needs in life.


As a possible suggestion the recently announced StartUp loan scheme could be leveraged by tech companies if they offered to match the government funding if the start-ups met whatever criteria the corporate partner would set (sector, geography, size etc).

As a simple example, wouldn't it be great for the North East if Sage launched such a scheme to support 20 ventures a year matching the government funds by 5x for young entrepreneurs in the region starting a business in the areas of software, IT, SaaS or other relevant spaces. This would be a £250,000 program and everyone would be a winner.

• Sage would encourage innovation in its back yard, which it could exploit as and when they mature. 
• They show that government and business collaborate successfully. 
• Of no less importance Sage would show that in an era of globalisation it still believes in the importance of giving back to the local community and fostering future talent that Sage and others in the region could benefit from.

By way of comparison if Sage spent the same proportion of its market value as Dell it would be allocating £16m (about 10% of its R&D spend) to this type of activity - now that would be radical!!

Innovation and entrepreneurship needs to be fostered, and the established tech companies have a responsibility to take part in that. More than that it is squarely in their interests to do say, as without home grown innovation it will not be possible to stay competitive in a globally demanding and dynamic market place.

Buyout funds are growing their activity in Israel

Here at Goldrock Capital, as a tech-focused growth equity investor, one of our investment theses since 2008 has been the expected emergence of international and local buyout activity to complement the existing strategic M&A activity within the technology markets in Israel.

This activity is a growing reality in Israel and we expect the trend to spread throughout the market. Many institutional shareholders in Israel have been reluctant to embrace this liquidity event, since generally the feeling is that strategic acquirers pay more than private equity buyers. This of course is true. But since many Israeli technology companies are "sub-scale" for large strategic acquirers, often a recapitalization is best for the company to continue strong growth and access opportunities that would otherwise be closed off within their existing capital structure.

We look forward to this continuing trend! Below is a list of funds and their respective buyout / recap transactions (in parenthesis) over the past few years:

JMI Equity (Paradigm Geophysical - 2012)
Apax (Paradigm Geophysical - 2012)
TPG (iMDSoft - 2012)
Summit (Touro - 2008, Answers.com - 2011)
TA (Answers.com - 2012, Alma Lasers - 2007)
Battery Ventures (Direct Insurance - 2010)
Premira (Netafim - 2011)
Citi Ventures (Ness - 2011)
W Capital Partners (Conduit - 2012)
Taldan Capital (Teledata - 2012, Sintec Media - 2011)
Susquehanna (Netformx - 2009, Skybox - 2011)
Great Hill Partners (Plimus - 2012)
Francisco Partners (Attenti - 2009, Ex-Libris - 2008)
Vector Capital (Aladdin - 2009)
The Riverside Company (NovaMed - 2008)

An important common denominator on the above purchases is that there is seldom a venture fund invested prior to the buyout. We believe that will change and more venture-backed companies will partner with buyout funds in the future.

I am sure I may have missed a few. If i did, please add them into the comments.

UK Tech as an Ecosystem

Really liked Ian Spence's thoughtful piece on the dynamics in the London public markets for UK software companies - you can find the full article here - http://tinyurl.com/cfxqj2c. Ian also referred to frustration (via Neil Rimer's blog) that the UK has not spawned signature IPO's matching the fizz of FB, Zynga, Linkedin, Groupon etc

One of the issues has certainly been that the capital released from the many "take privates" over the years has not been recycled by the City institutions into new IPO's and at best has been invested in the ever decreasing number of surviving companies.

Don't know if anyone has researched this yet, but it would be interesting to know what has happened to those PE backed companies within the UK tech sector that have then been re-financed or sold to strategics? What has become of that money and has it, on the whole, generated new wealth.

Bear in mind that there are probably more tech-minded PE firms in the UK than there are out and out VC funds. In the US and in Israel, it is the opposite, and whilst there is growth in the non-venture private tech strategies in both of these markets, they are both still dominated by the supply of venture for new businesses. The is the life-blood of new innovation, and certainly when you want to see ultra-ambitious and "global-domination" ambition.

A second issue has been that historically most of the public "software" companies in the UK are really IT services companies with differing levels of IP. By their nature, they have tended to be domestic and very few real IP-driven global businesses have been created or backed by the City.

The TechMARK itself is a hotch potch of engineering, telco, and IT services companies with a smattering of hardware thrown in. (Very few obvious exceptions like Autonomy (now HP of course), ARM, CSR and maybe Sage, which is global, although not a traditional global software company in the US sense of the word).

Finally, It is completely unrealistic to build an expectation that London can compete fairly with the US when you look at the make-up, size and global reach of the companies on both sides of the pond (Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, EMC etc vs Sage, Logica, Misys etc is just not a fair fight!), and hence why Ian's piece was thoughtful. It takes into account the risk appetite of the UK ecosystem and its long term affect on the type of companies that have and will be built and funded all the way through to being public.

Without a see-change (business culture, incentives, passion, risk appetite etc) this is the way it will continue to be, and in a macro environment that places a premium on cash-flow and visibility and a discount on future growth it will be even more sharply felt.

In Israel (where I am based) there is a much more mature strategic M&A market for tech companies and whilst some of this money recycles back out of Israel to the foreign VC's and institutions that have given their previous backing, much of the money is recycled into creating the next generation of start-ups.

The big question for the UK is whether they have the critical mass across the value chain to create this type of self-supporting ecosystem, and if not, what intervention is required to assist this in happening! (Your thoughts on a post card!)

What next for Dr Lynch?

It is no surprise that Mike Lynch and HP are parting company.


Hard to see how working for a US mega-corp was going to work for the founder of Autonomy having walked away with such an enormous cheque etc.


The big question is what's next for the UK's most successful technology entrepreneur? 


I don't know or have ever met Dr Lynch, so this is really just in the realm of speculation, but I would be surprised if he disappeared into the sunset following the exit from HP.


So what then are the options. In no particular order:

• Lead a new start up from scratch
• Use his wealth to invest in a series of tech companies, in the UK, or globally
• Acquire minority or controlling stakes in existing companies that he believes he can transform
• Join an existing VC or PE fund
• Philanthropy and public service, either to advance the cause of technology, education or other
• Some or all of the above!

There are not many truly global tech companies in the UK, and very few that have reached critical mass. In Mike Lynch the UK has someone who has seen this from "soup to nuts" and it would be great if he used this talent and experience to help others do the same.


As a direct consequence of the previous paragraph there is also a shortage of talented and experienced execs in the tech arena in the UK, which is part of the chicken and egg situation. 


Perhaps this is an area that Dr Lynch can apply his time and money to help nurture and promote the importance of growing the talent pool and its importance to the UK economy in the 21st century.

In any event I would want to wish him the best of luck in the rest of his life, having dedicated the last 15 years building the most successful British software company of its generation.

Sage R&D - bang for its buck (or pound)?

Sage announced their interim's this week, to the slight disappointment of the market. There is growing concern that as organic growth continues to trend in the mid-single digits, and acquisitions are hard to come by, the company will start to approach ex-growth with a knock-on effect to valuation etc.


George O (Panmure) picked up on the fact that Sage supports 270 different products on 70 different platforms.


He also made a headline comparison between R&D spend at Sage and some of its obviously comparable companies. Sage spends 11% of revenue on R&D, in contrast to 12.5% at Microsoft and 21% at Intuit. He adds that if anything there should be a higher spend on R&D than at present. (Note 5-year comparative share performance).


Whilst I accept this point, there is a more stark comment to be made. 


With 11% (or in absolute terms 160m GBP) invested annually in 270 different products on so many different platforms, the only real progress they can make is small incremental steps to maintain and evolve the products, at best, rather than push a more innovative product offering.


Within the other companies he mentioned (and true of most of the global software players) there is a global approach to product development and thus the effectiveness of the spend is magnified greatly.


Unless Sage allocates investment to blue sky thinking and more creative approaches to partnering/investing/acquiring tech rather than market share, they will continue to struggle in their efforts to generate real growth. Unfortunately attempts to generate these ideas internally have not yet been successful enough. One just has to look at the several years and attempts made by the company to launch a joined-up SaaS strategy, never mind product, to understand the difficulty it is in.


Given the amazing position that the company has, very large, global and loyal customer base, and a highly visible and reliable P&L, it could afford to be a little more expansive in its approach to creating long term growth engines for the business.


Part of the solution will be to realise that (at least for the time being) the era of growth via acquiring market share has passed. This will force the company into looking more organically for that growth.


I have always been of the view that there is sufficient talent within the company to rediscover the growth, it does however need to show confidence and leadership to make this happen. 

Professor Elmo explains the National debt in 1 graph

Its incomes that matter. Its incomes that pay the mortgages and supports small businesses. Not GDP. Government expenditure, however it is misspent, is incorporated into the GDP. But have the US citizens been helped? No. Increasing the national debt by 54% in the last 42 months has not had any affect whatsoever on income per capita. And thats in nominal terms. Add in inflation, and they're actually worse off than they were in 2006. To the tune of about 12%. 

Elmo cant make it any more obvious!

Falling unemployment - everything's fixed now? Part 2!!!

This is a follow-up to my previous posting found here: http://goldrockthoughts.blogspot.com/2012/03/falling-unemployment-everythings-fixed.html


Since my posting of earlier today, I have since been on the St. Louis Federal Reserve (FRED) website. I came across several fascinating graphs; which to me imply anything but a stellar recovery in the jobs market that the headlines are screaming out at you from every direction.


Consider that since the year 2000, the workforce has increased by some 33 million people:

wheras the number of total jobs, including full time jobs, part time jobs, temporary jobs, increased by a mere 4 million:

Of these 4 million new jobs, exactly ZERO of them, are full time jobs.

The number of new part time jobs? An additional 28 million jobs. And dont forget the part time jobs can just as easily be 20 hours a week, or an hour a week. Real earnings are falling and the number of jobs you can actually live on remains stuck at 115 million--all the "added jobs" are marginal: marginal hours worked, marginal security (temp), marginal pay (part-time=low pay and no benefits). Hardly the recipe for a roaring labor market.

Falling unemployment - everything's fixed now?

The latest unemployment report was released on Friday, showing the unemployment rate in the US steady (at a still elevated but falling) unemployment rate of 8.3%. I've long maintained that Employment is arguably the biggest problem that the Americans face today, as if you somehow manage to get people back in the workforce, all the other "problems" over time will fall into place. Government defecits, budget defecits, trade defecit, consumer confidence etc etc should all improve with an improvement in the labour force data. The US economy is a consumer led economy; however, for a real recovery, and confidence to return to allow the economy to get back on track, a real improvement in the jobs data is surely a pre-requisite.

Surely then falling unemployment can only be good news? Not necessarily.

Firstly, just to appreciate just how far we had fallen off a cliff, and what the rebound has looked like, lets compare the current cycle to previous ones.

We see quite clearly the extent of job losses in the current employment recession is in a league of its own when it comes to previous downturns in the job cycle; both in terms of extent and duration.

Surely though, a falling unemployment rate can only be a good thing?

The red line, shows the unemployment rate. 8.3% and sharply falling, yes, that is certainly an improvement. However, to be confident that a fall in unemployment will feed through to the real economy, one would like to see that the fall in unemployment rate would be accompanied by a rise in the participation rate, basically that the fall in the unemployment rate would be felt by a higher proportion of the population. Alas no. Extrapolating from the graph, the US is well on its way to becoming the first country with no unemployment, yet nobody participating in the labour force!!!

Yes, jobs ARE being created. But not enough. The steady/flat black line (employment/population ratio) is indicative that the number of jobs being created are only enough to keep up with the increase in population. 

But the news gets worse. The unemployment rate, and all the other statistics/graphs shown only deal with the quantity, they do not account for quality. Problem number 2, is that as with all statistics, the output is only as good as the input or assumptions made. The data in the labor force data, is subject to many revisions, often with a many year time-lag. Additionally, numbers are often not comparable, as a later consensus will suddenly show an additional x million people that previously hadn't been accounted for.

When looking at the quality of jobs generated, I prefer to go to the Feds website and look at tax data. Those figures are not played with whatsoever, there are no seasonal adjustments etc, nor is the data dependent on any population census. The numbers are reflective of the income tax received by the Government. No fudging whatsoever. A rising number is indicative of rising employment, and/or rising wages. And the numbers are startling.

The table is one that I made based on figures taken directly from the Feds website. They take 2 corresponding periods, the 4 month period from 1st October 2010 until 31st January 2012, and the corresponding period the following year. We can see that in the first period, the Government received $592.985B and over the course of the 4 months, there were an additional 571,000 jobs created. In the corresponding period the following year, the cumulative tax received by the Government FELL to $592.676B, despite an additional 715,000 new jobs created. Over the entire period, between 30th September 2010 and 31st January 2012, a period in which there were an ADDITIONAL 2.5 million jobs, aggregate tax revenue received fell. This means that yes, DESPITE new jobs being created, they were lower paid, poorer quality.

This is not a healthy state, and it seems to me to need some catalyst, to end this cycle. This has serious and substantial ramifications to the Treasury's forecasted debt issuance schedule. When issuing new debt, the Treasury works on many models, one of them being the rate of unemployment. Their working assumption of lower unemployment is going to need serious modification if the current trend of falling Government revenue despite falling unemployment continues.

And whilst I have focused on, and highlighted the negative trend in the US employment, Europe is in a far worse state.

  In the US, whilst the unemployment trend is very much down, in Europe and the UK it is still on the way up.

I think the graph is pretty self explanatory ...... and scary!!!

The full article as originally published in the New York TImes appears here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/the-dangerous-notion-that-debt-doesnt-matter.html