It’s Time to Unleash the Public Markets

Amar Bhidé

Jan 02, 2026, 10:07 am EST

Here is a new Barron’s op-ed endorsing the SEC’s “rapacious deregulatory zeal.” Lest you think me a MAGA fanatic, my previous op-ed attacked the lawlessness of Trump’s tariffs. John Authers approvingly remembers my 2010 book arguing for tough banking rules as  “straightforward polemic.” 

Free-thinking, open-minded discourse is also at the heart of a “Council for Transformative Enterprise” that some colleagues and I are promoting. We are inspired by Ned Phelps’s now defunct Center on Capitalism and Society. (A couple of us were founding members of the Center and I started and edited its eponymous journal.)  However, our renewal project emphasizes progress in Science, Technology and Art, more strongly. Its aims also align closely with my course on transformative medical advances.

Here’s a one-page summary. If you would like to help organize the Council and participate in its activities, please email me.

And if anyone would consider a “naming” gift–or housing it in an existing Foundation – and shaping its mission  we’d be immensely grateful.

Wishing you all a happy new year! The world was less awful in 2025 than in 2024. May it continue this trajectory.

I was googling my mother who died in Jan 1999 and thrilled to find this. The article is a year old. She had no connection with Varanasi. Who I wonder was so kind to remember her work?
Putting aside the immense personal gratification and misplaced pride, I wondered why Varanasi, a holy place, a spiritually moving place, but not the most obvious location for cancer research.
My mother’s home institute was the Cancer Research Institute in Parel, Bombay’s medical district. The research institute was a wing of Tata Memorial Hospital, the then go to place for cancer treatment in India.
Started by the farsighted Tatas both were, improbably, under the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than the Health Ministry — and thus under the Federal/Central government rather than the State/local government, like some of the other teaching hospitals in the ‘hood. (My sister went to GS Medical, a prestigious medical school attached to a municipal hospital.)
That was the pattern after Independence: creating a few showcase institutions under the Federal government, money no object. Thus, five Indian Institutes of Technology (I attended one). Three Indian Institutes of Management. The All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi…
These showcases were “successful” in attracting the brightest and best students. But the teaching was mediocre at best, and as far as the research goes, let’s say no Nobel prizes came from the immense investment made by the state.
Now, under political pressure, the showcases have proliferated. I have lost count of the number of new IITs and IIMs.  The Tata Memorial Center — which remains under the control of Central Government’s Atomic Energy Commission — has started ten cancer treatment and research centers, many far from major urban centers.
Perhaps it’s because it’s cheaper to construct facilities there. But how many top-notch researchers will join.
More likely it’s the more populist enthusiasms of the Modi government. If the IITs and Tata memorial names are valued brands, spread the brands around!
And who is to say this is so wrong? Yes the brand is diluted — but they weren’t doing great teaching or research to start with.
The policy is very like the National Institutes of Health’s in the US. The NIH operates 27 Institutes and Centers. Many are in Bethesda but not all. Spreading the goodies around helps attract political support. In Defense procurement as well.

Published Aug 23 2025

“By now, it must have dawned on elite universities that the Trump administration’s campaign against them won’t end soon. Even if the administration moves on, private universities will remain under pressure as long as they depend on public funding and they maintain untenable rules governing campus speech.

“Fixing those problems would require changes that go far beyond what many universities would consider. Yet battles over restricting speech appear to pose an existential threat. The only path to real academic independence is for universities to shed their dependency on big money and institute true political neutrality—changes few universities have seriously contemplated.

Read More here

Guy Spier, a wise and intellectually curious former student (from HBS), now a Zurich based value manager hosted this stimulating conversation about my book and many other matters!