He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle, and he does not score many goals. Apart from that, he’s all right - Football legend George Best on David Beckham.

David Beckham is considered as God’s Gift to Soccer in Britain and a celebrity even in his new home, the U.S.

Five years back, our own Gurinder Chaddha made a popular English movie - Bend it Like Beckham - featuring two football crazy British girls (Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley) who are in awe of Beckham’s prowess with the ball.

But a recent article by writer Aleksandar Hemon in New Republic (subscription required) does such a thorough hatchet job on Beckham in the context of his $250 million deal with L.A. Galaxy that it will change the way you think of this football celebrity.

Not content with describing Beckham as “an occasionally good player”, Hemon goes on to lash the soccer star as “being the most overrated and Continue Reading…

In an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), economist Arvind Subramanian questions the wisdom of providing foreign aid to poor countries.

In a piece titled Farewell to Alms (borrowing from Hemingway’s famous Farewell to Arms), Subramanian, a senior Fellow at the Washington DC think tank Center for Global Development argues that foreign aid damages governance and makes the receiving economy uncompetitive.

Subramanian seeks to debunk the Burnside-Dollar thesis that foreign aid works best when accompanied by good policies and effective local institutions. He argues in the WSJ piece that:

[A]s researchers pored over the data, it became increasingly difficult to maintain that there was any systematic relationship between aid and long-run economic growth.

Citing his research with Raghuram Rajan, Subramanian argues that in countries getting foreign aid, the export industries underperformed.

In Subramanian’s view, providing foreign aid distracts Continue Reading…

It seems like there’s no end in sight to Dell’s problems.

Just after disclosures of fraud in its accounting, Dell’s having serious problems shipping some of its laptops and desktops.

The problems couldn’t have come at a worser moment for Dell because the lucrative Back to School season is getting started in the U.S.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has a story with the details:

Persistent delays in laptop shipments caused by paint problems and supply constraints have put a crimp in the company’s turnaround efforts. Since late July, it has delayed shipments of some colorful models of its latest notebook computers, the XPS M1330 and its new Inspiron PCs. This latest incident — hitting right in the crucial back-to-school selling season — marks a significant setback in its push to rebuild its brand and business.

Apparently, Dell’s been facing issues of dust contamination in Continue Reading…

U.S. venture major Greylock Partners has invested in Indian electronic payment processing outfit TechProcess Solutions (formerly BillJunction).

The size of the investment has not been disclosed.

Greylock executives Asheem Chandna and Ganesh Rengaswamy are managing the investment in TechProcess.

TechProcess was originally backed by ICICI Ventures. TechProcess’ CEO Bikramjit Sen was an ICICI executive in the project financing group.

TechProcess provides Continue Reading…