Apple rot starts with Samsung lawsuit win; Iron ore as the newest, biggest bubble; India's 'arranged' marriages; An India banker speaks his mind

1 Apple rot starts with Samsung lawsuit win (Michael Wolff in The Guardian) Apple came close to destroying its business in the late 1980s by pursuing a suit against Microsoft claiming that Windows infringed the look and feel of the Mac desktop metaphor. Apple focused its hopes and business future on this lawsuit, while its market share dwindled. Rather than competing, it litigated. And lost. Last week, it litigated against Samsung over its iPhone design and won.

The first justifiable conclusion might be that big companies get their way. The second might reasonably be that Apple doesn't change much: its business model remains aggressive self-righteousness. The third is what everybody knows: patent rules and philosophy are all screwed up.

The Apple that has won against Samsung is the same Apple that lost against Microsoft. In other words, it is the kind of company that, through sheer willfulness, discipline, and perfectionism, can achieve brand hegemony of a singular type. But it is, too, the kind of company that becomes, perhaps inevitably becomes, the bete noire of consumerists, regulators and, of course, most of all, its competitors. This is the story between the lines of its great victory and its further share price surge. On the one hand, there is this seemingly golden company. On the other hand, there is anybody with any sense of history knowing this is going to end badly.

Companies that acquire the nation's imprimatur often, if not invariably, over-reach. It is a characteristic of American capitalism: the price of getting really big and overbearing is that you incur an inverse reaction. In the early 1990s, an ambitious department of justice commenced its assault on Microsoft. For better or worse, by the time the feds were finished, the company, with its rotten operating system, besieged and beleaguered, had become just one of many not-very-adept players in the space. Apple, and its rotten phone, have a ways to go. But karma should not be underestimated as a factor in this game.

2 Iron ore as the newest, biggest bubble (The Guardian) Marc Faber, the Swiss investor and ultra bear, says there have been four mega bubbles in the past 40 years. In the 1970s it was gold; in the 1980s it was the Nikkei, and in the 1990s it was the Nasdaq. Bigger than all of them, though, has been the iron ore bubble, a tenfold increase in prices in less than a decade.

Iron ore is the raw material for steel, production of which has rocketed as a result of China's economic boom. Consider the following facts. In the past 15 years, China has built 90 million new homes – enough to house the populations of the UK, France and Germany combined. A quarter of global steel demand is for Chinese property and Chinese infrastructure.

China's economy is now slowing, and although the economic data is not particularly reliable, it seems to be slowing fast. The country has two million unsold homes, with another 30 million under construction. There is a glut of iron ore and the price is falling. Where does that leave Australia? Horribly exposed, quite obviously. It has an over-valued currency, an over-valued property market, and its major customer is now desperately pulling every available policy lever in the hope of avoiding a hard landing.

3 Outcry in India over vaginal cream (The Guardian) What do you think of when you hear the words "female empowerment"? Equal pay, the pill, the vote… Or, according to Indian pharmaceutical company, Ultratech, a tighter vagina. An advert for the dubiously named 18 Again, a "vaginal tightening and rejuvenation cream", has caused an outcry in India. The video is ridiculous, but it has prompted serious debate. While it is not the first cream of its kind it does demonstrate conflicting forces in modern Indian society. Attitudes to sexuality are beginning to relax, particularly in big cities – but conservative morality remains powerful.

For the vast majority of people in India, premarital sex is taboo. A survey in India showed the average age at which Indians lose their virginity dropping from 23 in 2006 to 19.8 in 2011. Behaviour, then, is changing, particularly in urban areas. But whatever people are doing behind closed doors, social attitudes are slower to catch up. While India is fast becoming the next superpower, this rapid economic growth is not matched by a corresponding sexual revolution.

Although India's enormous size and range in terms of development and attitudes makes it difficult to generalise, shame culture remains powerful and pervasive. The obsession with virginity – a manifestation of the desire to control the female body – is a symptom of this.

4 India's 'arranged' marriages (Dawn) An overwhelming majority of Indians prefer marriages arranged by family members instead of “love matches”, a survey showed, despite rapid social change in the country over recent decades. A total of 74% of respondents from across India voted in favour of traditional “arranged” marriages, according to the poll by private television channel NDTV.

Parents in India often choose husbands or wives for their children, although the trend for “love marriages” has grown during India’s economic transformation. The survey also found 89% of Indians preferred living in an extended family set-up rather than a “nuclear” family comprising only parents and children.

5 An India banker speaks his mind (The Wall Street Journal) It’s not often that cash reserve ratios make news. But they did this week in India, when a central bank official told a commercial banker to take a hike for suggesting the country should scrap the ratio. Central banks around the world ask lenders to keep a small percentage, or ratio, of their cash deposits with them. It’s a measure aimed at giving the central bank a war-chest to manage liquidity in the banking system and hopefully avoid instability.

Pratip Chaudhuri, chairman of the State Bank of India, a state-run commercial bank, complained last week he felt the ratio in India should be phased out as it helped no one and was draining scarce capital out of the financial system. That led to an angry retort by KC Chakrabarty, a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, the central bank, who said Mr. Chaudhuri should find “some other place” to do business, presumably not at a state-run bank. The question is whether Mr. Chaudhuri had a point.

“There are both plus and minuses to having a cash reserve ratio. But it can’t be totally abolished, though in the current times, offering some interest on these funds will help banks,” an economist said.