ITHRON PERSPECTIVES · Launch Post What This Is — and Why It Exists

An introduction to Ithron Perspectives: what we cover, how we think, and what subscribing gets you that a one-time read doesn't.

There is no shortage of financial and strategic commentary. There is a significant shortage of commentary that is analytically serious without being ideologically captured, historically grounded without being nostalgic, and willing to reach uncomfortable conclusions without dressing them in the language of either political tribe.

Ithron Perspectives exists to occupy that gap.

I am Michael B. Grotell, the principal of Ithron — an independent advisory and investment banking firm focused on M&A, capital raising, and strategic advisory for growth-stage companies. I have spent the better part of two decades at the intersection of strategy, transactions, and the capital markets: building and selling businesses, advising founders through the most consequential decisions of their professional lives, and trying to understand why some organizations compound value while most don't.

I have also, for as long as I can remember, read widely outside the boundaries of what my professional context strictly required. The economists and historians and philosophers whose work I've found most useful are not always the ones who appear in business school curricula. Fernand Braudel on the longue durée. Hyman Minsky on financial instability. Jules Dupuit on marginal cost pricing — writing in 1844, anticipating every significant development in SaaS pricing strategy by 180 years. Thucydides on what happens when a dominant power makes its logic explicit without restraint. These are not decorative references. They are the frameworks I actually use when I'm trying to understand what is happening in a market, a transaction, or an economy.

The frameworks I find most useful are the ones that have survived long enough to be tested against history. Ideas that are still standing after a century tend to be standing for a reason.

This publication is the written version of that thinking — applied to the questions I find most worth asking about markets, capital, strategy, and the dynamics that determine which businesses and ideas endure.

What we cover

The range is deliberately wide, because the questions I find most interesting don't respect disciplinary boundaries.

On the macro side: monetary policy and its consequences, the dollar system and its fragility, the ZIRP era and what it did to capital allocation, the AI investment cycle and how to think about it honestly, and the geopolitical dynamics that are reshaping global capital flows in ways that most financial commentary hasn't caught up to yet. These posts will be analytical rather than predictive — I have views, and I'll state them clearly, but I'm more interested in helping readers think through the underlying dynamics than in providing confident forecasts of things that are genuinely uncertain.

On strategy and transactions: the M&A and capital markets work that Ithron does, written at the level of principle rather than procedure. What investors actually find in diligence. How competitive positioning works and why most companies get it wrong. The game theory of deal structures. What founders consistently misunderstand about the sale process before it starts. This is practitioner writing — the perspective of someone who has been in the room.

On intellectual history: the economists, strategists, historians, and writers whose work has shaped how I think about business and markets — often in ways that are not widely known in professional circles. The goal is not erudition for its own sake. It is to surface frameworks that are genuinely useful and that don't appear in the standard business literature because their authors were not writing for business audiences.

And, increasingly, real-time analysis: when something significant happens in markets, in policy, or in the transaction environment, I want to apply the analytical frameworks directly to the specific event rather than just gesture at relevance. The catalog of posts on this Substack is designed to make that possible — each real-time piece will be grounded in something already written here, so the analysis has intellectual roots rather than appearing from nowhere.

How we think

A few positions that are worth stating at the outset, because they will be visible in everything that follows.

Analytically non-partisan. I have views. Some of them are politically inconvenient in one direction, some in the other. My commitment is to follow the evidence rather than to maintain consistency with any prior ideological position. The petrodollar analysis I've published here reaches conclusions that will irritate people across the political spectrum. That is not a failure of calibration. It is the goal.

Epistemically honest. David Hume's problem of induction — the impossibility of deriving logical certainty about the future from observations of the past — is not a technicality. It applies to every financial forecast, every market prediction, and every strategic plan. I will try to be clear about the difference between what the evidence supports and what requires assumptions that go beyond the evidence. Confident conclusions will be clearly distinguished from calibrated uncertainty.

Historically grounded. The frameworks that have survived long enough to be tested against history tend to be standing for a reason. Minsky identified the mechanism of financial instability in the 1970s and was vindicated in 2008. Thucydides documented the self-destructive logic of imperial overextension in 415 BC and the pattern has recurred consistently since. Goodhart identified the relationship between measurement and gaming in 1975 and every major corporation is living with the consequences. Using old frameworks to analyze new events is not conservatism — it is taking seriously the possibility that the relevant patterns predate the current cycle.

I will try to be clear about the difference between what the evidence supports and what requires assumptions that go beyond it. Confident conclusions will be clearly distinguished from calibrated uncertainty.

Willing to be wrong. I will reach conclusions. Some of them will be wrong. When the evidence changes or when I discover I've missed something, I'll say so directly rather than letting wrong positions stand because retracting them is uncomfortable. This is not a virtue — it is the minimum requirement for maintaining the trust of an audience that is reading for genuine analysis rather than for confirmation.

A note on process

This publication uses AI tools in its research and drafting process. The analysis, positions, and intellectual frameworks are my own — the thinking is mine, the theses are mine, the specific historical and theoretical references reflect my actual reading and my actual views. The AI assists with research, structure, and drafting in the way that a very capable research associate might — it does not generate the ideas or substitute for the judgment that goes into them.

I'm disclosing this because I think the alternative — not disclosing it — would be a version of Cicero's grain merchant problem, which I've written about elsewhere. The practice is increasingly common and will become more so. Being straightforward about it seems both more honest and more interesting than pretending otherwise.

What subscribing gets you

The free tier will include the full catalog of evergreen posts — the intellectual history pieces, the macro analysis, the strategy and transaction writing — as it is published. These will also appear on the Ithron website.

Paid subscribers will receive the real-time analysis pieces first, before they are archived on the website. They will also receive occasional longer-form pieces on specific transactions, market developments, or analytical frameworks that warrant more depth than a standard post. And they will receive direct access — I will read and respond to subscriber questions and will occasionally make specific analytical questions the basis for a post.

The honest pitch for the paid subscription is not that the content is withheld from free subscribers. It is that paying for independent analysis that you find genuinely useful is the mechanism by which independent analysis continues to exist. The alternative — content supported by advertising, by banking relationships, or by the need to maintain access to institutional sources — produces the ideologically captured, conflicts-managed commentary that this publication exists to be different from.

The first batch of posts — covering the dollar system, the ZIRP era and its aftermath, the AI investment cycle, competitive strategy, and several pieces on the economic history that I find most directly applicable to the current environment — is live now. Start anywhere. The catalog is designed so that each post stands alone, but the posts reinforce each other across the range.

If something resonates, share it with someone who would find it useful. That is how independent publications grow, and it is the form of support that matters most at the beginning.

More soon.

— Michael B. Grotell

Principal, Ithron  ·  ithron.co

ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION

Ithron Perspectives publishes analytical writing on macro, markets, strategy, and the intellectual history that underlies them. Posts appear weekly, with additional real-time analysis when events warrant. The publication is written by Michael B. Grotell, principal of Ithron, an independent advisory and investment banking firm. Nothing published here constitutes investment advice.