BY HIS own account Christopher Hitchens, an author who died in 2011, was a poor student. He left Oxford with a third-class degree. This was not for want of ability. Hitchens would become a prolific essayist and fearsome debater. Rather, it was a choice. His tutors warned him about neglecting his studies. But he preferred to divide his time between his social life, political protests, books (other than the prescribed ones) and lively debates with other thinkers.
As Hitchens’s counterexample demonstrates, it is possible to regret the opportunities missed while striving for top grades. It is a lesson that many of America’s biggest companies have grasped. At one time, the sort of company that could tap the bond market for capital would be given an A-grade as a matter of course. These days the typical corporate-bond issuer has a credit-rating of BBB, only a notch above a junk rating (see chart).
That might seem to imply that business has become less efficient or lucrative. Yet profits have…
