Today begins the Chinese Year of the Ox. I wasn’t sure how much stock to put in the Chinese Year of the ___ stuff. (Right now I’m not buying stock in anything.) Then I had a brainstorm. I can easily see if there is anything to this Chinese New Year stuff by looking back at […]
I was still feeling kind of swishy in my belly this week as I read about various CEOs who brought down fat bonuses by bringing down their banks. And I was thinking, what is it that a top-of-the-line CEO does to bring down one of the world’s largest banks that makes him or her worth […]
When the present economic downfall was really getting under way last fall, Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, was lauded around the world for scooping up Merrill Lynch in a fire sale. What a brilliant man, the world thought, for picking up a Rolls Royce like Merrill Lynch for pennies on the dollar. […]
The Congressional Budget Office recently announced that the United States will be running its first trillion-dollar deficit this year — $1.2 Trillion if we count the pocket change. That’s about three times more than it’s been in any other year. Most Americans seem ready to agree with congress that this is necessary in order to […]
In June of 2008, U.S. President George Bush taught us that “one of the things important about history is to remember the true history.” With that as our guide, and this being the final days of a truly historic presidency, I’d like to reflect on the wisdom of the previous year that got us where […]
“It’s too big to fail, it’s too big to fail,” has been the mantra of the U.S. government bailout program. If crises occur because these organizations are such behemoths that a single institution falling can cripple the economy under it, why have the top gurus in the Bush administration insisted upon making each institution far […]
During the winter of our discontent, which was January and February of 2008, the Bush administration fiddled as the U.S. was falling. While the Gurus of Government played happy music on their violins, singing that the economy was “fundamentally sound,” I was telling friends that we had entered a recession that had all the makings […]
How do thousands of the world’s supposedly most brilliant investors fall for a con like Bernard Madoff and lose their shirts and slacks? The puzzle is not to explain how one person can be such a great con. There was nothing genius about his plan. His form of pyramid scheme, known as a Ponzi scheme, is one […]
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