I pick titles to my stories in several ways. Sometimes I hear an interesting turn of phrase in a movie or on some TV news or read it in an article and it just resonates with me, so I write to capture what it invoked in me when I heard or read it. Sometimes I have a decided theme in mind and I search for a word to describe it and when I capture that,…
Thirty years ago I ran the retirement business of Bankers Trust Company. BTCo. was founded in 1903 by J.P. Morgan (the man) and his other banking pals who thought it would be smart to put all their trust business in one institution that he and his pals controlled. BTCo. Grew to become the second largest trust bank in the country. When I was asked to take over the Retirement Services business with it’s 4,000 employees,…
The power of media is a longstanding source of commercial interest among the wealthiest people of the world. I recently saw a documentary by Ken Burns about Benjamin Franklin, the man often referenced as the most globally powerful American of his era and perhaps the most influential Founding Father of what has become the most powerful country in the world. Franklin was indeed an influential figure in early American media, and was so significant in…
I have been a CEO of eight companies (I actually had business cards that said CEO) during my career and I have run fourteen distinct businesses for which I was the primary decider of strategy and tactics. The term Chief Executive Officer seems like its a week defined role, but saying you are a CEO can range from being the head of a small start-up company with two people and a dog, to being the…
I feel like I am less inclined these days to write about politics, but that may or may not be true if you tally my stories about politics versus those about everything else. What I do sense is that I want to hold back and not just repeat my shock and awe over every new challenge put forth by the Trump team. I feel like I’m happy to let the system and others more activist…
I am quickly coming to the conclusion that it is simply getting too damn hard to pursue the American Dream in the way in which we have all grown up to know it. What I am talking about is independent, free-standing home ownership. There are many reasons for this conclusion, but I will start with one and ramble from there. This Dream is predicated on what used to be one of the key differentiators about…
For years now, I have thought to myself that I simply don’t understand why people listen to podcasts. Meanwhile podcasting has grown to become one of the most profitable mediums (to the podcaster) with the most audience appeal and an absolute influence on the political scene. It is now being said that Joe Rogan single-handedly won this election for Trump by swaying 11-15 million listeners (mostly young males) to the Trump camp, thanks to his…
I am sitting in the hot tub on an overcast Autumn day. It’s the first time -in many weeks that I have used the hot tub, and I feel like I have earned it by virtue of working most of the day on two active cases, one of which is at the stage of finalizing the report for submission to the court of arbitration, and the other is heading into a full day deposition tomorrow…
I wrote yesterday about Bill Ackman and his support of Trump. One of Bill Ackman’s 33 reason why he dislikes the Biden/Harris agenda was: #8 – “promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due…
I used to be a Crocs guy. They were my casual shoe of choice for a long time. By the time I moved out here to this hilltop for retirement, coming on five years ago now, my shoe wardrobe consisted of a whole array of $450 Allen Edmonds work shoes of all kinds. I would say I was 70% into black with the others all oxblood maroon. I found those colors were the most appealing…