New Story – Old Saga I’m sitting at the San Diego Airport with Kim, having just had a mediocre burger before boarding a Red-eye flight on Jet Blue to NYC. We get in at 5am at JFK and then hopefully get our checked bags (filled with Christmas gifts for the kids) fast enough to schlep over to the cab stand, which is a country mile from the main Terminal 5, and get on the GCP…
The Ethical Dimension Next semester I will be teaching a course a course at the University of San Diego that is a required course for all MBA students. It is called Law, Policy and Ethics, but the course is really about the ethics of business. It has long been my objective to teach such a course, so I am working very hard to make it a good one and not just a collection of stories…
Paying Your Share I have been lately using what I will call a Donald Trump tax trick. I lost a bundle a few years ago on a perfectly valid attempt to launch a business with my son. Many of my friends attended Winter Wonderland on Staten Island so they know I spent a lot of money making that extravaganza work in one sense (the attraction was well-attended) and not work in another (for various reasons…
Alternative Facts Today I got an email from my Department Chair (in Finance) at University of San Diego. He asked me if I would be willing to add a half of a course to my Spring 2022 schedule. It seems there is a need in the Masters of Finance program for someone to teach one half of a short course on Alternatives. There is an existing professor of real estate finance who will teach half…
The End of the Blockchain My personal history with blockchain began in 2014 when I was the Chairman of a new venture capital company called Green Visor Capital. It was started by a fellow Cornell MBA named Simon Yoo and I agreed to help him launch by signing on as a General Partner and, indeed, by serving as its first Chairman. That situation existed for about a year and then I passed the title over…
Uninsurable Kim is running around the house singing Uninsurable to the tune of Unforgettable by Nat King Cole. I got a notice yesterday from my long-time insurer, Chubb, who advised me that they will not be renewing my homeowners insurance coverage in 2022 due to the California wildfire issue. It seems that they have struck some sort of reinsurance deal that precludes them for renewing us hard-case daredevil Californians who choose to live in harm’s…
Declaring War Today, the Department of Justice began its court proceedings against Steve Bannon for his role as one of the leaders of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol Building. Bannon, the ultimate devotee of the notion that any publicity is good publicity went on the record saying that he and his like were using this indictment as a red flag to signal that they are now going on offense against the Biden Administration…
Strictly Business I have been reading about the travails of Jes Staley as he exits his job as CEO of Barclays Bank in London. He has left his post because the UK regulators have done a comprehensive investigation into the way in which he characterized his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the indicted and now deceased alleged perpetrator of many sex crimes including and especially involving many young women whose lives have been altered or ruined…
Treat Arbitrage Kim and I spend a lot of time commenting to each other about Betty. Try as we might, we are not fully able to understand what floats Betty’s boat other than the immediate gratification of as much food as she can possibly eat. Indeed, there seem to be no limits to how much she thinks she can eat and is apparently stuck in that mindset of deprivation which probably defined most of her…
Bootstrapping Bootstrapping is a complicated word. Much more complicated than I had imagined until I started looking into it. I would ask you to play along with me and make a note to yourself about what you think of when someone uses the term bootstrapping. I don’t want to bias your thought process by adding a context. The term derives from the small leather loop or tab at the back of a man’s boot that…