The 8 Billion Person Paradox National Geographic magazine continues to amaze me and feed me information that is relevant to the most important issues we face today. The April, 2023 issue just arrived on my doorstep with a cover graphic that looks like the earth transformed into some combination of a high-viz articulated world map and a funky coronavirus with spiky outcroppings. The large title emblazoned across the globe simply declared “8 BILLION” with a…
Tik-Tik-Tock, China’s on the Block My son Tom made his chops at Shake Shack a few years ago by bringing his Gen Z perspective to their marketing department by suggesting that they would benefit by using TikTok for getting their product message out to the young target market that they wanted to attract. He had been using the TikTok app to generate personal mini videos that gave him a creative outlet for his video making…
Chinese Menu We have just seen the conclusion of a pow-wow between Xi Jianping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia. In theory this should be no big deal since the dynamic duo have met together over 25 times (I heard a pundit say it was 40 times, but I can only verify 25 or so of those), and that’s a lot. That speaks to a number of things, not the least of which is…
Insuring Eternity Back in the late 1970’s when I was beginning my career in banking, I was traveling across New England almost every week, visiting a combination of banks and insurance companies to sell them our banking services. I was a member of FI or financial institutions side of the bank. For some strange reason, the FI side of banking was always the red-headed step-child of the banking business compared to the corporate side. The…
Here I Go Again Kim worked for David Coverdale in the 80’s when she started working in L.A. trying to jump-start her musical theater career. She was the personal assistant for the band Whitesnake, who came out with the song in 1982 on the Saints & Sinners album. I’ve always liked the song and did even before I met Kim. There is something so familiar and lonely all at once about the lyrics that suggest…
The Golden Door There is a spa near us, just down the hill on Deer Springs Road across the highway and towards San Marco. It is tucked away quietly on what looks like a quiet winding country road set between the hills. That road is very much like that except for two times a day when it acts as a shortcut between the 78 and the 15 North and gets jammed for about an hour…
Tanks, I Needed That It has been almost a year now since Russia invaded Ukraine in its latest round of aggression against its former significant satellite country to the west. They began their hostilities against Ukraine in the same month (February) in 2014, but the world was in a significantly different place vis-a-vis Russia back then and the global community more or less stood by and let Russia have its way with parts of Ukraine,…
The Population Irony In 2013 I published my first book about the global pension crisis. Pensions involve demographics and the demographics of China at the time were screaming that the thirty plus year old one-child policy of China was becoming an economic and pension issue for China. The fundamental issue is that economic growth cannot be had without population growth. It is an economic credo that is hard to avoid. And China had implemented what…
The Hot Seat Today I am sitting in the breakfast room wearing a blue suit and tie, like I did for the better part of forty-five years during my working life on Wall Street. As much as I am unused to strapping on my business armor at this point in life, I ws never that bothered by dressing the part during my working life. I had gone to four years of prep school during my…
The Hot Seat Today I am sitting in the breakfast room wearing a blue suit and tie, like I did for the better part of forty-five years during my working life on Wall Street. As much as I am unused to strapping on my business armor at this point in life, I ws never that bothered by dressing the part during my working life. I had gone to four years of prep school during my…