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…
Immigrants Everywhere This morning, two of my friends, Kevin and Roger, are on a motorcycle ride in Mexico that they wanted me to join them on. My teaching obligation made that impossible, but that hasn’t stopped them from sending me their usual array of inane texts with sophomoric humor and political undercurrent. This morning they are preparing to head back home so I got a string of emails making fun of how much money they…
It’s the Economy, Stupid There is much discussion in the air about how to keep the economy strong. This is always a big topic at any time, but I think it is fair to say that it is almost the only issue that really affects everyone. Issues like abortion may be an example of a non-economic issue (though I bet someone could draw a loose connection), but whether we are talking about infrastructure, immigration, defense…
All About Tesla No matter which way I turn these days, I am running into Tesla. TO start with, as I have reported, I own a Tesla X that is now five years old and has a whopping 11,000 miles on the odometer. I have full autonomous functionality on the car and have used it only a half dozen times to show friends how it works. Quite frankly, I’m not a fan of autonomous driving,…
The Antisocial Network Facebook can’t seem to help itself from getting in the news at every turn. It has achieved what I’m sure many people would have declared as unlikely and that is to get just about everyone against them. Watching the 2010 Jesse Eisenberg rendition of Mark Zuckerberg as he spawnsThe Facebook from his Harvard dorm room out of spite for the woman who spurned his affections, you do get a prescient view of…
New Age Finance I am teaching a course this semester in Advanced Corporate Finance. The traditional topics of such a course are the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), capital structure, debt and equity, risk management, projections and valuations. While those fundamentals still have value as a baseline, the truth is that with only that skill set it is unlikely that any person in the class would be able to make the necessary decisions to…
Easy Come, Easy Go I put in a bunch of expert witness work in August and September. In fact, I put in a total of 180 hours. In addition to that, I was preparing for and launching my course in Advanced Corporate Finance. I suppose that was another 40 hours of work. In the tradition of the 40-hour work week, those nine weeks would produce a time card of 360 hours. My math tells me…