I’m sure you remember when you were a kid that someone in your family would make a comment about eating your dinner as served to you on your dinner plate. There were the usual, “What about the starving kids in Europe?” comments that were popular after WWII for a few years. That would get complemented in the sixties by the wise-ass kids at the table asking with tongue-in-cheek, “Yeah, but what’s about the youth-in-Asia (euthanasia)?”…
I’m in New York City this morning having arrived here at the Cornell Club about 12 hours ago. I was out of the air condition cab and had to walk about 10 feet to the air-conditioned lobby of the club and I must say I was surprised at how how hot and humid it was for that few seconds that I was outside. It was a good reminder of just how muggy it can get…
The other day I read a piece about the supposed consequences of electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, a notion that has gripped the financial press for a few weeks now. I even saw a post from my favorite financial writer, Bill Cohen, that stated that his conversations in the market indicated that Wall Street was far less worried about the U.S. bombing Iran than they were about Mamdani winning the Democratic…
The other day I read a piece about the supposed consequences of electing Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, a notion that has gripped the financial press for a few weeks now. I even saw a post from my favorite financial writer, Bill Cohen, that stated that his conversations in the market indicated that Wall Street was far less worried about the U.S. bombing Iran than they were about Mamdani winning the Democratic…
One way to tell old school people from new age people is to watch what they do at Starbucks when its time to pay. It used to be that we would roll our eyes when someone used a card to pay for a coffee. It felt like that person was skating on thin financial ice, putting something as small as a coffee on a credit card. Of course it could have been a debit card,…
The year I started working after business school, 1976, ABBA released their hit song, Money, Money, Money with the tag line, “It’s a rich man’s world.” I recently read that in the clamber to build out AI capabilities as quickly as possible, the expanding array of AI companies, ranging from the monster tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as the start-ups like Safe Superintelligence (SSI) that are popping up like mushrooms after…
At various times, the classic white shirt has been denigrated as stodgy and yet used repeatedly by cool dudes with the top few buttons open to exemplify the height of refined male couture. When I went to work in NYC after business school in 1976, the white shirt was more the former than the latter. It was legendary that if you worked at IBM you had no choice, you had to wear a white shirt…
Yes, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys died at age 82 after a life of brilliant song writing and multiple bouts with drug abuse and mental illness. Brian Wilson was absolutely brilliant – one of the true geniuses of popular music. He was the creative mastermind behind The Beach Boys’ sound, writing and arranging those incredible harmonies and melodies that defined the California sound of the ’60s. His work on Pet Sounds (Rolling Stone considers…
Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, free markets, voluntary exchange, and the pursuit of profit. It emerged as the dominant economic system in Western societies during the Industrial Revolution, replacing feudalism and mercantilism. The key features of capitalism include several socio-economic elements. There is private property rights wherein individuals and businesses, rather than the state, own capital assets like land, factories, and equipment. There is market-based allocation…
Inherited wealth has been a defining feature of human societies throughout history, shaping social structures, economic systems, and political power dynamics across civilizations. In early agricultural societies, the concept of inherited wealth emerged alongside private property ownership. Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greek civilizations developed sophisticated inheritance laws, with wealth typically passed down patrilineally. Roman law established detailed inheritance frameworks that influenced Western legal traditions for centuries, including concepts like wills, trusts, and legitimate heirs. The…