Category: Politics

Memoir Politics

From the Halls of Montezuma

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

The United States Marine Corps has one of the most storied histories in American military service, spanning over 250 years. The Marines were established in 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized two battalions of Marines to serve as a landing force for the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War. The first Marines were recruited at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, a date and place still celebrated in Corps tradition. After the Revolution, the Corps was briefly…

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Business Advice Memoir Politics

Snake Plissken Escapes America

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

Snake Plissken is the iconic fictional antihero from John Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981), played by Kurt Russell. He’s a former Special Forces soldier turned criminal, distinguished by his eye patch, gruff demeanor, and complete contempt for authority. The story drops him into a dystopian 1997 Manhattan that’s been walled off as a maximum-security prison, tasked with rescuing the President. Escape from New York is set in a near-future America (that would be the…

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Business Advice Memoir Politics

Futurevision

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

In 1983 I was asked to launch a futures and options subsidiary for my bank, Bankers Trust. Don’t stop reading because you think I am using this as a launchpad for another boring discussion of derivative products and how I was the Robert Oppenheimer of banking who helped create the atomic bomb of the financial world. This little futures and options subsidiary was intentionally a separate legal entity that would have its own subsidiaries to…

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Memoir Politics

Cuban Missiles 2026

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

I was literally born into the Cuban Revolution. My mother was working in Venezuela for the Rockefeller Foundation, my parents met and married in Caracas, and any and all travel back and forth to the United States took place through the Pan Am hub in Havana. The Cuban Revolution began in 1953, with Fidel Castro’s attack on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. By my birth math, I was three months in utero at…

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Business Advice Love Politics

Cry, The Beloved Media

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

We have all spent a lot of time over the past year watching the Ellison Dynasty exert its influence over global media. I managed to keep my thoughts to myself during the Warner Brothers / Discovery wars between Paramount and Netflix, not knowing who would inflict more change/harm on the things I cared about in the movie and media universe. But then Pete Hegseth had to step to the podium this weekend doing what all…

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Memoir Politics

Changing The World

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

It is hard these days not feeling like the world is getting changed from underneath us. I’m sure every generation feels this to some degree, but I am equally sure that some eras involve more of this feeling than others. The more change we are confronted with, the more we look for ways to grapple with the change and understand what’s going on or what’s driving it. I have noticed lately that lots of people…

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Business Advice Memoir Politics

1929 Redux

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

Last week when I gathered with my old motorcycle buddies, one of them, a guy who makes his living managing money for others, brought a copy of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s newest book, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. Sorkin is an interesting writer. He is the NYC-raised son of a playwright and Wall Street lawyer. He has a BS in communication from Cornell University, my Alma…

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Business Advice Memoir Politics

Bringing It Home

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

The United States has always had a special advantage against its global competitors and that’s it’s isolation in the Western Hemisphere. This is a geopolitical and historical point of differentiation that cuts across geography, economics, military history, and political development. The advantage has been enormous, though with some important nuances. In terms of the geographic advantage, the U.S. sits in what strategists sometimes call a “geopolitical paradise.” It is bounded by two vast oceans, two…

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Memoir Politics

Energy Crisis 2026

By Rich Marin | by Rich Marin

When I was in college in Ithaca New York, I experienced my first energy crisis. The 1970s energy crisis was actually two overlapping crises, each triggered by geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East. The first oil shock (1973–1974) began in October 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, starting the Yom Kippur War. The U.S. airlifted weapons to Israel to prevent its defeat. In retaliation, the Arab members of OPEC (the…

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