Cracking Up It’s falling apart for Trump…again. How many lives can this cat have? Is this a dead cat bounce or is he likely to rise again from the ashes and regain lost momentum? He was getting pummeled about his handling of El Paso and Dayton (while his fellow septuagenarian, Joe Biden was getting slammed for his thoughts on Houston and Michigan…ouch!) and then the markets started to gyrate. Out of desperation, he came…
The Empty Chair We now have the iconic symbol of the Trump presidency. As we have all seen, Trump chose to absent himself from the G-7 meeting on Global Climate Change. He literally was a no-show, leaving an empty chair at the roundtable of world leaders. There are several ways to interpret this phenomenon. To begin with, there are a series of empty chair metaphors. I suppose it is possible that as a student…
The Eisenhower Cohort General Dwight David Eisenhower (a.k.a. Ike) was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces throughout its existence. That is when we all know he guided the efforts of Operation Overlord 75 years ago and pushed for the reclamation of continental Europe from the clutches of the fascist Nazi war machine. The books and stories that recount those daring days are plentiful and we have almost all seen some version of the…
Pavlov’s Dilemma In high school, a friend of mine wrote a paper titled Rascal Rasputin Rampages Russia about the end of the Romanov Empire and the lead-up to the Bolshevik Revolution, one of the most impactful populist overthrows in human history, and a mere 100 years ago. When I was in college, I was a dual major in Economics and Government with a focus on development economics. I spent some considerable time studying comparative…
We Need a Hero A rainy night, a lonely road, a scratchy windshield wiper, a flash of light from the sky, and a roaring turbine with a sick metallic whine. Then Dustin Hoffman, his face covered in aviation grease and his wet and soggy socks dragging from his limping feet, wanders up the muddy slope after saving fifty-four airline passengers from the exploding inferno that was flight 104 from New York. Andy Garcia is a…
No Joking Zone I am a strong believer in the value of a sense of humor. To me, being able to joke around about things sets people at ease and helps to break down the hierarchical barriers that often prevent the level of open communications that are essential in good management. There are many cautionary signs these days about what one jokes about. Since many people create jokes that are either off-color or politically-incorrect…
While Rome Burns Back in 1989 I went to the Amazon on a side-trip connected to a business trip to Brazil. In the prior five years, I had been back and forth to Latin America dozens of times as I ran first the Latin debt crisis team and then built from the ashes the Emerging Markets Department of Bankers Trust. During that time Brazil was our biggest debtor at over $1 billion and one…
The Sovereign State of Mine, Mine, Mine Yes, you heard that tight, Donald Trump is having a temper tantrum over a place he’s never been, has only 50,000 indigenous inhabitants (the size of Sheboygan, Wisconsin), and has only one and a half golf courses, one of which appears to be on a glacier or something similar. What it does have is a lot of land, with less and less ice and something called rare…
Ostrich Outreach I am reading about Quantum Technology and China’s push to dominate the space while Jamie Dimon and the Business Roundtable redefine the basis of corporate purpose to go beyond pure shareholder value. Something he has chosen to support since Rep. Katie Porter schooled him on the cost of living in Irvine, California. When you combine those thoughts with the goings on in China and Hong Kong and the shifting sands of capitalism and…
Hardballing The latest poll (indeed, a Fox News poll) about the general election in 2020 is out today and it stacks up Trump against all the leading Democratic contenders. The issue of who wins is not in contention with these polls. Ever since they began taking them in May, Biden, as the leading Democratic candidate, has gravitated between a spread of +2 to +13. Biden is currently at +12 (with three other candidates trouncing Trump…