I was in business as an employee for fifteen years before I began to be a student of it. It started when I went into business for myself. That was twenty three years ago. It’s amazing how interesting even the most mundane elements of business can become when you’re betting all of your own assets on the outcome. I realized at the time of my entrepreneurial launch that I needed to learn a lot more than I knew, so I read about small business management, subscribed to the Harvard Business Review, started reading books that would have never made it to the nightstand had I not taken the leap, went to seminars and conferences, etc.
The mind of the market
Posted in Strategy and the Big Picture
Comments Off on The mind of the market
Free markets or John Maynard Keynes?
[This column was written a few years ago on a visit with friend Bob to Latvia. Its theme seems pertinent to the current election debates about what to do with our economic engine in the U.S.]
Capitalism has gotten a bloody nose over the last couple of decades, given the implosion of the financial markets, the incredible greed of certain Wall Street tycoons and the self-inflicted destruction of future wealth represented by our American appetite for debt-financed lifestyles. But lest we think the entire capitalistic proposition is bankrupt, a reminder of the failures of other economic experiments is in order.
Posted in Politics and Business
Comments Off on Free markets or John Maynard Keynes?
Bribed with our own money
Peter Schiff’s role model is an incarcerated felon, his father. The crime? Tax evasion. Irwin Schiff is 84 years old, and has served nine years of a 13 year sentence. The elder Schiff played a prominent role in challenging the Constitutional support for income taxes.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Posted in Politics and Business
Comments Off on Bribed with our own money
We have met the enemy and he is us
How many times will this simple observation be a revelation? Uttered humbly and powerfully in 1971 by one of the most influential leaders of our time—the cartoon strip character Pogo—this statement has never been truer than it is today. If you are angry about the capital markets mess we find ourselves in, you need travel no farther than your own bathroom mirror to pick a bone with the protagonist.
Posted in Strategy and the Big Picture
Comments Off on We have met the enemy and he is us