Simon Critchely, author of “The Book of Dead Philosophers”, wrote in the NY Times on 4/2/2009 that “perhaps this recession will make cynics of us all.” He explains this logic by stating that “cynicism is a moral protest against hypocrisy and cant in politics and excess and thoughtless self-indulgence in the conduct of life.” The […]
Maureen Dowd in the NY Times today said that we are currently struggling to get over our “affluenza. That condition, the bane of the middle class, is defined in a book of the same name as ‘a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.’” […]
The old definition – a path or a roadway over which something runs – has been updated for the times to mean: the length of time your company has until it runs out of cash. Jason Calacanis, a successful geek entrepreneur (and I use that word with all due respect) said the following: “You need […]
I recently returned from facilitating a Remodelers Advantage peer group review – a good meeting with good people. There was lots of conversation about what to do next and how to accomplish all that needed doing gracefully and with forethought. Compassion, gracefully and focused were words used many times over those 3 days. Many good […]
As an economics major I’ve watched the economy ‘unravel’, to use Paul Krugman’s term, with a sense of increasing fascination combined with dread. I’ve often called it a ‘slow train wreck’. As a consultant to the remodeling industry I’ve noticed a certain tension in the air since spring 2008 as even the most successful and […]
According to N. Gregory Mankiw, professor of Economics at Harvard, in a NY Times article in the Business Section on Sunday, November 30th, “If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes.” And “According to […]
Every Sunday morning I sit down with the NY Times and quickly move to the Business Section to read the latest from Ben Stein – we may not agree on many things, but his analysis of the current economy is usually spot to me! In the January 11, 2009 column entitled “Ordinary People vs. Extraordinary […]
If you’re half as interested as I am in how we got into our current economic mess you’ll want to read the New York Times Op-Ed piece of today’s date entitled “Where is our Ferdinand Pecora?”. “Under Pecora’s expert and often withering questioning, the Senate committee unearthed a secret financial history of the 1920s, demystifying […]
Adam Gopnik, in the January 5th issue of The New Yorker compares our current economic crisis with “the moment when a small child hits his forehead on a doorknob … and then the long seconds of red-faced anticipation, breath drawn, while everyone waits for the explosion of tears. ‘…we have all bumped our foreheads, hard, […]
Michael Lewis and David Einhorn begin this piece “AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics.” The article questions how a crisis of this magnitude could happen here – to the nation where “half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall […]