Keeping Up With Mozart (or not) “Ron Johnson” is not exactly the kind of name that stands out, especially to someone living in Scandinavian-rich Minnesota, as I do. However, the headshots that accompanied the various stories on JC Penney’s new CEO did look awfully familiar. So, I looked him up. Yup, he was at Stanford when...Read More
Blue Chip Stocks as Alternative Stores of Value When the world is going to hell on a Harley, investors find few places to hide: Treasury bills, gold, Swiss francs”or the stock of McDonald’s Corp. –Holman Jenkins, “What Pepsi Can Learn From McDonald’s“; The Wall Street Journal (1/27/2012) To Jenkins’ list, I’d add Coke, Phillip Morris,...Read More
If Hollywood ever needs to cast someone to play Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, I have just the actress: Allison Janney. Compare these two photos, and tell me you don’t see a striking resemblance. A little hair dye, and a different hairstyle (and a suntan!), and you wouldn’t be able to tell...Read More
“Some Day, Son, This Will All Be Yours” It’s a given that, in a market of some 20,000-plus Twin Cities home sellers at the moment, some are more motivated than others. Which ones? You can usually tell by how well each home is priced, staged, marketed, etc. But there’s another, surefire way to know that a...Read More
Call That the Really Old-Fashioned Kind There are hardcover dictionaries (just like always). There are online dictionaries, including the now-ubiquitous Wikipedia (more of an encyclopedia, actually — not that there’s much difference anymore). And then there’s what I’ll call “the Daddy Dictionary.” After my 9 year-old asked me — for the umpteenth time — to...Read More
Hiding in Plain Sight Depending on how long you’ve been driving, you’ve probably looked directly at it on your car’s dashboard 10,000 — or 100,000 — times . . . and never seen it (I certainly didn’t). What exactly am I referring to? The little arrow on the gas gauge indicating whether the car’s tank is on...Read More
