(Because) Ugly is Forever As a long-time Minneapolis resident, homeowner, taxpayer, parent, parent of a serious teenage bicyclist, local Realtor, native Minnesotan, U of MN alum, arts and culture patron, Cedar Lake neighbor (and maybe a few other hats I can’t think of at the moment), there are few people with more of a vested...Read More
Back-to-School Quotes 2013: That’s a Lower Case “V,” Not Upper Case My three kids are (blissfully) back in school as of this Monday. Which means that they’re coming home with the first volley of homework assignments. Discussing one such assignment with my soon-to-be nine-year old daughter, I imparted the adage, “history is written by the...Read More
Does This Picture Make Anyone Else Nervous? The picture above accompanied a recent New York Times article, “Silence Underground,” discussing a shuttered Chinese coal mine and the corruption afflicting Chinese state conglomerates generally. But what caught my eye was the precariously perched building. The bluff directly in front of the middle of the building clearly...Read More
Entrenched Management’s Favorite Weapon Imagine a political maneuver that allowed an embattled state governor — facing widespread voter disapproval and imminent defeat at the polls — to magically conjure millions of additional votes to give to his or her political allies and supporters. Exactly how long do you suppose such a flagrant legal abuse artifice...Read More
“Justice delayed is justice denied.” –Mishnah (Jewish religious text) So, coming up on two years after commodities trader MF Global imploded, taking over $1 billion of its customers’ supposedly segregated cash with it, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) is set to bring civil charges against MF Global’s former head, Jon Corzine. Note that that’s civil charges, not...Read More
Explaining the Summer Swoon “Sell in May and go away.” –Investing maxim Selling in May sure seems to have been good advice this year: the Dow is down about 700 points (almost 5%) from its Spring high. The explanation? (or at least one of them): Wall Street’s “A” team departs for the Hampton’s in the...Read More
