Do we have the capability to eliminate booms and busts in economic activity? The answer in my judgment is no, because there is no tool to change human nature. Too often people are prone to recurring bouts of optimism and pessimism.
November 29, 2016
Recently, I was in a local restaurant having dinner when my cell phone rang. As I reached for the phone, I saw a client’s name. It was the first day of stock trading following the election. The market had opened down horribly but closed up 250 points for the day. Virtually everyone in the media had been saying Hillary...
November 15, 2016
Imagine buying a washing machine for $800. Then a month later you see Sears Roebuck advertising the same model for $400. You know you can’t take it back. You’ve used it. Is the new price low enough to warrant buying another? And if you did, what would you do with it? In the real world when you have too much of something, you don’t want...
September 09, 2016
“Gentlemen, we must leap over the high wall.” Hearing that, I thought to myself “Huh? What is he talking about?” I was too young (21) – and too poor-- to have an understanding of what this seeming allegory was about. The words were spoken with strong conviction in a heavy Boston Brahmin accent. To me, an Irish kid from...
August 11, 2016
To recall a lunch from 38 years ago, it had to have an emotional impact. This one certainly did. I felt despondent as the lunch began. The guest speaker was the Chief Financial Officer, Norman Rifkin, of Toys R Us. At that time, the toy retailing industry was an eight billion dollar business. Toys R Us was the largest company in the...
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