I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me? – Beck, “Loser,” 1994 Bite my lip and close my eyes Take me away to paradise I’m so damn bored, I’m going blind And loneliness has to suffice – Green…
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the bankruptcy of Enron, which at the time was the largest chapter 11 filing in U.S. history and one with economic, financial, law enforcement, and public policy ramifications still felt to this day….
As Democratic congressional leaders advance their $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package, shopworn tropes have been dutifully trotted out to support the proposition that “debt and deficits don’t matter.” While such arguments have been with us at least since the federal…
A curious phenomenon has begun to emerge in the wake of the CDC’s recent updated guidance on mask-wearing related to COVID-19, or its “Interim Public Health Recommendations for Fully Vaccinated People,” as stated on the CDC’s website. Specifically, the CDC…
The arts have rarely been kind to commercial activity, and visual media are no exception. Businesspeople are typically depicted as venal and immoral, and even when not playing the villain their line of work is usually at best incidental to…
In an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, Phil Gramm and John Early made a convincing, fact-supported case that, contrary to what is repeatedly asserted and widely believed, income inequality in the U.S. is lower now than it was 50…
As a long-time financial services executive, every so often I am called upon by friends and family from other walks of life to comment on a story related to the stock market. Such is the case with the GameStop saga….
On March 12 of this year, I wrote for these pages a piece entitled “China and the Coronavirus — A Reckoning.” While the origins of COVID-19 were at that time murky (and remain so), what has become increasingly clear is…
Occasionally a business story, particularly when salacious, presents an opportunity for deeper reflection upon our commercial culture beyond the scope of simple facts and narrative. In early September Dan Kamensky, founder of hedge fund Marble Ridge Capital, was arrested and…
It is sufficiently obvious as to not require detailed explanation that in the modern era, movements for change require intellectuals, activists, and foot soldiers at scale in order to gain traction in the public square, much less achieve some measure…