I was working on Wall Street during the crash of October 19, 1987, when the Dow dropped 22% (or about 7,000 points in today’s market). That evening, traders gathered at Harry’s Bar to commiserate. One of the old timers pulled…
Given the intense political animus on display in Washington in recent weeks, it is hard to imagine any rational policy agenda emerging from the chaos. The optics of a new president being installed with thousands of federal troops standing by…
Was the election outcome a reaffirmation of free market capitalism or a headlong lurch towards socialism or what Hayek termed, “The Road to Serfdom”? Wait! Is that what this election was about? Struggling with the daily COVID fear and loathing,…
Ghost Town? A few weeks ago I took my car to the mechanic in downtown San Francisco. It was nice day, with nothing else to do and contemplating the assorted possibilities of COVID exposure in an Uber or public transport,…
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics” – Jesse M. Unruh, 1966 Each day I get more than 20 requests for money from both political parties. The friendly missives come via text and email. Happily, they haven’t discovered my WhatsApp…
When I got back to the states in March, walking through an airport that seemed to have suffered a neutron bomb strike, I knew life would be different for a while. It wondered what manner of distractions would appeal to…
In the dime stores and bus stations People talk of situations Read books, repeat quotations Draw conclusions on the wall Some speak of the future My love she speaks softly She knows there’s no success like failure And that failure’s…
In October 2006, Netflix launched a contest. They offered a $1 million prize to any team that could improve their movie-recommendation software engine by 10%. Netflix’s global hackathon eventually engaged 30,000 engineers loosely organized and endlessly re-organized into hundreds of…
Most of us have worked in high performance teams at some time. Those were the teams that took pride in doing what others said was impossible, where debate was open and energized and sometimes at high volume, where decisions were…
“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” …