In the seventeenth century, Duc Francois de La Rochefoucauld penned the still popular epigram “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” Unfortunately, this remark is rapidly losing its currency. It’s not that we have turned into a planet of Goody Two Shoeses, far from it. We have plenty of vice left. The problem is […]

Even the Wall Street Journal smells collapse. For months they have been chanting the dirge “The MBA Is A Relic of the Past.” How dare they impugn the honor of the laborers in the vineyard of spreadsheets, who have taught us all how to outsource every useful job to Outer Uzbekistan! How dare they fail […]

You have a dirty mind. This is NOT a discussion of excremental over-inflation. We are talking about Form Over Substance. A 62-year old man, on doctor-recommended sick leave for stress, went to the beach to unwind. Seeing  a shark heading for a group of children, he rushed into the water, wrestled the shark into submission, […]

The phrase of the day is “Grand Bargain.” Balderdash! The first issue this raises is: why do we need a title? This evil practice hies  back to the days of the Iran hostage crisis, when a pusillanimous president cowered in the White House, allowing American diplomats to remain captive by the heirs of the Barbary […]

The city of Fall River, Massachusetts (most renowned  for its famous axe-wielding citizeness, Miss Lizzie Borden) defaulted on its municipal bonds early in the last century and was managed by a creditors’ committee for twenty eight years. The creditors eventually got their money back. We should be so lucky. Fiscal armageddon impends. Within the last year, four […]