With Super Bowl XLIX (how many Americans can quickly translate Roman Numerals?) just days away, the sports pages (even some science and editorial pages) are passionately afroth with Deflategate chatter. Was the football intentionally underinflated during the first half of the Patriots/Colts game? Hands are wringing! The world trembles with the possibility that an NFL […]
Category Archives: Business/Economics
Gas(p) Prices!
July 17, 2014 – 9:27 pm
After a terrific cioppino lunch at Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero (the huge quantity of crab paired extremely well with the wallet-slimming price), my wife and I motivated south on California’s Highway 1. She was driving. I was marveling at guano-encrusted rocks jumping up from the seabed. It was a bright blue day, and we were in our Prius, […]
What America Wants…according to Walmart
December 27, 2013 – 12:43 am
As a Harvard Business School MBA, I learned that the leading edge of knowledge about the American psyche can be found in the back rooms of Madison Avenue. Other than the NSA, probably no group is more in tune with American desires than advertisers. They survey, they run focus groups, they look at what’s trending […]
Are Milk Duds Duds?
June 5, 2012 – 2:44 pm
I think this will bring a curl to your lip…you tell me whether it’s a smile or a sneer. I am working on the website for the second book in the Cheesie Mack series: Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel. The book will be released later this month. In this book, Cheesie wonders…since the […]
Too Big to Fail? Or Too Big to Exist? [Redux]
May 24, 2012 – 12:43 pm
In light of the recent JPMorgan Chase $3B trading loss and the unrestrained chaos that was the Facebook IPO, I am republishing a blog post from 3/7/09. Over three years have passed…and it appears no lessons have been learned. What was trenchant then is just as relevant today. * * * * * AIG is […]
Two Lives in a Small Town
February 9, 2012 – 6:22 pm
The following, in Shonnie Brown’s “Neighbors” column, appeared in The Healdsburg Tribune, our local weekly, on February 9, 2012. [Most of the images were not in the original.] * * * * * Ann, born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, has the dubious distinction of attending high school with both Dick and Lynne Cheney and […]
Steve Cotler in Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin
September 26, 2011 – 9:26 pm
For fairly obvious reasons, Harvard Business School keeps very good track of and contact with its alumni. One of the best things they do is their magazine, HBS Alumni Bulletin. Some of the articles are interesting, okay, uh-huh, but the real reason alumni turn this mag’s pages is the Class Notes. Every class that still […]
The Market Falls–Then and Now
August 5, 2011 – 4:13 pm
I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO. “Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937). The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years. Yesterday the Dow fell […]
Evaluating Charities
December 12, 2010 – 12:12 am
Now, as at the end of every calendar year, we are besieged by charities asking for support. Incoming mail brims with urgent and passionate pleas. Your phone will ring at dinner time. Even with a “Do Not Call” prohibition installed on your phone number, you can still expect calls from non-profits you have previously supported […]
Is It Really Extra Virgin Olive Oil?
July 18, 2010 – 12:50 am
On July 14, the UC Davis Olive Center, part of that school’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, released a paper reporting that 69% of randomly selected imported Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) brands had “defective flavors such as rancid, fusty, and musty” and “did not meet international and US standards.” This compares to a […]
