Christmas is nice. So is Hanukkah. And Kwanza too! My favorite of the religiously-inspired holidays has always been Easter, with its Spring-like weather, with its hope of renewal, and with its prayer of “rising from the dead.” Among the nationally-inspired holidays, like Thanksgiving, President’s Day, and other shopping days, I feel more emotional about Memorial Day than all the rest. Unlike Veterans Day, which theoretically…
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was arguably the most prosperous nation in the world and certainly was the financial center of the world. It even developed the first Futures Market, which gives investors the right to buy or sell a certain commodity, such as bushels of corn or wheat, at a certain price on a future date. Unfortunately, the Futures Market included the…
We know the rules. One, you must never say the “N-word.” Likewise, you must never say the “F-word.” Now, according to Barron’s magazine, it is impolite to use the “I-word” in polite company. Right now, the stock market is over-reacting to INFLATION . . . there, I said the I-word! Phase One of this over-reaction was that the Fed doesn’t realize inflation is increasing. Currently,…
Because Afghanistan is “where empires go to to die”, most Americans are relieved that we are finally withdrawing . . . myself among them. Twenty years is long enough. The United States has many great strengths, but nation-building is not one of them. Remember Somalia? In 2019, the average age in the U.S. was 38.4 years, the highest ever. The Israeli nation-building experiment began in 1948,…
Yes, it was hot and muddy . . . Waterfront Law Team Participates in Little Neck Creek, Virginia Cleanup (waterfrontpropertylaw.com) . . . but it is always fun to do good! Special thanks to Jim Lang of the Waterfront Law Team at the law firm of Pender & Coward in the Town Center of Virginia Beach for making this opportunity available!
There are disadvantages to remembering the 1970’s, which was a time of high inflation. The disadvantage is that you see a return to high inflation behind every bush. Currently, the stock market is over-reacting to the fear of higher inflation, which is tougher on lower-income people, not that the stock market cares about lower income people, but the market knows high inflation will bring higher…
While reading “the classics” is never a bad idea, most people read newer books. However, a middle-age book can also give a refreshing perspective. I just finished Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun, written by Erik Larson and published in 1995. It was recommended to me by a good British friend who struggles to understand the love affair that Americans have with guns. In…
A Republican neighbor is currently very upset that public schools may start teaching “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), which argues that white supremacy is tightly maintained and supported by America’s legal structure. While I respect her fear, this is not news. It’s been almost twenty years, since I was required to attend a half-day class on “The 800-lb Gorilla” in Washington, D.C. Although I didn’t know…
In January, most economists expected GDP to lift-off in the first quarter, spike in the second quarter, before leveling off the rest of the year. First quarter GDP growth was expected to be about 4-5%, spiking to 7-8% in the second quarter, with full year average of 5-6%. Last week, we learned that Q1 GDP growth was 6.4% — stronger than expected. Maybe, that number…
As the son of a World War II veteran, I was force-fed a steady diet of war stories from birth. I knew which countries were on which side and why. I knew the various campaigns and their outcome. I learned that there was no one war, and there was a lot of ethnic-score-settling masquerading as a single war. Most interesting to me was that the…
According to Webster’s, a “bad apple” is “a member of a group whose behavior reflects poorly on or negatively affects or influences the remainder of the group.” Of course, the best way to deal with a bad apple is to separate it from the others, before it rots the whole bushel. In the Army years ago, we dealt with bad apples by giving him a…