Integrated Man

Desperately Seeking Hillary

They yearn for Hillary.

" What would Hillary have done ? "

" If only Hillary had won,...."

" Hillary would have..."

Who are 'they'?  Democrats, of course.  And, interestingly, some Republicans.

But she didn't win.  Get over it, and tip-toe back into reality.

And, to help you with that painful exercise, let's take " If only Hillary "  out for a test drive and see where we wind up.

Gates Gets Energy

Bill Gates gets energy, almost.

In today's Politico, he addresses the need for a concerted long term energy policy.  He comes closer to the speech that Obama has yet to give, and has possibly lost the opportunity to give.  But Bill, too, has yet to go the distance. He has yet to tell the public what it must know. In the face of dwindling long term supply of fossil fuels and increasing world demand, energy innovation and evolution is not an option but a necessity. Without it, economic and ultimately civil failure is not an option but a probability.

Are We on Frack?

I  read an article in the New York Times on the recent East Coast earthquake of 2011, August 23rd. You may remember that it didn't put the big numbers on the board (Magnitude 5.8) that the West Coast typically enjoys, but it had a much larger audience (like most of the eastern seaboard). Its damage was more symbolic than substantive.  It put cracks in the Washington Monument and National Cathedral, compromising structures we typically think of as enduring and eternal, perhaps more so than the underlying institutions they symbolize.

Warren Buffett's Last Mission

Dear Mr. Buffett

You don't know me from Adam. I'm utterly inconsequential in the scheme of things.  So I hope you'll forgive my audacity in proposing one last mission in the public interest before you depart this existence. 

I am emboldened by your prior efforts to encourage your peer group to pledge their wealth to the public good, and more recently to call attention to yourself as a justification for the nation to call upon the rich to carry their fair share of the tax burden.   But there is one more mission in which your unique position and skills at unadorned truth-telling might yet have critical impact.   Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to inspire the business and investment titans of the US economy to get off their fear or apathy and earn their money by taking risks on the US economic revival.  Only you can do this.  No one else in the business community has your stature and ethical capital; and beyond the business community the President and Chairman of the Fed are a distant second and third.