Category Archives: Money & Market Behavior

The Global Business Context: A Davos CEO Panel

Here are key themes from the Davos panel about the strategic, organizational and operational issues that are reshaping how businesses operate worldwide. The CEOs on the panel included: • John T. Chambers, Cisco • Thomas Enders, Airbus • Klaus Kleinfeld, Alcoa • Duncan Niederauer, NYSE Euronext • Ferit F. Sahenk, Dogus Group • Patricia A. Woertz, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) • Hans-Paul Bürkner, The Boston...

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You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

Junk fees are bad ethics and bad business. We just refinanced our home. Chase collected $30 on Facsimile fees even though no one is using fax anymore. And then to add insult to injury Chicago Title collected $54.75 for (get this) – EMAIL DOC DELIVERY FEE TO CHICAGO TITLE INSURANCE CO. “How many emails did they receive for this fee?” I asked the loan officer....

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The KEY: It’s Not Coming Back – It’s Going Forward

There is a shift taking place in the semi-conscious of society, the market and the global system. The fulcrum of the change is invisible and hard to grasp. To sense it, see it and decipher it, you need a certain detachment. Here are a few starters about the question: What is the meaning of this crisis and how to begin looking beyond it? Read the...

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Tectonic Shift

Every earthquake has an epicenter and a deeper hypocenter. Hypocenter is where the tectonic shift takes place. This below is a tectonic shift in the global monetary system. Financial Times: “China and Argentina in Currency Swap.” China, which is pushing to end the dominance of the dollar as a worldwide reserve, has agreed to a renminbi 70 billion dollar swap with Argentina that will allow...

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Davos Reflections and Capitalism 4.0

The Davos webcasts tell a story. If the World Economic Forum is a gauge of the current global economic mindset, it tells us that decision makers are in “Stage two” and in part “stage three” of the five stages of grief – they are in the anger and blame phase and beginning the bargaining phase. The grief framework originally pioneered by Kübler-Ross includes Five Stages:...

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Kaleidoscoping & Doing Your Shadow Work

Kaleidoscoping is a pattern recognition exercise. You seek to decipher the meta-process at play. You endeavor to discover the archetypal nature of what’s moving through the systems you are observing. Here is a kaleidoscoping exercise (written originally during October 2008). The process zooms into one field and looks to identify a pattern and recognize its potential in other fields. What is the significance of the...

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The 90/10 Rule Of Investment

The 90/10 rule shows up in a variety of ways in all fields of life. In money management and investment the 90/10 rule says that—over long periods of time (think your lifetime or 100 years) you will come out on top 90% of the time by following conventional wisdom, known also as the wisdom of the crowd. It follows that in the other 10% of...

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The Greatest Tax Increase

The greatest tax increase is neither in McCain’s programs, nor in Obama’s plans. The greatest tax increase is in the breakdown of communication and civil discourse, the breakdown of trust and the ability to work through differences to find optimal solutions. Breakdown of trust and leadership is going to cost individuals, families, organizations and the economy as a whole, and the consequences will be greater...

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The KEY: The Lethal Jackpot

This KEY can save your life. It saved mine. As a young fighter pilot I read with keen interest the investigation reports of accidents. I figured it was going to help me stay alive. Pilots who were better than I, with more experience and whom I admired crashed. I was scared. It made me ask: “What is the anatomy of accidents? Can I learn something...

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Yellowstone Fire On Wall Street?

The three Ds—the three legged stool of the prosperity economics since WWII—were: the Dollar, the Debt economy and the Drive of entrepreneurialism. 1. The Dollar offered a stable monitory framework. Its universal reserve currency status based on the Bretton Woods agreement and the belief that “the dollar was as good as gold” made for monetary stability. 2. The Debt driven economy produced a framework in...

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