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Nortel Unplugged

January 14, 2009

The company’s falling into bankruptcy proceedings is the ultimate progression of decades of flawed strategies, management hubris and a clubhouse full of disengaged directors. With its Chapter 11 filing in a Delaware court today,  Nortel is making its final journey as the company that once aspired to be a world-class technology player.  It is unlikely [...]

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When the Pillars of Invincibility Fall | A Short Essay on Success and its Frequent Impostors

December 12, 2008

General Motors and Nortel look at bankruptcy. The BCE deal dies.  The Bernard Madoff fortune-making machine was a fraud.   The demise of once commanding forces takes its toll and causes us to have many questions about the permanency of success and the always-looming specter of disaster. This week revealed  things no mortal was ever supposed [...]

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The Cerberus-Chrysler Bailout: Time to Open the Mouth of the Whale

December 8, 2008

The myth that removing the company from what some now regard as the shackles of quarterly statements will make all the difference is just one of the ironies in this deal. Cerberus, like the other members of this secretive club of private funds, is known neither for its patience nor its altruism. When you move [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Day Canada’s Doors Closed to the Voice of the People

December 5, 2008

When Canada’s Parliament is reconvened on January 26th and gets down to any meaningful business, it will have met for a total of 13 days over the past half year. By that time, a new President and Congress will be in place in the United States along with the most comprehensive program to restart the [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Leadership Abdicated

November 21, 2008

It was a week that illustrated how not to be a leader. The CEOs of the big three auto makers appeared before the United States Congress, and showed a level of ill preparedness on even rudimentary questions about their bailout pleas that would have incurred the ire of a fifth grade teacher.  Their separate arrivals in three [...]

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What If Citigroup Had a Real Board? Part 1

November 18, 2008

One is forced to reach back to 1917 and a delusional Russian czar on the eve of his abdication to find such a comparative detachment from reality. The almost heart-stopping disintegration of the value of Citibank shares seems unrelenting. It is not entirely surprising, however. This is a company that has had three CEOs in [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Paulson and Bernanke Flunk the Confidence Test

November 14, 2008

In a time when the restoration of confidence, perhaps more than even financial liquidity, is paramount in calming markets and providing stability, neither the Treasury secretary nor the chairman of the Fed acquitted themselves well this week. As the war in Iraq unfolded, and then morphed into disaster in its first several years, the world discovered the [...]

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