From the category archives:

Essay

Bonfire of the Insanities: An Essay on AIG and Wall Street’s Culture of Entitlement

March 21, 2009

AIG’s bonuses have become more than just a tipping point for a long simmering resentment over executive compensation.  They have become an entire gravitational force field of umbrage at the greed, arrogance and now horrifically costly stupidity on the part of these Wall Street masters of the universe, as they preferred to be called in times [...]

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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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Mr. and Mrs. America Ride to Capitalism’s Rescue -Again

July 31, 2008

A brief essay on the subprime credit consequences when CEOs fail to lead, directors fail to direct and regulators fail to regulate It began as a term that few had even heard of barely 18 months ago and most experts dismissed as an insignificant blip in a fundamentally robust economy. But yesterday, George W. Bush [...]

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Edward R. Murrow at One Hundred: Still Journalism’s Gold Standard

April 25, 2008

This week marks the 100th anniversary of Edward R. Murrow’s birth. For the generation of my grandparents and parents, his voice was synonymous with integrity in reporting the events that shaped their lives. Few could match his gift for words or their authenticity in describing the seminal events of his era -a war-time Europe in [...]

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The Pope Who Found His Voice in America

April 19, 2008

Benedict XVI came out from behind the long, and for many, saintly shadow of John Paul II this week when he arrived in the United States. His visit instilled a sense of curiosity in millions and a deep outpouring of respect from his American flock. He gave the most contrite apology yet for the terrible [...]

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Conrad Black: Lord of What Might Have Been

March 3, 2008

How strange it is that success can be such an impostor and only a warm-up for the main act of self-inflicted tragedy yet to arrive. When Lord Kylsant of Carmarthen lost all hope of appeal in 1931, the wealthy titan was taken off and spent the next year in London’s bleak Wormwood Scrubs prison. Until [...]

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A Marshall Plan for Wall Street – In Reverse

January 16, 2008

What does it say when an America that once saved the world is now turning cap-in- hand to a collection of anti-democratic regimes from Dubai to China? Already, foreign funds, mainly controlled by nations and regimes that hold democracy suspect, to say the least, have pumped nearly $20 billion into Citigroup and Merrill Lynch as [...]

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The Autumn of Leaders Falling and the Rise of the Quiet Hero

September 14, 2007

An essay on icons of privilege and power in a skeptical world Here and there, the turning leaves of autumn have begun to fall. A few leaders, or those who would have the world cling to such notions, have already preceded them. Alberto Gonzales has finally ended the torment of his pathetically inept performance as [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Failure and Pretense of the World Economic Forum at Davos

February 2, 2007

One sees in this annual Alpine pilgrimage of Davos fragments of the grainy black and white movies showing the imperial families of Europe gathering in their toy soldier costumes and opulent surroundings, oblivious to the marshaling clouds of change and discontent that would bring their primacy to an end. Fortunately, the annual spectacle known as [...]

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