Pro Commerce

Back to smell

I have found smell to be the most powerful sense that registers in my memory.

When I walked to middle school in San Francisco, in the Richmond District, more than half a century ago, I passed a wall of shrubs.

On mornings when the fog was heavy, about ten days a year during school, the wall of shrubs had a very powerful smell.  A pleasant and unforgettable smell. I loved it.

About two years ago I passed a cluster of small shrubs while taking a walk with a friend, with low fog,  out in the Sunset District.  Same geographic relationship to the fog that exists in the Richmond District. The shrubs instantly matched my memory.

I picked a branch and took it to the nursery.  They said it was a Rose of Sharon. So I  bought one and planted it on my back deck.  There is far less fog in San Francisco these days, less open space, and I live farther from the ocean fog.  But there is occasional fog and I get to enjoy the smell memory of my childhood.

The Rose of Sharon is not a rose, it is an hibiscus.

My book gets reviewed

Everyone appears to have an internal dialog.  Many mistake this for consciousness; others have a range of explanations. Including paranoid ‘voices’, superego, devil, god and stern parent.

My internal voice is benign, even friendly, most of the time. I often think of my internal voice as a guardian angel.  Most recently my guardian angel has played an ironic joke on me.

That is what the image on the right is about.

A year ago I published a book that summarizes my 55 years as a business consultant with over 2,000 clients around the world and my role as a thinker about the nature of commerce.  The book has an outrageous title: The Most Important Book in Human History.

In hopes of getting reviews, I sent out dozens of review copies with a ‘charming’ and personalized letter.  It was my fervent hope to be reviewed The most important reviews would have been in the weekend Wall Street Journal Review section or the Claremont Review of Books..  So far, no reviews by any of the book reviewers I sent copies to.

Now the ironic joke my fantasy guardian angel has played on me.  Which you can see here.

A longtime close friend in Japan, Yuzawa Saburo, who has been a Japanese Ambassador and is currently retired, is on the board of the main Japanese development organization.  Yuzawa san, ordered a printed version of my book and wrote a review for The World Economic Review. Almost the kind of review I would dream about.

Except, as an ironic joke by my guardian angel, the The World Economic Review is in Japanese and is certainly not read outside of Japan. And probably rarely inside Japan.

Thanks anyway.  I enjoy the irony.

The review itself emphasizes my book’s focus on commercial innovation arising from societies that lack an hereditary elite (only the U.S. and Israel), are open, love markets and are diverse.  Japan is hereditary but promotes talent with upward marriage, is among the most open societies on the planet and has loved markets for over a thousand years.

But only the Japanese think they have diversity.  By diversity they point to the great differences between a person from a rural area on the Southern Island of Kyushu and a Northern prefecture such as Aomori.  The Japanese can recognize the very different accent. Just as Americans can tell a Boston accent from a Texan.

Yuzawa san in his review of my book suggests that that is the kind of diversity I mean.  

It is not.  To me diversity can be ethnic, like an Indian or Finn or it  can be religious like a Mormon and an Anglican, or just the difference between a young Bryn Mawr alumna and an old Sacramento Junior College machinist.

I did get a review in a relevant global journal.  Thank you Yuzawa san. Thank you very much.

Damit I was right

The Wall Street Journal of May 12th had two articles that made me sad.  Sad because I am getting old and my importance as a thinker and as a writer about commerce is so little appreciated.

The first article is about the cause of the 2008 financial crash. The article is about Gary Gorton, currently a finance professor at the Yale School of Management who was a finance professor at Wharton at the time of the crash.  Gorton said at the time and still says the crash was caused by a borrowing crisis caused by a lack of repo funding.

Repos are the very short term funds used overnight and over weekends by banks and other financial institutions.  It is a repurchase agreement for some secure asset like a government bond. I said at the time and I said often that this unfortunate ‘bank run’ was caused by the small size of the repo market.  There were only about $2.5 trillion in repos in the market in mid-2008 at a time when a stock market decline and bank loan demand required something like $10 trillion. The consequence was a freeze on all credit and a financial meltdown.

Gorton said so at the time.  Later the chairman of the Fed., Ben Bernanke, and a dozen economists agreed with him.

The other article is in the Review section of the WSJ of the same date.  It is about a man made planet for 8,000 people to circle the sun in an orbit just outside the earth’s orbit. NASA is paying consultants to work on this issue.

I started this stuff in a serious way in 1973.  This blog describes my vision. This one explains why my expectations were so completely wrong.  This one describes my role in getting NASA initially involved,

I started this blog saying I’m a little sad at my anonymity as a writer and thinker. That is just a fact I have to live with and have lived with for many decades as I produce more and more.

I called my latest book The Most Important Book in Human History.   The arrogance of that title gives you a sense of my growing frustration with the failure of the world to appreciate my work.  

The sadness is occasional.  Most of my life is rewarding, filled with joy and happiness everyday.

Hatred of Trump golfing

It is hard for most Lefties to see how virulent the hatred of Trump is.  And how it leads to the vicious lying and distortions the press reports about him.

I have the most visible and blatant case for my readers.  It makes me angry to see such evil and blatant lying in a major American newspaper.

This horrible example occurs on a trivial subject.  I was trying to learn about golf and trying to find out how good a golfer President Trump is after reports that his golfing buddy is Tiger Woods.

I came across this piece by the well known Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. It begins with horrible lies by the editor and chief of the newspaper. The article claims Trump puts the ball where he wants it, doesn't record second swings at the ball and gives himself a hole when he is merely near the hole. Regularly.  And fakes his scores.

However the authoritative piece by an honest person is by the editor in chief of Golf Digest, James Diaz,  who played with President Trump on two occasions on two different courses. Diaz doesn’t report any of the evil lies of the Washington Post.  He just reports the facts including Trump’s 2.8 handicap based on games over a 16 year period.

Additionally, what is convincing to me is the 19 club championships that Trump won since 1999.  These were all highly competitive games where fellow golfers would not allow any cheating at all, ever.

Trump is the best golfer to ever occupy the White House and he is good. The Washington Post is a disgrace to journalism and to all the people who read it. And the owner.

Was President Donald Trump a businessman?

My coauthor, Salli Rasberry, asked me that question.  She knew I had a unique opinion based on working with over 2,000 businesses over 45 years.

There are several types of people who appear to be business people but aren't.  

The one that I first understood was not a business person is a farmer.  Try being a business consultant when hired by a farmer. If your partner is god (weather) your activities are too risky for a business person to choose this line of work.  Some farmers operate on a large scale with irrigation. That changes little, because the market price for your product in the end is determined by the way the weather effects the  global production of the crops you grow. A farmer is a hard working gambler.

The second person who is widely seen as a business person is a Real Estate Agent.  But they aren’t. They are employees, sales people, working for a broker. The broker is a business person.  The broker has to maintain a steady supply of new customers, a general reputation and a record of paying his salespeople on time and accurately. Sales people are sales people.

The third person who is mistakenly considered a business person is a ‘developer’.  A developer works on separate projects. Each project is a gamble on its own. Though borrowing for a project can be secured by assets from a previous project.  Making a living on a project by project basis is not how a business person operates. It is gambling.

In the early 1980’s a young man in San Francisco opened a school for entrepreneurs.  He was much loved by his friends who were mostly fellow trust-fund babies. His class taught how to create and run a ‘project’.  His school went under when one of his ‘projects’ was wiped out along with all his money.

President Trump was a 'developer' not a businessman.

However, having been a developer has given President Trump a unique set of skills.  Developers are almost universally hated by politicians, NIMBYs, social activists, the press and nearly everyone else. That has given President Trump a powerful and necessary set of skills to survive the onslaught of hatred that he has endured since the day he entered politics. He is among the toughest people in our society. 

President Donald Trump has not been a success story for a 'businessman in the White House'.  His is the historically unique story of a developer being one of the most talented and appropriate people to ever lead an nation. In a time of near social collapse.