June-July 2016 / For the history buffs in all of us, we would do well to remember what happened in 1916 while the First World War was raging on. Two mid-level diplomats, Mark Sykes and Francois George’s-Picot negotiated the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which became the blueprint for carving up the Ottoman Empire. While well-meaning, their actions inadvertently set in motion decade upon decade of...
May 2016 / In a little noticed New York Times article, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir was reported as telling President Barack Obama that Saudi Arabia will sell hundreds of billions of dollars of US assets if Congress approves legislation that puts the Saudi government squarely in the crosshairs of lawsuits which hold the Saudi government responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This means that...
April 2016 / Anatole France in his novel PENGUIN ISLAND made the point that people have an almost uncontrollable instinct to get behind anyone who is perceived as more powerful, more robust at life than they think themselves to be. They do this, they tell themselves, for self-survival, but all too often they become victims of the leaders they surrender themselves to. Richard Nixon understood this...
March 2016 / Imagine a scenario where tenant owners in a Co-Op pay their monthly maintenance and gym membership fees a year in advance. Hard to believe but we appear to be going down that track. This past January the Japanese central bank unilaterally started charging commercial banks for holding deposits with it. The Bank of Japan was following a precedent already set by banks in Europe...
February 2016 / A little commented-upon fact of the recent Powerball lottery was that the winning tickets were sold in the sunbelt states of California, Florida and Tennessee. As New Yorkers we like to believe that our town is the center of the universe but demographic shifts are signaling otherwise. The sunbelt states not only won the lottery largess but continue to win transplants from our...
Best-selling financial author, Wall Street investment banker, social commentator, award-winning poet, energy consultant, off-Broadway producer, and community organizer in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, Ron Spurga is the ultimate Renaissance Man.
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