May 2, 2018 at 9:55 am
AllianceBernstein Holding LP is moving its corporate headquarters and about 1,050 jobs to Nashville, Tenn., from New York City, Bloomberg News reports: "In recent years, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has built up operations in Salt Lake City, while Deutsche Bank AG has expanded in Jacksonville, Florida....In addition to cutting costs, the move was prompted in part by lower state, city and property taxes in Tennessee compared with the New York area, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources and a staff memo." In the Albert Hirschman "Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" framework that I write about often here, this one is an exit.
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May 1, 2018 at 1:07 pm
Inaccurate predictions that President Trump would resign are the topic of my column for this week. Please check out the full column at Reason (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).
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April 30, 2018 at 11:40 am
An effort by American socialists to abolish prison was the topic of my column last week. Please check out the full column at Reason (here) and Newsmax (here).
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April 26, 2018 at 2:32 pm
A New York Times obituary of Richard Jenrette, a co-founder of the Wall Street firm Donaldson, Lufkin, & Jenrette, mentions "the high-ceilinged octagonal library at Edgewater, his six-columned home built in 1824 on a Hudson River peninsula just north of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County, N.Y. He bought the home in 1969 from the author Gore Vidal, who had done his writing in the library." The article goes on. "In Manhattan, his townhouses at 67 East 93rd Street and the adjacent No.69, which was his office, once belonged to George F. Baker, the New York banker who donated the money for the campus of the Harvard Business School." Then the obituary reports, "Ms. Howell, of the Preservation Trust, said Mr. Jenrette had regarded Edgewater as his primary residence."
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April 25, 2018 at 10:50 am
The University of Chicago Law School has posted excerpts from the book Liber Amicorum for Richard A. Epstein to mark the law professor's 50 years of teaching. They are a reminder of the possibilities in academia and that, as one of Epstein's colleagues put it, "One man can accomplish much if he sets out to do everything."
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April 25, 2018 at 10:13 am
April 24, 2018 at 1:37 pm
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was interviewed onstage at Southern Methodist University as part of the George W. Bush Presidential Center's Forum on Leadership. The video is embedded below. A few highlights I took away: •Bezos's father is an immigrant from Cuba, and his mother got pregnant with him when she was 16 and had him when he was 17. (Campaigners against teen pregnancy, take note: as a general rule teen pregnancy may lead to increased risks of adverse outcomes, but Bezos's life has turned out pretty successfully — by a lot of accounts he is the richest person in the world, and his company has saved a lot of people time and money.) •A publisher once wrote Bezos a letter objecting to Amazon's publishing negative customer reviews and suggesting that Amazon would make more money if it only published positive reviews. Bezos thought about it and realized his company wasn't just there to sell things, but to help customers make purchase decisions.
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April 20, 2018 at 10:39 am
A federal judge is threatening to appoint a "private prosecutor" to press a criminal investigation about FBI leaks to the press in an insider trading case. The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation in December 2016 into the leaks. But progress has been slow, or opaque, enough that Judge P. Kevin Castel of the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York issued a two-page order on April 2, 2018, raising the prospect of hiring his own lawyer.
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April 19, 2018 at 9:37 am
From the annual shareholder letter of Jeff Bezos comes this piece of business — or life — wisdom: A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand. No leaning against a wall. Not for just a few seconds. Instagram good. She decided to start her journey by taking a handstand workshop at her yoga studio. She then practiced for a while but wasn't getting the results she wanted. So, she hired a handstand coach. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but evidently this is an actual thing that exists. In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. "Most people," he said, "think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you're just going to end up quitting." Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards.
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April 18, 2018 at 9:01 am
An article in Medium by Malcolm Harris about the declining pay of freelance writers reports: "I would be remiss if I omitted that almost every person I spoke to brought up one of the industry's worst-kept secrets: New Yorker staff writers, some of the most admired journalists in the business, don't typically receive health insurance." This may help at least partly explain two things. First, the ferocity against which the New Yorker fought the possibility of repeal of ObamaCare. Second, the degree to which it relies on writers (Princeton's John McPhee; Harvard's Jill Lepore and Atul Gawande, Columbia's Adam Kirsch and Nicholas Lemann) who have additional jobs as academics and who therefore get their health insurance paid for by alumni donors or tuition-paying parents.
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April 17, 2018 at 9:56 am
The renewal of the Charles River is the topic of my column this week. Please check out the column in full at the New York Sun (here) and Newsmax (here).
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April 16, 2018 at 1:49 pm
Clinton administration official Elaine Kamarck — now affiliated with the Brookings Institution and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government — has a review of Julian Zelizer's edited volume The Presidency of Barack Obama: A First Historical Assessment. She writes: In the end there are only two ways a president can forge a legacy in U.S. politics: accomplish things with bipartisan support, or nurture his political party so that people are elected who will carry on and protect his accomplishments. Obama's legacy is in trouble because he did neither.
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April 15, 2018 at 5:05 pm
The Nantucket house of Democratic politician John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz Kerry has sold for $17,500,000 after being originally listed at $25 million, the Boston Globe reports. They bought a place on Martha's Vineyard last year for $11,750,000. It is worth remembering the next time someone makes fun of Donald Trump for having fancy personal real estate yet purporting to champion the common man.
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April 13, 2018 at 9:42 am
From a New York Times news article about an interview with the new director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow: His glass-half-full predictions were punctuated with talk of branding and "Kudlowisms," terms he said he invents and tries to weave into the staff vernacular, like telling the press secretary to make a trade talking point "growthier." "This administration and its economic advisers, our goal here is growth — growth, growth, growth, growth — that's the raison d'être of this administration on domestic policy," Mr. Kudlow said. "We will rise and fall politically on that."
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April 13, 2018 at 6:13 am
A New York Times article on federal prosecutors' raids of the offices of a lawyer for President Trump, Michael Cohen, reports: The investigation is being run by Robert S. Khuzami, whose boss, Geoffrey S. Berman, the interim United States attorney in Manhattan, has recused himself. Mr. Khuzami is a veteran federal prosecutor who spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention in support of President George W. Bush and later led the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Obama administration.
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