Gift giving can be a simple joy or a source of stress. We want to give gifts that bring happiness to the recipient, but we know they can fall flat or end up being returned, discarded or re-gifted. When we laugh at Johnny Carson’s quip about there being only one fruitcake in the world that […]
News & Insights
Spinning Our Wheels…
The holiday season brings warm recollections of leisurely time spent with family and friends. But increasingly I have been wondering if these memories are more relics of the past than an accurate portrayal of the average worker’s experience today. Average annual hours worked has fallen over the last six decades across much of the industrialized […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Doing Good Work at In-N-Out Burger
USA Today It’s always a source of wonder when fast food chain In-N-Out Burger ranks near the top of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work, as it has in recent years. This year (the 2017 list) it ranked seventh nationally. Silicon Valley News reported that In-N-Out was the third best place to work in Silicon Valley […]
The 2-Minute Thought: A Stock Picker’s Market?
People say it’s starting to look like a stock picker’s market. That’s because the performance of individual stocks and the performance of different sectors are diverging. Since President-elect Trump’s win in November, the disparity in returns among different sectors is the highest it’s been since 2009. In addition, correlations among individual stocks have been falling. […]
Dewey Versus Truman… Rest in Peace…
Your time on the stage as the greatest political upset is, well, history. Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton is the new shocker for the ages. I would guess that even many Trump supporters were surprised. Now on to what this will mean for everyone. The Financial Times from London says this “marks a thunderous […]
In Search of the True Self…
Recently I stumbled on the fact that the third most popular course at Harvard University is Classical Chinese Ethical and Political History. Who would have guessed? The course explores the teachings of Chinese Philosophers from 2,000 years ago. Michael Puett, who teaches the course, has now written a book with a co-author, The Path, explaining […]
The Power of Alipay…
We know there just was an election that was kind of important, but last week there was another fascinating day of an entirely different nature: Singles Day on November 11. Singles Day is a made-up holiday in Asia that started as a way for young people to celebrate being single (since the date is written […]
Spending in Retirement – the Big Unknown…
Retirement planning can be devilishly difficult. It requires you to think about what your life will look like many years ahead, trade-off spending today for spending in the future and, at some level, face mortality – all endeavors most of us would rather avoid. One of the biggest challenges is forecasting your spending. A standard […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Modern Anxiety and Purpose
A friend of mine who is a nurse told me that on election night her hospital saw a surge in patients coming to the ER with chest pain. For some, the stress, suspense, and excitement or disappointment of election night became too much to handle. The last few months, there have been plenty of stories […]
The 2-Minute Thought: The Danes Are a Happy People
Source: Citi IO Earlier this year, Denmark once again was declared the world’s happiest country in the World Happiness Report Update 2016 released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations. Although Denmark lost the number one spot once in 2015, it otherwise has been ranked the world’s happiest country three out of […]
The 2-Minute Thought: Are the Super-Rich Really Smarter Than Everyone Else?
**Please note: The 2-Minute Thought will be on holiday for two weeks and will return on November 10** You may say yes, of course the super-rich are smarter. Or you may say no way, they’re just luckier. Or you may say, wait a minute, it depends. And yes, it does depend . . . But […]
A Modest Proposal…
There are a lot of moving parts to the U.S. economy today. Let me focus on just two. The first is the general feeling of anger across the country. As Robert Samuelson the columnist in The Washington Post said recently, “the sense of boundless optimism and national superiority that characterized the boom years” of the […]
