Those of you who receive my newsletter, Center and Margins , will likely at the beginning of October receive an essay (on the 'Center' side) that overlaps with the material below. But the overlap is not repetition, and may indeed be a sort of parallax. ---------------------------- On the Epstein matter in general, Trump is simply saying what he deems he has to say. Politically, this is a toughy for him. After all, perhaps even more than immigration/border issues, revulsion about pedophilia and elite conspiracy are what has gotten him where he is. During his first campaign, in 2016, the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton family advisor, were leaked to the public (through Russian efforts) and one circle of theorists decided they were all written in a secret code that when decoded detailed Podesta’s involvement with a child-abuse ring. There is no evidence of this, the ‘code’ was something the theorists made up. This soon led to a bizarre story about the basement of a Washingto...
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At this time of year I ask myself what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months in business/financial news. Here are the twelve stores that especially caught my attention and that in retrospect I recommend to yours. I'll make no effort to rank their importance against one another, so I will order them simply by month. January: Brick and mortar retail. A bankruptcy court judge offered Lambert, the man behind the chief institutional owner of Sears, another chance at avoiding the liquidation of that august institution. (Update -- Lambert would get that chance, but wouldn't make it stick. By end of year liquidation was well advanced.) February : Space exploration for profit. The Dutch organization, Mars One, entered bankruptcy. Why do I elevate that fact to the unutterable prestige suggested by putting it on this list? Because it suggests the narrowness of the line that now separates reasonable business plans from fantasy/fraud. Mars One had planned to cr...
When does the right to vote have a negative value, and why? Shares in one of Rupert Murdoch's concerns, Twenty-First Century Fox Inc., are divided into voting and non-voting classes. Both represent an equity interest, so both are inferior to debt in the event of a restructuring or litigation. The reason for the division is that Murdoch and his family want to maintain control, yet they don't want to have to own as large an equity share as they would need in order to do so. The two class share structure allows him effective control of the company, with 39.7% of the voting rights, even though he (and his family) have a total of only 12% of the equity. Twelve percent is still a large chunk of a corporation, but dissidents could conceivably challenge Murdochian control if both classes of stock were equity, challenges that are cut short since he controls almost 40% of the shares that count for purposes thereof. My curiosity is piqued, though, by the fact (a recent turn of eve...
Rebekah Brooks -- the lass who looks like Hermione after she magically borrows Ron's hair -- was once the head of The Sun, whence she moved in June 2009 to News International, and in both capacities was considered a right-hand woman of Rupert Murdoch. She resigned that latter job two years and one month after she took it, under pressure of the phone-hacking scandal that has brought her to this. Now, she's on trial. An Aussie friend of mine calls it the trial of the century. Well ... only one-seventh of this century has thus far passed us by. But we are seeing the trailing end of a news story that has been appalling and amusing in turns, and both in epic proportions. Here's a link to the curtain-opening piece from The Guardian .
I find that I have never yet discussed on this blog the issue of Islamic finance -- that is, the financial institutions and theories that have arisen out of the Koran's prohibition of riba ( roughly: usury). This comes as something of a surprise, because this blog has been around for almost a year now, I have opined and observed here on a wide range of subjects from the relationship between Murdoch and Ailes at News Corp. to the foundations of epistemology. yet during all this time Islamic finance has been a great curiosity of mine. I've never mentioned that here? Really? Even at the precursor to this blog, Pragmatism refreshed, which I kept for more than five years before starting this one, I don't seem to have written anything squarely on point. I came close, noting certain relevant statements I had encountered in a listserv for example, here. And I have written of it more squarely elsewhere, for example in AOL's DAILY FINANCE. I wrote a piece on how "Du...
A week ago I quoted for you from a biography of Rupert Murdoch, written by Michael Wolff, the well known Vanity Fair columnist. I there cited in particular Wolff's discussion of the succession issue, and of the rather odd way in which Murdoch announced his resolution thereof. But never mind that. Here's a better quote, from much later in the book (which is not at all chronological). "In steady, constantly discomfiting ways, Murdoch shares the feelings about Fox News regularly reflected in the general liberal apoplexy. Everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp. suffers Fox News. Everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp is afraid of Roger Ailes,. Further, everybody outside Fox News and inside News Corp. thinks that there's a bit of insanity at Fox News."
My recent reading has included a biography of Rupert Murdoch by Michael Wolff . One point that I found remarkable: the way Murdoch announced the settlement of a critical matter of family business -- on the Charlie Rose show. It seems to have come as a surprise to everyone in his family. The basic succession issue concerns who will run, and profit from, the Murdoch empire when Rupert is gone: the adult children he had with his first and second wives, several of whom have played various roles within that empire and see themselves as vested in it? or will the minors born to his third and present wife, Wendi, be dealt into the situation? The tensions here aren't unusual. Blended families of one configuration or another aren't are common these days, after all. But the sheer quantity of the wealth involved -- and the placement of much of that wealth (billions of dollars worth) in a trust holding more than a quarter of News Corp's equity -- make this family drama...