Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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...

In the US, politically conscious folk have been so absorbed of late in our own national soap operas --about the Putin-Trump relationship, about an open Supreme Court seat, about real or alleged discussions of the 25th amendment, about the political implications of the latest version of A Star is Born , about the midterm Congressional elections -- so much on our plates that we may have lost track of what is going on in the Mother Country. Some fascinating and dramatic developments are underway there, as the effectuation of the Brexit vote of 2016 comes to a head. I'll simply offer you some pertinent links today. If all goes according the schedule, Great Britain will cease to be part of the European Union in March 2019. What if you want to move some products across the Channel in April? How will this matter to you then? That remains surprisingly unsettled. The underlying idea in the minds of many of those who supported a "Leave" vote was that Britain could adopt ...

When the US was obsessing about the then-still-not-exactly President Trump and his tweets about Congressman John Lewis, I tuned it out, and tuned in instead to the politics of the Mother Country. The Bank of England's Governor Mark Carney on Jan. 15 said that the country's consumer spending has held up well since the Brexit referendum, a fact that seems to have surprised him. Consumers are "entirely looking through Brexit-related uncertainties." Stiff upper lips and all that? More important, Prime Minister May gave an important address about the direction her government will take in executing the UK's exit from the EU. There have been talk of a so-called "soft Brexit," which would presumably entail retaining many of the benefits of membership in the EU while throwing off the liabilities. The leaders of other European nations had made clear their displeasure at that idea, and there developed a consensus that it wasn't going to happen. May ackn...