When I take my daily shower, I devote my energy to groaning and swearing at the walls. My pent up pain, not really directed at any one thing, is drowned by the noise of the water striking the floor. It is one way to dissolve the negativity that feels so powerful inside me early in the morning. I towel off quickly and flop back into bed exhausted from the hot water and the verbal expiation, continuing my groans. After ten or fifteen minutes flat on my back in bed, I do my fifteen minute prayer and meditation ritual, eat breakfast,…
Author: Lloyd Graff
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) makes it almost impossible for a small company to develop an effective drug and bring it to the marketplace. It’s one of the main reasons drugs are so expensive in the United States and introduction of new drugs is so slow. Yet once in a blue moon a relatively small pharma company, living on borrowed money and borrowed time, defies all the odds and slithers a potential blockbuster drug through the laborious regulation, testing, and lawsuits of fat pharma that wants to squash potential competition, and dashes to the finish line. This happened a…
I’m in the mood for sports today. In baseball, Washington won the World Series for the first time after losing Bryce Harper to the Phillies. And they won it in seven games, winning all four played at Houston’s ballpark. Never happened before. And the Nationals’ best pitcher, Matt Scherzer, got hurt in the Series. Unpredictable game. In football, the traditional drop-back quarterback, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, is being gradually surpassed by the mobile, elusive running quarterback. The three most likely MVP quarterbacks this year are Russell Wilson, Lamar Jackson, and Patrick Mahomes. All were misjudged coming out of…
Homeless people spook me. I hate it when somebody wearing a sign proclaiming their homelessness, holding a cup and looking forlorn, shoves the cup toward me begging for coins. Yet their plight, if they really are homeless, is a terrible thing. It struck me hard recently when Noah and I were driving to a business conference in the city concerning hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of unsold screw machines. We drove by a tiny makeshift shelter covered by a couple of blue tarps next to an apartment building which appeared empty and possibly being prepared for demolition in an…
Lisa Goldman is living with a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. She writes a blog called Every Breath I Take, aimed at people like herself. In her latest piece she talks about surpassing five years on her medication, which she says has a “median effective time of 18 months.” She says she knows of less then six people in the world with her diagnosis who have been on her medication that long or longer. She writes, “It is oddly isolating, way, way, out here on this ever-narrowing branch with this ever-dwindling number of fellow-travelers. My doctors keep telling me the…
I find California the most interesting state in America. It is not known as a machining mecca, but it is home to America’s most progressive and largest machine tool builder, Haas Automation of Oxnard, north of Los Angeles. It appears we may not be saying that much longer as Haas prepares to build a gigantic manufacturing complex in Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas. Gene Haas, the owner of the company bearing his name, has bought a home in Henderson so he will be able to have his eyes and ears to the ground in the 2 million plus square…
The last few days have been fascinating for me as an avid observer of business, politics and sports. Last week two big auctions in the precision machining space took place, Triumph Manufacturing in Tempe, Arizona, and HN Precision in Rochester, New York. My focus was on Triumph, which Noah attended, but I also listened to HN Precision online. A few observations and generalizations: Late-model CNC equipment, even if it is slightly flawed, brings strong prices, but a middle-aged CNC loses value abruptly. At Triumph, the marquee piece, a Nakamura WT250II new in 2016 with no Y-axis, brought $225,000 plus the…
What do you do when you go for a brief vacation to the Bay Area to visit family? Naturally, you study up on the history of Greenland. Greenland is getting some interest these days. Donald Trump, still a real estate developer at heart, recently tossed out the idea that the United States should buy it from Denmark. Of course, the Danes put a kibosh on the deal, which may mean negotiations have begun. A recent scholarly article published by Northwestern University geologists has proven that Erik the Red, the Viking who fled Iceland after a murder and conviction in 985,…
Let’s start with a discussion of two labor strikes that affect my life. The General Motors strike that may be in its final stages is less about money than it is about control. GM and the UAW seemingly agreed on the basic pay issues before the strike even started. What GM President Mary Barra and the GM Board were really concerned about was the ability to make key decisions such as closing a factory or moving work to Mexico without the UAW having veto power. Indication of that is workers at the Spring Hill, Tennessee, plant voting against the settlement…
It seems like it’s the season for a lot of machining businesses to be selling out or auctioned off. I have worked as an advisor on some of these situations as well, so I have had an inside look at buyers and sellers contorting to get a deal done on an operating business. Selling a job shop as a going concern is really tough unless it is a big and growing business, blessed with depth of management and ownership that is clear about what it wants and decisive when an appropriate buyer materializes. Having a limited debt also helps because…