I’ve really been trying to stay away from political stuff in this blog, but the Kavanaugh sex allegations are just so juicy I feel compelled to comment. I was aghast when I first heard that Senator Dianne Feinstein was pulling a “Hail Mary” with the Christine Blasey Ford letter, but the more I read about it and her, the more I felt she really does believe that Brett Kavanaugh, as a 17-year-old prep school basketball player and self-proclaimed virgin, assaulted her, groped her and left her indelibly scarred. Did he really do it while “stumbling drunk”? I doubt we will…
Author: Lloyd Graff
Scroll down to listen to the podcast with Russell Ethridge. Today Brett Kavanaugh is being interrogated in hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee as he attempts to thread the political needle to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. In today’s podcast I interviewed Russell Ethridge, a solo practitioner lawyer in Detroit, who also listens to cases as a judge two days a month for the humongous sum of $15,000 a year. He believes the legal system must work for the guy accused of drunk driving for the second time and the secretary in the local real estate firm accused of…
How much would you pay for a bottle of clean water if you were thirsty and could not find drinkable water? How much would you pay for a room if you had no place to sleep? How much would you pay for a programmer for your CNC machines if they were down there was nobody to hire? We are apparently in a period, or on the cusp of one, in which there are almost no skilled machinists available. In such an environment the logical thing to expect is that men and women with skills that the market demands will begin…
Today, a blog about America—the politics and economics—as we head toward IMTS and Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), which start on the same day in September. Business in the machining world is thriving, though automotive is having just a little heartburn—not worthy of a Nexium, just a couple of Tums. The tariffs are barely biting yet, but the smell of them is screwing up the metals market that was smokin’ before President Trump shocked everybody by choosing to pick on aluminum and steel in order to wake up China and push a NAFTA deal through. Couldn’t he instead have chosen to…
I heard a National Public Radio piece recently on the shortage of homes on the market. The reporter, Ben Marcus, was reporting from Denver on his local market, which is seeing prices skyrocket. He focused on the rehab boom. Rehabs on bathrooms, kitchens and basements, along with home additions are going nuts in the Mile-High City. The parallel phenomenon is that very few new or used homes are coming on the market despite ferocious demand. A partial explanation Marcus honed in on was the large number of homes bought during the recession which were converted to rentals. The fat and…
David Killen is an art dealer in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. He is also a treasure hunter of the modern variety, a profession a humble used machinery dealer like myself connects with. David is the kind of guy who frequents flea markets and auctions, not just because he needs inventory for his own bi-monthly auctions of prints and Tchotchkes, but because he loves the hunt. He’s 59 now and has been schlepping around art fairs and Swap-O-Ramas for 50 years. He thought that one day he might find an overlooked stash of value. It looks like he finally…
Malcolm Gladwell recently put out a brilliant episode in his “Revisionist History” podcast series about his Number One rule for living — “Pull the Goalie.” (Click here to listen) Gladwell interviews two of his buddies, Clifford Asness and Aaron Brown, successful Wall Street money strategists. They analyze everything. It’s what they do for a living and just for the heck of it. They test their offbeat theories with mathematical precision, looking for the absurd that carries the germ of truth. They love being “disagreeable,” espousing truth that defies the conventional wisdom and makes “normal” folks feel extremely uncomfortable. They recently…
Take a flyer with me today. This is a blog about change, race, real estate values and the chance to make a fortune if my left field projections are actually correct. Amazon will make its decision shortly about where to build its new headquarters. It’s original home office will remain in Seattle, but its second home will be built somewhere else in America. Chicago is one of the finalists. Consider the other likely candidates such as Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington DC and Chicago. Chicago is only a 4-5 hour plane ride from Seattle, making it a strong candidate. Chicago has…
Written June 19, 2018 This isn’t a blog I really want to write. But I feel like I can’t write anything else right now so I better just write it and get it out of the way. I’ll figure out whether I want to publish it later. I am nearing the 10th anniversary of the heart attack that should have killed me just prior to Labor Day Weekend in 2008. I am a bit obsessed by the date. I can’t get it out of my mind. Fortunately, I’m feeling pretty good physically, but the knowledge of the 10-year mark is…
I bought a gorgeous piece of art last Saturday, a painting of an “L” Train clacking through an apartment jungle in Chicago. At least, that’s what it represented to me. Another person might see something different. That’s part of the beauty of art. I didn’t expect to be buying a painting. On the spur of the moment after a workout with my trainer I was driving home, focusing on NOT stopping at Dairy Queen, when I remembered there was an art fair in downtown Homewood, Illinois. I spotted a parking spot at Starbucks, went in and bought a bottled water…