Author: Lloyd Graff

Two weeks ago I spent several days in Poland, staying in Kraków and Warsaw. Poland is a country full of beauty with a rich history. Unfortunately much of that history has been a bloody one due to its location between Germany and Russia. I knew that while there it was imperative for me to learn about the history of the Jews in Poland—my roots. Many of my ancestors lived in Poland; fortunately a lot of them left before World War II. While staying in Kraków I drove an hour away to visit Auschwitz, the most notorious of Nazi concentration camps.…

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I watched the NBA Finals with rapt attention as LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers beat Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. One thing that struck me was despite the incredible athleticism of the players, several key guys on the floor were inept free throw shooters. Tristan Thompson, Andrew Bogut, and Festus Ezeli were butchers at the line. It brought to mind Wilt Chamberlain, perhaps the greatest basketball player ever, who was also a pathetic foul shooter. As luck would have it, I was listening to a podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, historian, writer, social commentator and big time hoops…

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The scuttlebutt in the machinery business is that the Branford Group and partners made a bundle on the Bronson Products auction a week ago. It had been a hotly contested bid by several auction groups to buy the machinery and tooling and accessories. Branford and partners allegedly had about $9 million in the deal. Knowledgeable observers think they did extremely well on the deal with the aggressive bidding and buyers premium. How did the competition miss the upside on a deal like that? My sources tell me that a Korean buyer had been interested in buying the package but…

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Father’s Day gives us a reason to celebrate our Dads, either in life or in memory. I think of my father, Leonard, every day during a 15 minute prayer ritual I do. He used to do the same routine and I adopted it when I was 13. It’s one of many things I observed and copied. At one point I take note of people who were important to me and I briefly imagine them. My memory of my father always comes up first. He was a dominating figure to me as I was maturing. He would tell stories about growing up…

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Some of you may remember a blog I wrote a year and a half ago promoting “Saving Ferris,” my latest YouTube documentary about the Chicago locations of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” To make my documentary I visited almost all of the film’s locations in Chicago and the northern suburbs of Chicago where it was originally shot. In the film I talk about where and what the locations actually are and how they have changed in the last few decades. I also try to recapture the experience of the movie. I go to a Cubs game, drive a Ferrari replica down…

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I heartily recommend the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek for a brilliant article on the Takata airbag saga, recounting the dubious decisions the company made in the 1990s, leading to the enormous legal entanglements of today. The title of the piece is “60 Million Car Bombs.” I am fascinated by Takata’s story, not only because I own a 2003 Toyota Avalon that had an airbag replacement recall recently, but because it relates to the machining business that many of my customers are in. The Bloomberg story indicates that Takata employees understood the danger of using ammonium nitrate as the explosive…

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Within the first week of June 2016, 13 Chicagoans have been shot and killed, primarily in the war zone called the South Side of Chicago. In Cincinnati a 17-year-old well-behaved gorilla was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a 4-year-old child wiggled into his living space. Anxious zookeepers followed protocol and shot the gorilla to save the child. A week earlier at a zoo in Chile a seemingly deranged man snuck into the big cat area, stripped naked and offered his flesh to the lions. The zookeepers obeyed their preset ground rules and shot two lions dead…

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The biggest basketball games of the year are starting. I’m pumped for Steph Curry vs. LeBron James, but the game I’m looking forward to even more will be at a family wedding in Virginia this Saturday. For the last 40 years, at almost every wedding or Bar Mitvah weekend on my wife Risa’s side of the family, the cornerstone of the event is the family “North vs. South” basketball game between members of the Levine clan. The natural rivalry is between my wife’s family from Charlotte and the other Levines from the New York area. The games started when Risa’s…

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Monday I went to the Cubs game with my boy Roberto. I’ve known Roberto for about nine years. I met him when I started salsa dancing. My first memory of him is when he was hitting on a girl who I ended up dating for a short time. He’s 50 years old, from Columbia (he grew up in Chicago), and I think that neither of us are exactly sure what the other one does for a living, but we have things in common and we connect. I consider him one of my best friends in Chicago, probably my best guy…

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Observations of the machining business at mid-year. There seems to be a real case of the blahs in the market. Auctions from the wreckage of the domestic frackers are swamping the Southwest. Waves of 10-year-old CNC lathes and mills are hitting the market and depressing prices. Haas VF-2 and VF-3 machines, market staples, have softened 20% in the last year. Even the CNC Swiss market which has been strong for so long is softer, partly because the Japanese Yen’s weakness versus the dollar has enabled new machine sellers to discount. The total market has also eroded with ferocious worldwide competition…

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