Advisor Related Quotes

Some things are good for our image but bad for our pockets.

Choose and create a circle of proper advisors around you. Do not discuss your project with your relatives, neighbor, grandmother, friends’ friends, pastor, or babysitter! Thank God pets can’t talk or you’d probably ask their opinions too!

Trip Advisor: Travel the World with Haiku [D] Jerusalem, Israel Jews pray motionless and the Western Wall shakes. It's all relative. Capetown, South Africa And the coloured girls say, 'We're not Africaans, we're English.' In a total Africaans accent. Bulls Bay, Jamaica Weed, rum, guava jelly, Reggae, Marley, Red Stripe beer, O Baby, jerk that chicken. Istanbul, Turkey I asked my driver, 'Why do you believe in Allah?' He answers: 'If not, He hit me!' Cairo, Egypt Cairo International Airport, Porter drops my bags six times. Descendents of the Pharaohs, my ass. Santorini Island, Greece Greeks are like the current, They push you over and then Try to suck you in. Christiania, Denmark One thousand drug dealers, Five hundred thousand tourists. Alway$ Chri$tma$ here.*

Only a month before Americans were due to go to the polls, the UAE—and later joined by a coalition of Islamic countries—gave Kushner the greatest gift of his four years as advisor to the president by agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. Behind the scenes, the leaders of the UAE and Israel had developed strong intelligence and security ties over more than a decade, but this was a public coming-out ceremony that put Abu Dhabi in the hot seat as far as much of the Arab world was concerned.

Sir Lewis Finch was not only a brilliant inventor, but he’s become a royal advisor. He was said to have the ear of the Prince Regent himself, when he chose to bend it. The right word from this man could have Bram back with his regiment next week. And idiot that he was, Bram had announced his arrival in the neighborhood by tackling the man’s daughter in the road, rending her frock, and kissing her without leave. As strategic campaigns went, this one would not be medal-worthy. Fortunately, Sir Lewis seemed not to have noticed his daughter’s bedraggled state on their arrival. But Bram had best conclude this interview before Miss Finch returned and had a chance to relate the tale.

To avoid corrosion of the steel structure, the designers have implemented a clever air-conditioning system that circles 45,000m³ of warm air per-hour within the vicinity of the shelter’s cladding. “There are steel structures that have lasted 100 years, such as the Eiffel Tower, but they last because they’re continually repainted,” said Dr Eric Schmieman, a senior technical advisor from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US, to Wired magazine in 2013. “We’re not able to do that once we slide this into place - the radiation levels are so high we can’t send people in. So what are we going to do? We are going to condition the air that goes into that space. We’re going to keep the relative humidity in there at less than 40 percent.”278

One can even imagine that inflation tends to improve the relative position of the wealthiest individuals compared to the least wealthy, in that it enhances the importance of financial managers and intermediaries. A person with 10 or 50 million euros cannot afford the money managers that Harvard has but can nevertheless pay financial advisors and stockbrokers to mitigate the effects of inflation. By contrast, a person with only 10 or 50 thousand euros to invest will not be offered the same choices by her broker (if she has one): contacts with financial advisors are briefer, and many people in this category keep most of their savings in checking accounts that pay little or nothing and/or savings accounts that pay little more than the rate of inflation.

Clients recognize excessive self-orientation through such things as: 1. A tendency to relate their stories to ourselves 2. A need to too quickly finish their sentences for them 3. A need to fill empty spaces in conversations 4. A need to appear clever, bright, witty, etc. 5. An inability to provide a direct answer to a direct question 6. An unwillingness to say we don’t know 7. Name-dropping of other clients 8. A recitation of qualifications 9. A tendency to give answers too quickly 10. A tendency to want to have the last word 11. Closed-ended questions early on 12. Putting forth hypotheses or problem statements before fully hearing the client’s hypotheses or problem statements 13. Passive listening; a lack of visual and verbal cues that indicate the client is being heard 14. Watching the client as if he/she were a television set (merely a source of data)

The collapse of startups should be no surprise. Ever since antitrust enforcement was changed under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, small was bad and big was considered beautiful. Murray Weidenbaum, the first chair of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, argued that economic growth, not competition, should be policymakers' primary goal. In his words, “It is not the small businesses that created the jobs,' he concluded, ‘but the economic growth.” And small businesses were sacrificed for the sake of bigger businesses.34 Ryan Decker, an economist at the Federal Reserve, found that the decline is even infecting the high technology sector. Americans look at startups over the years like PayPal and Uber and conclude the tech scene is thriving, but Decker points out that in the post-2000 period, we have seen a decline even in areas of great innovation like technology. Over the past 15 years, there are not only fewer technology startups, but these young firms are slower growing than they were before. Given the importance of technology to growth and productivity, his findings should be extremely troubling. The decline in firm entries is a mystery to many economists, but the cause is clear: greater industrial concentration has been choking the economy, leading to fewer startups. Firms are getting bigger and older. In a comprehensive study, Professor Gustavo Grullon showed that the disappearance of small firms is directly related to increasing industrial concentration. In real terms, the average firm in the economy has become three times larger over the past 20 years. The proportion of people employed by firms with 10,000 employees or more has been growing steadily. The share started to increase in the 1990s, and has recently exceeded previous historical peaks. Grullon concluded that when you look at all the evidence, it points “to a structural change in the US labor market, where most jobs are being created by large and established firms, rather than by entrepreneurial activity.”35 The employment data of small firms supports Grullon's conclusions; from 1978 to 2011, the number of jobs created by new firms fell from 3.4% of total business employment to 2% (Figure 3.2).36

President Trump reacted negatively to the Special Counsel’s appointment. He told advisors that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jefferson (Jeff) Sessions unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Counsel removed, and engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses. Those and related actions are described and analyzed in Volume II of the report.

The biggest leverage for reliability enhancement probably lies in the emotional realm. The more a provider can do to understand and relate to the usually unconscious norms of the client, the more the client will feel at ease and experience a sense of reliability. Some

Throughout the history of Buddhism in Vietnam many distinguished monks, both foreign and native, contributed to the nation's welfare and enriched Vietnamese culture through their Buddhist activities, often serving as national masters or advisors to the king on important matters, compiling or writing various Buddhist works, and excelling in literary accomplishments.

Even when the would-be lover himself, without pressure from an outside advisor, longs to fall in love with a particular person, it is not within his control. Lillian Hellman, writing about her friend Arthur Cowan, who had declared her too old for him, finally divined what she thought was his true reticence in relation to her: “I was what he wanted to want, could not ever want, and that must have put an end to an old dream about the kind of life that he would now have because he didn’t really want it.” In fact, he seemed to prefer fashion models. It is for good reason that Cupid is known to be willful, mischievous, and sometimes even perverse. Love comes when it does.

It would be unseemly for me to beg for your succour so early in this letter, and so I shall divert you (or so I flatter myself) by relating my last conversation with my employer, Peter Romanov, or Peter the Great, as he is now styled—not without perfectly sound reasons—by many (I say “employer” because he owes—I do not say “pays”—me a stipend to act as his advisor on certain matters; my Mistress and liege-lady remains, as always, Sophie). As

Via the role of therapist, individuals with a diffuse self-concept can, in a sense, be "all things to all people." Coming into contact with a wide range of personalities, they may vary how they relate to others according to the needs of the situation. Depending upon the type of the phase of treatment, the clinician may function as teacher, healer, advisor, confidant, psychic masseur, devil's advocate, audience, or teddy bear.

Mr. Arpit from UK has invested Rs. 100,000,000 in various equity mutual funds that generate 12% annual return, he could save Rs. 10,529,241 in 10 years and Rs. 43,231,465 in 20 years by selecting the direct plan. It would be better to pay an advisor that fee and invest directly than invest indirectly and pay the fee to a MF for marketing, selling and distribution expenses. For more information and which plan to select please refer to most important concepts related to Direct or Indirect option of investing in Mutual Fund.

Making the Right Decisions Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. James 1:5 HCSB Some decisions are easy to make because the consequences of those decisions are small. When the person behind the counter asks, “Want fries with that?” the necessary response requires little thought because the aftermath of that decision is relatively unimportant. Some decisions, on the other hand, are big … very big. If you’re facing one of those big decisions, here are some things you can do: 1. Gather as much information as you can: don’t expect to get all the facts—that’s impossible—but get as many facts as you can in a reasonable amount of time. (Proverbs 24:3-4) 2. Don’t be too impulsive: If you have time to make a decision, use that time to make a good decision. (Proverbs 19:2) 3. Rely on the advice of trusted friends and mentors. Proverbs 1:5 makes it clear: “A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel” (NKJV). 4. Pray for guidance. When you seek it, He will give it. (Luke 11:9) 5. Trust the quiet inner voice of your conscience: Treat your conscience as you would a trusted advisor. (Luke 17:21) 6. When the time for action arrives, act. Procrastination is the enemy of progress; don’t let it defeat you. (James 1:22). People who can never quite seem to make up their minds usually make themselves miserable. So when in doubt, be decisive. It’s the decent way to live. There may be no trumpet sound or loud applause when we make a right decision, just a calm sense of resolution and peace. Gloria Gaither The Reference Point for the Christian is the Bible. All values, judgments, and attitudes must be gauged in relationship to this Reference Point. Ruth Bell Graham The principle of making no decision without prayer keeps me from rushing in and committing myself before I consult God. Elizabeth George If you are struggling to make some difficult decisions right now that aren’t specifically addressed in the Bible, don’t make a choice based on what’s right for someone else. You are the Lord’s and He will make sure you do what’s right. Lisa Whelchel We cannot be led by our emotions and still be led by the Holy Spirit, so we have to make a choice. Joyce Meyer

The United States became engaged in hostilities with North Vietnam on November 1, 1955, when President Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group as advisors to train the army of South Vietnam, better known as the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Things escalated in 1960, which was about the same time that Cuba established diplomatic relations with Vietnam, the communist country at war with the United States. In May of 1961 President Kennedy sent 400 United States Army Special Forces personnel to South Vietnam for the purpose of training South Vietnamese troops. By November of 1963 when he was killed, President Kennedy had increased the number of military personnel from the original 400 to 900 troops for training purposes. Direct U.S. intervention started with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August of 1964. As things heated up, the number of American troops started including combat units and escalated to 16,000 troops, just before Kennedy’s death. During the early hours of April 30, 1975, the fighting ended abruptly, as South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh delivered an unconditional surrender to the Communists. Between 195,000 to 430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war and 50,000 to 65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost somewhere between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war. The Communist military forces lost approximately 444,000 men. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians died and another 60,000 Laotians died during this war. In all 58,220 U.S. service members were killed. The last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam were killed during the evacuation of Saigon, when their helicopter crashed. After the United States pulled out of South Vietnam, the two sections of the country came together under Communist rule. Vietnam has since become Cuba’s largest trading partner next to China, and the United States has also returned to a normalized trade relationship with Vietnam.

Youssef Zohny began his journey in investment advising and wealth management as a quantitative analyst. From there, he gained expertise, skills, and grit relating to the industry that allows him to be the successful advisor he is today. He currently focuses on helping clients manage accounts and investments ranging from trust funds to family offices.

The sheer scale of the family wealth makes Jonathan’s concerns about losing it seem pretty irrational. But emotions are emotions. “You put the walls up and you want to guard it and protect it and defend it and heaven forbid somebody should take it from you,” he says. “You’re fear-based now.” In some ways, being very rich and very poor are strangely similar. Just as having not enough money creates fear and anxiety, so can having more than you know what to do with. At both ends of the spectrum, money tinkers with our notions of self-worth, our egos, our social lives, the stability of our marriages, our relationships with children, parents, and siblings—even our mental health. Raising that difficult child properly requires a network of friends and relatives, teachers and advisors, except in the ultrawealth world those teachers and advisors wear business casual and charge substantial fees. “I’m a lawyer, not a therapist,” one estate lawyer who caters to ultra-high-net-worth clients told me. “Although the fact of the matter is, you become one.

QuickBooks Desktop Help +1-877-788-4840 QuickBooks Desktop Help Phone Number can be found, as you might imagine. The QuickBooks site has a wealth of resources for anyone using any version of their software. This official QuickBooks community is attentive, interactive, and even features members who are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, accounting professionals and small-business owners. In this QuickBooks community, you can find help articles, Q&A and guides to get started with your software. Similarly, the getting started guides offer articles on how to download and set up QuickBooks, as well as tutorials explaining basic QuickBooks functions. In the Q&A section, you’ll find questions posed by real users in the QuickBooks community, and answers from other users as well as accounting and bookkeeping experts. Questions cover the full range of topics relating to using QuickBooks — and you can search the site to find a posting that addresses any question you might have. The QuickBooks site also gives you the ability to filter questions based on the specific software you’re using. Furthermore – and perhaps most importantly, if you can’t find help from an existing posting, you have the opportunity to pose your own QuickBooks question and start a discussion on this topic within the community.

QuickBooks Help Phone Number +1-877-788-4840 QuickBooks Help Phone Number is the original Intuit QuickBooks Support Phone Number can be found, as you might imagine. The QuickBooks site has a wealth of resources for anyone using any version of their software. This official QuickBooks community is attentive, interactive, and even features members who are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, accounting professionals and small-business owners. In this QuickBooks community, you can find help articles, Q&A and guides to get started with your software. Similarly, the getting started guides offer articles on how to download and set up QuickBooks, as well as tutorials explaining basic QuickBooks functions. In the Q&A section, you’ll find questions posed by real users in the QuickBooks community, and answers from other users as well as accounting and bookkeeping experts. Questions cover the full range of topics relating to using QuickBooks — and you can search the site to find a posting that addresses any question you might have. The QuickBooks site also gives you the ability to filter questions based on the specific software you’re using. Furthermore – and perhaps most importantly, if you can’t find help from an existing posting, you have the opportunity to pose your own QuickBooks question and start a discussion on this topic within the community.

QuickBooks Online Help +1-877-788-4840 QuickBooks Online Help the original Intuit QuickBooks Support Phone Number can be found, as you might imagine. The QuickBooks site has a wealth of resources for anyone using any version of their software. This official QuickBooks community is attentive, interactive, and even features members who are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, accounting professionals and small-business owners. In this QuickBooks community, you can find help articles, Q&A and guides to get started with your software. Similarly, the getting started guides offer articles on how to download and set up QuickBooks, as well as tutorials explaining basic QuickBooks functions. In the Q&A section, you’ll find questions posed by real users in the QuickBooks community, and answers from other users as well as accounting and bookkeeping experts. Questions cover the full range of topics relating to using QuickBooks — and you can search the site to find a posting that addresses any question you might have. The QuickBooks site also gives you the ability to filter questions based on the specific software you’re using. Furthermore – and perhaps most importantly, if you can’t find help from an existing posting, you have the opportunity to pose your own QuickBooks question and start a discussion on this topic within the community.

QuickBooks Help Number +1-877-788-4840 QuickBooks Help Number can be found, as you might imagine. The QuickBooks site has a wealth of resources for anyone using any version of their software. This official QuickBooks community is attentive, interactive, and even features members who are QuickBooks ProAdvisors, accounting professionals and small-business owners. In this QuickBooks community, you can find help articles, Q&A and guides to get started with your software. Similarly, the getting started guides offer articles on how to download and set up QuickBooks, as well as tutorials explaining basic QuickBooks functions. In the Q&A section, you’ll find questions posed by real users in the QuickBooks community, and answers from other users as well as accounting and bookkeeping experts. Questions cover the full range of topics relating to using QuickBooks — and you can search the site to find a posting that addresses any question you might have. The QuickBooks site also gives you the ability to filter questions based on the specific software you’re using. Furthermore – and perhaps most importantly, if you can’t find help from an existing posting, you have the opportunity to pose your own QuickBooks question and start a discussion on this topic within the community.

A visionary company has to inculcate a safety culture within its walls , wherein, its employee related issues are dealt with, fairly and judiciously within the precincts of its HR policies and the law.

Priebus said he believed the President’s initial reluctance to fire Flynn stemmed not from personal regard, but from concern about the negative press that would be generated by firing the National Security Advisor so early in the Administration. And Priebus indicated that the President’s post-firing expressions of support for Flynn were motivated by the President’s desire to keep Flynn from saying negative things about him.

On March 30 and April 11, against the advice of White House advisors who had informed him that any direct contact with the FBI could be perceived as improper interference in an ongoing investigation, the President made personal outreaches to Comey asking him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation by making public the fact that the President was not personally under investigation.

Everyone looked forward to the party, but the Yellow advisor never showed up; she had accidentally double-booked that day. There must have been a wedding on that same weekend. Or maybe a relative was turning fifty. As a matter of fact, it might have been both.

(I found out later that my lawyers had also represented various Trump-related entities. I wish I’d known sooner.) The finer points: (1) I would volunteer as a trusted advisor,

President Trump reacted negatively to the Special Counsel's appointment. He told advisors that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jefferson (Jeff) Sessions unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Counsel removed, and engaged in efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it, including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses. Those and related actions are described and analyzed in Volume II of the report.

Vicente Fox, who succeeded Mr. Zedillo and was president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, institutionalized the policy of ensuring that Mexican-Americans remained Mexican. In 2002, his government established the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (Institute for Mexicans Abroad) to promote “a more comprehensive approach” to promoting Mexican loyalty. One method was to invite Mexican-American elected officials to Mexico, to deepen their Mexican identity. In October 2003, for example, the Instituto invited 30 American state legislators and mayors for two days in Mexico City, where they met lawmakers, ministry officials, scholars, and advocates for immigrants. The Instituto had plans to bring 400 Mexican-American officials on similar trips every year. The Instituto also sends representatives to the United States. Jacob Prado, counselor for Latino affairs at the Mexican Embassy, explained to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials that it was in “Latino officials like yourselves that thousands of immigrants from Mexico find a political voice.” He went on to explain: “Mexico will be better able to achieve its full potential by calling on all members of the Mexican Nation, including those who live abroad, to contribute with their talents, skills and resources.” American citizens who hold elective office in the United States are still expected to be “members of the Mexican Nation.” One Instituto official is Juan Hernandez. Born in the United States, and therefore a US citizen, Mr. Hernandez was at one time a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, but made no secret of his real loyalties. In 2002 he wrote that he had “been commissioned to bring a strong and clear message from the president to Mexicans abroad: Mexico is one nation of 123 million citizens—100 million who live in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States.” On ABC’s Nightline on June 7, 2001, he explained, “I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’ ” Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who later became national security advisor to Vicente Fox, wrote in the Mexican newspaper El Siglo de Torreon that the Mexican government should work with the “20 million Mexicans” in the United States to advance Mexican “national interests.” Vicente Fox’s interior secretary Santiago Creel once complained, “It’s absurd that (the United States) is spending as much as it’s spending to stop immigration flows that can’t be stopped . . . .” When he took over in 2004 as the man in charge of border relations with the United States, Arturo Gonzalez Cruz explained that his ultimate goal was to see the border disappear entirely. Mr. Fox himself insisted that any measure the United States took to arrest or deport illegal immigrants was a violation of human rights.

Hitler’s electoral success—far greater than Mussolini’s—allowed him more autonomy in bargaining with the political insiders whose help he needed to reach office. Even more than in Italy, as German governmental mechanisms jammed after 1930, responsibility for finding a way out narrowed to a half-dozen men: President Hindenburg, his son Oskar and other intimate advisors, and the last two Weimar chancellors, Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. At first they tried to keep the uncouth Austrian ex-corporal out. One must recall that in the 1930s cabinet ministers were still supposed to be gentlemen. Bringing raw fascists into government was a measure of their desperation. The Catholic aristocrat Franz von Papen tried as chancellor (July– November 1932) to govern without politicians, through a so-called Cabinet of Barons composed of technical experts and nonpolitical eminences. His gamble at holding national elections in July let the Nazis become the largest party. Von Papen then tried to bring Hitler in as vice chancellor, a position without authority, but the Nazi leader had enough strategic acumen and gambler’s courage to accept nothing but the top office. This path forced Hitler to spend the tense fall of 1932 in an agony of suspenseful waiting, trying to quiet his restless and office-hungry militants while he played for all or nothing. Hoping to deepen the crisis, the Nazis (like the Fascists before them) increased their violence, carefully choosing their targets. The apogee of Nazi street violence in Germany came after June 16, 1932, when Chancellor von Papen lifted the ban on SA uniforms that Brüning had imposed in April. During several sickening weeks, 103 people were killed and hundreds were wounded. Von Papen’s expedient of new elections on November 6 diminished the Nazi vote somewhat (the communists gained again), but did nothing to extract Germany from constitutional deadlock. President Hindenburg replaced him as chancellor on December 2 with a senior army officer regarded as more technocratic than reactionary, General Kurt von Schleicher. During his brief weeks in power (December 1932–January 1933), Schleicher prepared an active job-creation program and mended relations with organized labor. Hoping to obtain Nazi neutrality in parliament, he flirted with Gregor Strasser, head of the party administration and a leader of its anticapitalist current (Hitler never forgot and never forgave Strasser’s “betrayal”). At this point, Hitler was in serious difficulty. In the elections of November 6, his vote had dropped for the first time, costing him his most precious asset—momentum. The party treasury was nearly empty. Gregor Strasser was not the only senior Nazi who, exhausted by Hitler’s all ornothing strategy, was considering other options. The Nazi leader was rescued by Franz von Papen. Bitter at Schleicher for taking his place, von Papen secretly arranged a deal whereby Hitler would be chancellor and he, von Papen, deputy chancellor—a position from which von Papen expected to run things. The aged Hindenburg, convinced by his son and other intimate advisors that Schleicher was planning to depose him and install a military dictatorship, and convinced by von Papen that no other conservative option remained, appointed the Hitler–von Papen government on January 30, 1933. Hitler, concluded Alan Bullock, had been “hoist” into office by “a backstairs conspiracy.

The Nazis received less direct financial help from business than many have assumed. Before the final deal that put Hitler in power, German big business greatly preferred a solid reassuring conservative like von Papen to the unknown Hitler with his crackpot economic advisors. In the final tense months, when Hitler was refusing all lesser offers in an all-or-nothing gamble on becoming chancellor, and when party radicalism resurfaced in the Berlin transport strike, money grew scarcer. The NSDAP was virtually broke after the disappointing election of November 1932. A relatively minor Cologne banker, Kurt von Schröder, served as go-between in negotiations between Hitler and von Papen, but business contributions did not become a major resource for Hitler until after he attained power. Then, of course, the game changed. Businessmen contributed hugely to the new Nazi authorities and set about accommodating themselves to a regime that would reward many of them richly with armaments contracts, and all of them by breaking the back of organized labor in Germany

I'm so sick and tired of leeches; blood sucking individuals with no remorse. It's now time to cut them off and get rid of them from my life. The hungry consultants, unscrupulous professional advisors, fake friends, dubious investors, bogus business partners, self-anointed good-soil for seed ministries, selfish relatives and those who feel I don't deserve!

On August 29, I flew from Kiev to Moldova and Belarus, continuing my travels in the former republics of the USSR. I wanted to show Russia we had a sustained focus on its periphery and were not content simply to leave these struggling states to contend with Moscow alone. Had I stayed in the White House longer, I had more substantive plans for US relations with the former Soviet states, but that was not to be. Particularly in Minsk, despite Alexander Lukashenko’s less-than-stellar human-rights record, I wanted to prove the US would not simply watch Belarus be reabsorbed by Russia, which Putin seemed to be seriously considering. One aspect of my strategy was a meeting the Poles arranged in Warsaw on Saturday, August 31, among the national security advisors of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and the United States. Let the Kremlin think about that one for a while. I obviously had much more in mind than just having additional meetings, but this was one that would signal other former Soviet republics that neither we nor they had to be passive when faced with Russian belligerence or threats to their internal governance. There was plenty we could all do diplomatically as well as militarily. After I resigned, the Administration and others seemed to be moving in a similar direction.18

At 50, people are still looking for a stockbroker to work a miracle for them, but at 60 they start looking for an advisor to help them negotiate a truce with reality. Regardless of when people are actually planning to retire, 60 is psychologically the beginning of the end of the accumulation period in their lives, and the beginning of the beginning of the distribution phase.... Variable annuitization offers genuine hope to people who (a) need to live on more than six percent of their capital, (b) need their income to grow in some relation to equity returns, which have historically been more than three times the inflation rate, and (c) at the very, very least, need to be assured that some income will continue for their entire lives. Variable annuitization is the only chance these people have. ...If Americans understood how the capital markets actually work, most folks would choose variable universal life insurance over variable life and whole life as the cheapest form of permanent insurance they could buy for the long run. That's simply because the insurance cost of an insurance policy is a pure function of how much of its own money the insurance company has exposed. Since the policyholder's own cash value builds up most significantly over time - and therefore the insurance company's exposure falls further, faster - in variable universal policies than in other debt-based (or general account-based) contracts, the net premium dollars allocated to the purchase of the death benefit must be lower, at the end of the day. And the policyholder's equity must be commensurately greater.

If your needs are not attainable through safe instruments, the solution is not to increase the rate of return by upping the level of risk. Instead, goals may be revised, savings increased, or income boosted through added years of work. . . . Somebody has to care about the consequences if uncertainty is to be understood as risk. . . . As we’ve seen, the chances of loss do decline over time, but this hardly means that the odds are zero, or negligible, just because the horizon is long. . . . In fact, even though the odds of loss do fall over long periods, the size of potential losses gets larger, not smaller, over time. . . . The message to emerge from all this hype has been inescapable: In the long run, the stock market can only go up. Its ascent is inexorable and predictable. Long-term stock returns are seen as near certain while risks appear minimal, and only temporary. And the messaging has been effective: The familiar market propositions come across as bedrock fact. For the most part, the public views them as scientific truth, although this is hardly the case. It may surprise you, but all this confidence is rather new. Prevailing attitudes and behavior before the early 1980s were different. Fewer people owned stocks then, and the general popular attitude to buying stocks was wariness, not ebullience or complacency. . . . Unfortunately, the American public’s embrace of stocks is not at all related to the spread of sound knowledge. It’s useful to consider how the transition actually evolved—because the real story resists a triumphalist interpretation. . . . Excessive optimism helps explain the popularity of the stocks-for-the-long-run doctrine. The pseudo-factual statement that stocks always succeed in the long run provides an overconfident investor with more grist for the optimistic mill. . . . Speaking with the editors of Forbes.com in 2002, Kahneman explained: “When you are making a decision whether or not to go for something,” he said, “my guess is that knowing the odds won’t hurt you, if you’re brave. But when you are executing, not to be asking yourself at every moment in time whether you will succeed or not is certainly a good thing. . . . In many cases, what looks like risk-taking is not courage at all, it’s just unrealistic optimism. Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don’t know the odds. It’s a big difference.” Optimism can be a great motivator. It helps especially when it comes to implementing plans. Although optimism is healthy, however, it’s not always appropriate. You would not want rose-colored glasses in a financial advisor, for instance. . . . Over the long haul, the more you are exposed to danger, the more likely it is to catch up with you. The odds don’t exactly add, but they do accumulate. . . . Yet, overriding this instinctive understanding, the prevailing investment dogma has argued just the reverse. The creed that stocks grow steadily safer over time has managed to trump our common-sense assumption by appealing to a different set of homespun precepts. Chief among these is a flawed surmise that, with the passage of time, downward fluctuations are balanced out by compensatory upward swings. Many people believe that each step backward will be offset by more than one step forward. The assumption is that you can own all the upside and none of the downside just by sticking around. . . . If you find yourself rejecting safe investments because they are not profitable enough, you are asking the wrong questions. If you spurn insurance simply because the premiums put a crimp in your returns, you may be destined for disappointment—and possibly loss.