Resort Business Quotes

Since I didn't have a candy wrapper to help me with the bad connection I was about to have, I resorted to using vocal sound effects. When Agent Carson picked up, I started my performance. "Agent... Agent Carson," I said, panting into the phone. "Yes, Charley." She seemed unimpressed, but I wasn't about to stop now. "I--I know who the kshshshshshsh are." "I'm a little busy right now, Davidson. What is a Ksh, and why do I care?" "I'm sorry. My kshshsh... is kshshsh... ing." I repeat. What is a Ksh? And why do I care if it is ksh-ing?" She was a tough one. I knew I should have waited and bought a Butterfinger at the Jug-N-Chug. Those wrappers crakled like Rice Krispies on a Saturday morning. "You aren't listeni--kshshsh." "You're really bad at this." "Bank ro-ksh-ers. I know who they kshshsh." "Charley, if you don't cut this crap out." I hung up and turned off my phone before she could figure out what I was trying not to tell her and call back.

History is a narrative enterprise, and the telling of stories that are true, that affirm and explain our existence, is the fundamental task of the historian. But truth is delicate, and it has many enemies. Perhaps that is why, although we academics are supposedly in the business of pursuing the truth, the word “truth” is rarely uttered without hedges, adornments, and qualifications. Every time we tell a story about a great atrocity, like the Holocaust or Pingfang, the forces of denial are always ready to pounce, to erase, to silence, to forget. History has always been difficult because of the delicacy of the truth, and denialists have always been able to resort to labeling the truth as fiction. One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but we have also been taught not to trust an individual speaker. Yes, it is true that no nation, and no historian, can tell a story that completely encompasses every aspect of the truth. But it is not true that just because all narratives are constructed, that they are equally far from the truth. The Earth is neither a perfect sphere nor a flat disk, but the model of the sphere is much closer to the truth. Similarly, there are some narratives that are closer to the truth than others, and we must always try to tell a story that comes as close to the truth as is humanly possible. The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.

Tristan’s Mom: What are these? Tristan: Your granddaughters. Tristan’s Dad: Don’t worry honey, you don’t look old enough to be a mother let alone a grandmother. Tristan’s Mom: Again with the flattery, thank you dear. Where did they come from? Tristan: Camie gave birth last night. Jeff: I didn’t know she was pregnant. Tristan: She wasn’t. It was a miracle. Tristan’s Mom: Do they have names? Tristan: Phineas and Ferb. Jeff: From the cartoon? Tristan’s Dad: That figures, he named the dog Scooby. Tristan’s Mom: They sound like boy names. Tristan: Mom! Shhh, you’ll give them a complex. Jeff: If that Ferb one climbs my legs again I’m drop kicking it. Tristan: That’s child abuse and I’ll press charges. Besides, they just miss their mom. Jeff: I’m calling CPS (cat protective services)… Tristan: What for? Jeff: Because you’re making your kids live in a broken home unnecessarily. Tristan: I’m not talking to you anymore. Jeff: Fine, as long as you to talk to her. Tristan: Back off. Jeff: Nope, not gonna do it. Tristan: I’m warning you man. Jeff: You miss her too. Tristan: Yeah, so? Jeff: So do something about it. Tristan: Happy? Last night was miserable and I think it’s too late. Jeff: You still have a 12 year old ace in the hole. Tristan: Saving it as a last resort. Tristan’s Dad: Honey, do you have a clue as to what they’re talking about? Tristan’s Mom: No and I don’t want one. Jeff: I’m just helping my nieces get their parents back together. Dude, it’s time. Make the call. Tristan: Alright, I did it. But I get the feeling I’m about to do business with the mob. I hope I don’t wake up with the head of my horse in bed with me tonight. Jeff: Well, a good father will do anything he can to protect his family, even if that means he runs the risk of sleeping with the fishes. Tristan: Okay girls, your aunt helped Daddy come up with a plan and if it works you should get to see Mommy today. Cross your paws, or claws, or whatever…just cross something for luck.

Fearful leaders side-step issues instead of dealing with them, cover up mistakes instead of owning up to mistakes; they skulk back into the shadows and hope that the crisis—whatever it is—will somehow blow over instead of facing their fears. Worse, they resort to lies and deception to cover up the truth.

Ben had never seen another hotel quite like The Mandrake. The valets were all dressed like Roman Centurions, the Doorman was dressed like Caesar, and the bellmen all had dark blue business suits and Donald Trump wigs.

I was finally ready to turn to the last resort: talking to customers. Armed

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller–Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business.

Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous’.

The sands are the children’s great resort. They cluster there, like ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows the realities of their after lives.

majority in the Reichstag for any policy—of the Left, the Center or the Right—and that merely to carry on the business of government and do something about the economic paralysis he had to resort to Article 48 of the constitution, which permitted him in an emergency, if the President approved, to govern by decree.

When you feel the need to escape your problems, to escape from this world, don't make the mistake of resorting to suicide Don't do it! You will hear the empty advice of many scholars in the matter of life and death, who will tell you, "just do it" there is nothing after this, you will only extinguish the light that surrounds you and become part of nothingness itself, so when you hear these words remember this brief review of suicide: When you leave this body after committing one of the worst acts of cowardice that a human being can carry out, you turn off the light, the sound and the sense of reality, you become nothing waiting for the programmers of this game to pick you up from the darkness, subtly erase your memories and enable your return and I emphasize the word subtle because sometimes the intelligence behind this maneuver or automated mechanism is wrong and send human beings wrongly reset to such an extent, that when they fall to earth and are born again, they begin to experience memories of previous lives, in many cases they perceive themselves of the opposite sex, and science attributes this unexplainable phenomenon to genetic and hormonal factors, but you and I know better! And we quickly identified this trigger as a glitch in the Matrix. Then we said! That a higher intelligence or more advanced civilization throws you back into this game for the purpose of experimenting, growing and developing as an advanced consciousness and due to your toxic and destructive behavior you come back again but in another body and another life, but you are still you, then you will carry with you that mark of suicide and cowardice, until you learn not to leave this experience without having learned the lesson of life, without having experienced and surprised by death naturally or by design of destiny. About this first experience you will find very little material associated with this event on the internet, it seems that the public is more reserved, because they perceive themselves and call themselves "awakened" And that is because the system has total control over the algorithm of fame and fortune even over life and death. Now, according to religion and childish fears, which are part of the system's business to keep you asleep, eyes glued to the cellular device all day, it says the following: If you commit this act of sin, you turn off light, sound and sense of reality, and from that moment you begin to experience pain, fear and suffering on alarming scales, and that means they will come for you, a couple of demons and take you to the center of the earth where the weeping and gnashing of teeth is forever, and in that hell tormented by demons you will spend eternity. About this last experience we will find hundreds of millions of people who claim to have escaped from there! And let me tell you that all were captivated by the same deity, one of dubious origin, that feeds on prayers and energetic events, because it is not of our nature, because it knows very well that we are beings of energy, then this deity or empire of darkness receives from the system its food and the system receives from them power, to rule, to administer, to control, to control, to kill, to exclude, to inhibit, to classify, to imprison, to silence, to infect, to contaminate, to depersonalize. So now that you know the two sides of the same coin, which one will your intelligence lean towards! You decide... Heads or tails? From the book Avatars, the system's masterpiece.

So many ruins bear witness to good intentions which went astray, good intentions unenlightened by any glimmer of wisdom. To bring religion to the people is a fine and necessary undertaking, but this is not a situation in which the proposed end can be said to justify the means. The further people have drifted from the truth, the greater is the temptation to water down the truth, glossing over its less palatable aspects and, in short, allowing a policy of compromise to become one of adulteration. In this way it is hoped that the common man – if he can be found – will be encouraged to find a small corner in his busy life for religion without having to change his ways or to grapple with disturbing thoughts. It is a forlorn hope. Standing, as it were, at the pavement’s edge with his tray of goods, the priest reduces the price until he is offering his wares for nothing: divine judgement is a myth, hell a wicked superstition, prayer less important than decent behaviour, and God himself dispensable in the last resort; and still the passers-by go their way, sorry over having to ignore such a nice man but with more important matters demanding their attention. And yet these matters with which they are most urgently concerned are, for so many of them, quicksands in which they feel themselves trapped. Had they been offered a real alternative, a rock firm-planted from the beginning of time, they might have been prepared to pay a high price.

OPEN YOURSELF TO SERENDIPITY Chance encounters can also provide enormous benefits for your projects—and your life. Being friendly while standing in line for coffee at a conference might lead to a conversation, a business card exchange, and the first investment in your company a few months later. The person sitting next to you at a concert who chats you up during intermission might end up becoming your largest customer. Or, two strangers sitting in a nail salon exchanging stories about their families might lead to a blind date, which might lead to a marriage. (This is how I met my wife. Lucky for me, neither stranger had a smartphone, so they resorted to matchmaking.) I am consistently humbled and amazed by just how much creation and realization is the product of serendipity. Of course, these chance opportunities must be noticed and pursued for them to have any value. It makes you wonder how much we regularly miss. As we tune in to our devices during every moment of transition, we are letting the incredible potential of serendipity pass us by. The greatest value of any experience is often found in its seams. The primary benefits of a conference often have nothing to do with what happens onstage. The true reward of a trip to the nail salon may be more than the manicure. When you value the power of serendipity, you start noticing it at work right away. Try leaving the smartphone in your pocket the next time you’re in line or in a crowd. Notice one source of unexpected value on every such occasion. Develop the discipline to allow for serendipity.

Love is not coercion, and the state is only an agent of coercion. It has no other function and can work no other way. Its job is to be the last resort in society: the coercion of criminals through punishment. Its nature and its funding are coercion. Any solution it offers will inescapably be coercive. When we make it the primary agent of healing, we fundamentally alter the nature of society. We ought to have a society in which the power of love drives us to break down all social, class, and political barriers, and to effect healing through private means, private associations, private institutions, counselors, networks, schools, hospitals, charities, businesses, etc. It ought to be driven by giving. Love is giving; selfishness is taking. When we make the state the mover, we make the primary solution one of taking rather than giving. This inverts God's designed order for all human relations, including race relations and racial healing.

There is an old debate," Erdos liked to say, "about whether you create mathematics or just discover it. In other words, are the truths already there, even if we don't yet know them?" Erdos had a clear answer to this question: Mathematical truths are there among the list of absolute truths, and we just rediscover them. Random graph theory, so elegant and simple, seemed to him to belong to the eternal truths. Yet today we know that random networks played little role in assembling our universe. Instead, nature resorted to a few fundamental laws, which will be revealed in the coming chapters. Erdos himself created mathematical truths and an alternative view of our world by developing random graph theory. Not privy to nature's laws in creating the brain and society, Erdos hazarded his best guess in assuming that God enjoys playing dice. His friend Albert Einstein, at Princeton, was convinced of the opposite: "God does not play dice with the universe.

What is this mysterious masculine force which spurs you onwards, whence comes this will, this heroic initiative which seems to precede the start of the great journey? This is what prevents you turning back on the path. If you were to do so, if you failed to travel the path to its end, you would be guilty, because the practices of your initiation have mobilised enormous forces which destroy men and drive them insane if they are not aimed in the right direction. The signs will help you open a way for yourself in the virgin forest where no roads exist. 'Even the Gods are your enemies; because their impersonal lives are at risk in this war. You will have to overcome the Archetypes, dethrone them, reincorporating their tremendous numinous energies within yourself. Do you remember the Greek legend? Man was a circular androgynous. He began to roll up Mount Olympus. The Gods were frightened, fearing defeat, and so they resorted to artifice: they divided the man-sphere in half. The result was that he was so busy trying to find his other half that he had no time to make war with them. But, luckily, the Gods made a mistake. Because one day we will bring them back to life as well, giving them a face. 'When the water runs downhill, it gives rise to Samsara and human generations, to the circular movement of the involuted earth; when it runs uphill, the opposite direction, it provokes the mutation of the Gods themselves, the divinisation of the hero; it creates a free, eternal race, without Gods, without a king. This is the Road of the Warrior.

To make way for more resorts with spectacular views, developers destroy native habitats and ignore local concerns. Preservationists decry the growing propensity to bulldoze old hotels and buildings in favor of constructing new resorts, water holes and entertainment spots that look identical whether in Singapore, Dubai or Johannesburg; a world where diversity is replaced with homogeneity. Another catastrophe for countries betting on tourism has come from wealthy vacationers who fall in love with a country and buy so many second houses that locals can no longer afford to live in their own towns and villages. Among the more thoughtful questions is how mass tourism has changed cultures. African children told anthropologists that they want to grow up to be tourists so they could spend the day doing nothing but eating. The tourists who do not speak the local language and rely on guides to tell them what they are seeing and what to think marvel at countries like China with its new wealth and appearance of democracy. Environmentalists wonder how long the globe can continue to support 1 billion people racing around the world for a long weekend on a beach or a ten-day tour of an African game park.

I have no criticism of the basic concept of irrefutable authority. Properly employed, it is the easiest, the surest, and the proper way to resolve conflicts. There is an omnipresent temptation, however, to rely on such authority regardless of its applicability; and I know of no better examples than the scriptures and the Constitution. We find it easy to lapse into the expansive notion that the Constitution, like the gospel, embraces all truth and that it protects and guarantees all that is right, equitable, and just. From that grand premise it is only a short and comfortable leap to the proposition that the Constitution embraces my particular notion of what is right, equitable, and just. The Constitution lends itself to this kind of use because of its breadth. Issues such as foreign aid, fluoridation of water, public versus private education, progressive income tax, to which political party I should belong and which candidate I should support; questions about economic development and environmental quality control; questions about the power of labor unions and the influence of big business in government--all these are issues of great importance. But these questions cannot and ought not to be resolved by simply resorting to irrefutable authority. Neither the Constitution nor the scriptures contain answers to these questions, and under the grand plan of eternal progress it is our responsibility to develop our own skills by working out our own answers through our own thought processes. For example, the Constitution authorizes an income tax, but it neither commands nor forbids an income tax. That is a policy issue on which the Constitution--and the scriptures--are silent. Attempting to resolve our differences of opinion by asserting that if our opponents only understood the scriptures or the Constitution they would see that the whole answer is contained therein only results in foreclosing the careful, rational attention that these issues deserve and require. Resorting to several broad provisions of the Constitution in answer to that kind of question is just plain intellectual laziness. We, of all people, have an obligation to respect the Constitution--to respect it not only for what it is and what it does, but also for what it is not and what it does not do. For in this as in other contexts, improper use of that which is grand can only result in the diminution of its grandeur.

When my personal world is falling apart and something or someone precious is at stake, it is frightening when God doesn't show up to hold things together, especially when I'm begging him to come....Christians are great pretenders. We tell ourselves it's not supposed to be this way for Christians, and so we resort to a cover-up....God won't and doesn't participate in this kind of masquerade. ....On every page of the Bible there is recognition that faith encounters troubles. We are broken ourselves and can't escape the brokenness and loss of our fallen world. ....An honest reading [of Job and Naomi's stories] reveals a God who doesn't explain himself. He didn't tell Job about his earlier conversation with Satan and he didn't give Naomi three good reasons why her world fell apart. Both sufferers went to their graves with their whys unanswered and the ache of their losses still intact. But somehow, because they met God in their pain, both also gained a deeper kind of trust in him that weathers adversity and refuses to let go of God. Their stories coax us to get down to the business of wrestling with God instead of chasing rainbows and to employ the same kind of brutal honesty that they did, if we dare.

In order to find and eliminate a Constraint, Goldratt proposes the “Five Focusing Steps,” a method you can use to improve the Throughput of any System: 1. Identification: examining the system to find the limiting factor. If your automotive assembly line is constantly waiting on engines in order to proceed, engines are your Constraint. 2. Exploitation: ensuring that the resources related to the Constraint aren’t wasted. If the employees responsible for making engines are also building windshields, or stop building engines during lunchtime, exploiting the Constraint would be having the engine employees spend 100 percent of their available time and energy producing engines, and having them work in shifts so breaks can be taken without slowing down production. 3. Subordination: redesigning the entire system to support the Constraint. Let’s assume you’ve done everything you can to get the most out of the engine production system, but you’re still behind. Subordination would be rearranging the factory so everything needed to build the engine is close at hand, instead of requiring certain materials to come from the other end of the factory. Other subsystems may have to move or lose resources, but that’s not a huge deal, since they’re not the Constraint. 4. Elevation: permanently increasing the capacity of the Constraint. In the case of the factory, elevation would be buying another engine-making machine and hiring more workers to operate it. Elevation is very effective, but it’s expensive—you don’t want to spend millions on more equipment if you don’t have to. That’s why Exploitation and Subordination come first: you can often alleviate a Constraint quickly, without resorting to spending more money. 5. Reevaluation: after making a change, reevaluating the system to see where the Constraint is located. Inertia is your enemy: don’t assume engines will always be the Constraint: once you make a few Changes, the limiting factor might become windshields. In that case, it doesn’t make sense to continue focusing on increasing engine production—the system won’t improve until windshields become the focus of improvement. The “Five Focusing Steps” are very similar to Iteration Velocity—the more quickly you move through this process and the more cycles you complete, the more your system’s Throughput will improve.

Lest you think that this pattern has occurred only in connection with Jewish moneylenders and the Knights Templar, let me remind you of Idi Amin’s expulsion of the East Indians from Uganda in 1972, the East Indians were highly represented in the banking business and of the treatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam in the 1970s, including their expulsion. Whenever you have an out-group to whom an in-group owes a lot of money, “Kill the Creditors” remains an available though morally repugnant way of cancelling your debts. Note: you need not resort to murder as such. If you make people run away very fast, they’ll leave all their stuff behind, and then you can grab it. And burn the debt records: that goes without saying. You’ll notice I got through this part without mentioning the Nazis. The point being that I didn’t have to. For they have not been alone.

From every direction, the place is under assault—and unlike in the past, the adversary is not concentrated in a single force, such as the Bureau of Reclamation, but takes the form of separate outfits conducting smaller attacks that are, in many ways, far more insidious. From directly above, the air-tour industry has succeeded in scuttling all efforts to dial it back, most recently through the intervention of Arizona’s senators, John Kyl and John McCain, and is continuing to destroy one of the canyon’s greatest treasures, which is its silence. From the east has come a dramatic increase in uranium-mining claims, while the once remote and untrammeled country of the North Rim now suffers from an ever-growing influx of recreational ATVs. On the South Rim, an Italian real estate company recently secured approval for a massive development whose water demands are all but guaranteed to compromise many of the canyon’s springs, along with the oases that they nourish. Worst of all, the Navajo tribe is currently planning to cooperate in constructing a monstrous tramway to the bottom of the canyon, complete with a restaurant and a resort, at the confluence of the Little Colorado and the Colorado, the very spot where John Wesley Powell made his famous journal entry in the summer of 1869 about venturing “down the Great Unknown.” As vexing as all these things are, what Litton finds even more disheartening is the country’s failure to rally to the canyon’s defense—or for that matter, to the defense of its other imperiled natural wonders. The movement that he and David Brower helped build is not only in retreat but finds itself the target of bottomless contempt. On talk radio and cable TV, environmentalists are derided as “wackos” and “extremists.” The country has swung decisively toward something smaller and more selfish than what it once was, and in addition to ushering in a disdain for the notion that wilderness might have a value that extends beyond the metrics of economics or business, much of the nation ignorantly embraces the benefits of engineering and technology while simultaneously rejecting basic science.

During the boisterous years of my youth nothing used to damp my wild spirits so much as to think that I was born at a time when the world had manifestly decided not to erect any more temples of fame except in honour of business people and State officials. The tempest of historical achievements seemed to have permanently subsided, so much so that the future appeared to be irrevocably delivered over to what was called peaceful competition between the nations. This simply meant a system of mutual exploitation by fraudulent means, the principle of resorting to the use of force in self-defence being formally excluded. Individual countries increasingly assumed the appearance of commercial undertakings, grabbing territory and clients and concessions from each other under any and every kind of pretext. And it was all staged to an accompaniment of loud but innocuous shouting. This trend of affairs seemed destined to develop steadily and permanently. Having the support of public approbation, it seemed bound eventually to transform the world into a mammoth department store. In the vestibule of this emporium there would be rows of monumental busts which would confer immortality on those profiteers who had proved themselves the shrewdest at their trade and those administrative officials who had shown themselves the most innocuous. The salesmen could be represented by the English and the administrative functionaries by the Germans; whereas the Jews would be sacrificed to the unprofitable calling of proprietorship, for they are constantly avowing that they make no profits and are always being called upon to 'pay out'. Moreover they have the advantage of being versed in the foreign languages. Why could I not have been born a hundred years ago? I used to ask myself. Somewhere about the time of the Wars of Liberation, when a man was still of some value even though he had no 'business'. Thus I used to think it an ill-deserved stroke of bad luck that I had arrived too late on this terrestrial globe, and I felt chagrined at the idea that my life would have to run its course along peaceful and orderly lines. As a boy I was anything but a pacifist and all attempts to make me so turned out futile.

Who May Enter? Who may worship in your sanctuary, Lord? Who may enter your presence on your holy hill? Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth from sincere hearts. Psalm 15:1-2 When we kneel at the altar, we present our hearts in reverent worship to God. It is our inward sacrifice of praise. In these verses the psalmist presents another side of worship—the worship that praises God with our lives. We offer this type of worship when we live in integrity and honesty in everyday situations. We offer it when we treat others with fairness in business deals and speak highly of others no matter who is listening. When we avoid the bitter tongue of gossip, tell the truth instead of resorting to a lie, or keep a promise we have made even at great cost, we are showing that our lives are a living sacrifice of worship to God. I’m thankful that we don’t have to be perfect to worship God. No one is without fault. However, when we endeavor to worship God through the way we live our lives, we offer him more than a show of worship. We present him with a heartbeat that sincerely desires to please him. Ask God today to help you live in such a way that your life is an offering of praise to his name. GOD, I am far from perfect, but I desire to serve you in integrity and honesty. I realize that others watch my life and that my daily decisions influence others. I pray that they will see you in both my words and my actions. Lord, I sincerely desire to worship you not only with my heart but with my character. Help me to live a blameless life. Only you can do this. May I speak your truth from a sincere heart so that you will receive the glory and honor you deserve.   THE HEART THAT IS NOT ENTRUSTED TO GOD FOR HIS SEARCHING, WILL NOT BE UNDERTAKEN BY HIM FOR CLEANSING. Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879)

Managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talent are all necessary, but they can be applied only to goals that have already been defined by military policies, broad and narrow. And those policies can be only as good as strategy, operational art of war, tactical thought, and plain military craft that have gone into their making. At present, the defects of structure submerge or distort strategy and operational art, they out rightly suppress tactical ingenuity, and they displace the traditional insights and rules of military craft in favor of bureaucratic preferences, administrative convenience, and abstract notions of efficiency derived from the world of business management. First there is the defective structure for making of military decisions under the futile supervision of the civilian Defense Department; then come the deeply flawed defense policies and military choices, replete with unnecessary costs and hidden risks; finally there come the undoubted managerial abilities, bureaucratic skills, technical expertise, and political talents, all applied to achieve those flawed policies and to implement those flawed choices. By this same sequence was the fatally incomplete Maginot Line built, as were all the Maginot Lines of history, each made no better by good government, technical talent, careful accounting, or sheer hard work. Hence the futility of all the managerial innovations tried in the Pentagon over the years. In the purchasing of weapons, for example, “total package” procurement, cost plus incentive contracting, “firm fixed price” purchasing have all been introduced with much fanfare, only to be abandoned, retried, and repudiated once again. And each time a new Secretary of Defense arrives, with him come the latest batch of managerial innovations, many of them aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and mismanagement-the classic trio endlessly denounced in Congress, even though they account for mere percentage points in the total budget, and have no relevance at all to the failures of combat. The persistence of the Administrator’s Delusion has long kept the Pentagon on a treadmill of futile procedural “reforms” that have no impact at all on the military substance of our defense. It is through strategy, operational art, tactical ingenuity, and military craft that the large savings can be made, and the nation’s military strength greatly increased, but achieving long-overdue structural innovations, from the central headquarters to the combat forces, from the overhead of bases and installations to the current purchase of new weapons. Then, and only then, will it be useful to pursue fraud, waste, and mismanagement, if only to save a few dollars more after the billions have already been saved. At present, by contrast, the Defense Department administers ineffectively, while the public, Congress, and the media apply their energies to such petty matters as overpriced spare parts for a given device in a given weapon of a given ship, overlooking at the same time the multibillion dollar question of money spent for the Navy as a whole instead of the Army – whose weakness diminishes our diplomatic weight in peacetime, and which could one day cause us to resort to nuclear weapons in the face of imminent debacle. If we had a central military authority and a Defense Department capable of strategy, we should cheerfully tolerate much fraud, waste, and mismanagement; but so long as there are competing military bureaucracies organically incapable of strategic combat, neither safety nor economy will be ensured, even if we could totally eliminate every last cent of fraud, waste, and mismanagement.

The National Socialist Movement has, besides its delivery from the Jewishcapitalist shackles imposed by a plutocratic-democratic, dwindling class of exploiters at home, pronounced its resolve to free the Reich from the shackles of the Diktat of Versailles abroad. The German demands for a revision were an absolute necessity, a matter of course for the existence and the honor of any great people. Posterity will some day come to regard them as exceedingly modest. All these demands had to be carried through, in practice against the will of the British French potentates. Now more than ever we all see it as a success of the leadership of the Third Reich that the realization of these revisions was possible for years without resort to war. This was not the case-as the British and French demagogues would have it-because we were not then in a position to wage war. When it finally appeared as though, thanks to a gradually awakening common sense, a peaceful resolution of the remaining problems could be reached through international cooperation, the agreement concluded in this spirit on September 29, 1938, at Munich by the four great states predominantly involved, was not welcomed by public opinion in London and Paris, but was condemned as a despicable sign of weakness. The Jewish capitalist warmongers, their hands covered with blood, saw in the possible success of such a peaceful revision the vanishing of plausible grounds for the realization of their insane plans. Once again that conspiracy of pitiful, corrupt political creatures and greedy financial magnates made its appearance, for whom war is a welcome means to bolster business. The international Jewish poison of the peoples began to agitate against and to coroode healthy minds. Men of letters set out to portray decent men who desired peace as weaklings and traitors, to denounce opposition parties as a “fifth column,” in order to eliminate internal resistance to their criminal policy of war. Jews and Freemasons, armament industrialists and war profiteers, international traders and stockjobbers, found political blackguards: desperados and glory seekers who represented war as something to be yearned for and hence wished for. Adolf Hitler - speech to the Reichstag Berlin, July 19, 1940

Isn’t this the weekend of Xander Eckhart’s party?” “Yes.” Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. “So are you bringing anyone?” Melinda asked. Foiled. Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. “Oh, there’s this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll just go by myself, who knows.” Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. “What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we’re hearing of him?” “Because I just met him a few days ago.” Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. “So? Tell us. How’d you meet him?” “What does he do?” Melinda asked. “Nice, Melinda. You’re so shallow.” Corinne turned back to Jordan. “Is he hot?” Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected to give up the goods in similar circumstances. But she also knew that she really didn’t want to lie to her friends. With that in mind, she’d come up with a backup plan in the event the conversation went this way. Having no choice, she resorted to the strategy she had used in sticky situations ever since she was five years old, when she’d set her Western Barbie’s hair on fire while trying to give her a suntan on the family-room lamp. Blame it on Kyle. I’d like to thank the Academy . . . “Sure, I’ll tell you all about this new guy. We met the other day and he’s . . . um . . .” She paused, then ran her hands through her hair and exhaled dramatically. “Sorry. Do you mind if we talk about this later? After seeing Kyle today with the bruise on his face, I feel guilty rattling on about Xander’s party. Like I’m not taking my brother’s incarceration seriously enough.” She bit her lip, feeling guilty about the lie. So sorry, girls. But this has to stay my secret for now. Her diversion worked like a charm. Perhaps one of the few benefits of having a convicted felon of a brother known as the Twitter Terrorist was that she would never lack for non sequiturs in extracting herself from unwanted conversation. Corinne reached out and squeezed her hand. “No one has stood by Kyle’s side more than you, Jordan. But we understand. We can talk about this some other time. And try not to worry—Kyle can handle himself. He’s a big boy.” “Oh, he definitely is that,” Melinda said with a gleam in her eye. Jordan smiled. “Thanks, Corinne.” She turned to Melinda, thoroughly skeeved out. “And, eww—Kyle?” Melinda shrugged matter-of-factly. “To you, he’s your brother. But to the rest of the female population, he has a certain appeal. I’ll leave it at that.” “He used to fart in our Mr. Turtle pool and call it a ‘Jacuzzi.’ How’s that for appeal?” “Ah . . . the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” Corinne said with a grin. “And on that note, my secret fantasies about Kyle Rhodes now thoroughly destroyed, I move that we put a temporary hold on any further discussions related to the less fair of the sexes,” Melinda said. “I second that,” Jordan said, and the three women clinked their glasses in agreement

The boom in the contingency law business has been driven in part by former attorneys general like Ms. Singer who have capitalized on personal relationships with former colleagues that they have nurtured since leaving office, often at resort destination conferences where they pay to gain access.

The Buffetts followed the trail blazed by earlier SUVs a few miles onward from the airport to the tiny town of Ketchum, near the turnoff to the Elkhorn Pass. A few miles later, they rounded Dollar Mountain, where a green oasis appeared, nestled among the brown slopes. Here amid the lacy pines and shimmering aspens lay Sun Valley, the mountains’ most fabled resort.

Public travel during seclusion for work and as a result desires to situate for viable services anywhere they amount to acquire exceptional ability. As a result of that included just recently is through car leasing centers. Such takes enormously much less instant in addition to rises initiative effectiveness. Entirely comfort is supplied other than, similar to the rush to take a trip anywhere during the city. Along with if despite which occurs to the automobile was travelling the firm vehicle renting facilities immediately supply by an unique vehicle in order to take place their service quality by applying customary of the team. We can take delight to enjoy any kind of movie also as going. There certainly is no panic of the really train or bus to be missed because you will hold your individual automobile. Correctly there would be no plain time frame. You understand how you can yet assign a Month-to-month auto rental or any sort of such of cream of the crop vehicles. The enormous brand names are also accessible to hire. Corporate specific essentially make use of such exceptional vehicles to show their standard in addition to their personal business worth. Comfy vehicles to some sort of any sort of sector of car have the ability to be teased behalf to their different rates. All resorts of 5-star in addition to 7-star does not include the vehicles, however, work with vehicles. For that reason, we are able to simply envision the well worth of these assigning facilities there are lots of a Month-to-month auto rental and every these service supply with a much better service as different to others. When it comes to such reason vehicle rentals are taking a prospering in the company in addition to the regional marketplace. Therefore, the group needs to support their well worth in the market using providing a type of facilities for their consumers. Not merely in locally nevertheless in bunches of huge business towards other fundamentals requirements. Just as travelling within any of the individual owning if you figure out a little bit magnificent on the edge and seem like acquiring it on the other hand you still cannot for the reason that they won't drop in for you however here by methods of this Auto Lease Dubai you could acquire whatever you figure out in purchasing. The program can be all set according to your choices equally as not according to the typical timings of public transportation. During the Car Rental solution, the client will hold no concerns pertaining to the protection or safeguarding of the auto. One can pick Automobile Lease Dubai along with doing accordingly it will turn into unproblematic to opt for a vehicle of their option even as choices any auto. You be up to the trip to the appropriate location that you wish by applying the aid of this car rental. Called for credentials for transport are the look out of the services nonetheless we have to be reliable that it's a superior company with every obligatory certificate approved. If a person does not be full of the ability to get an automobile even though one could easily hire an automobile as it's not at every little thing costly to utilize this improvement.

He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul…. —Psalm 23:2–3 (KJV) I grew up on a farm, doing chores after school and helping with garden or livestock during the summer. I worked hard as a farm wife and mother, and later held a demanding job with a church social service agency. Although I’m now retired, I’m still most comfortable with a never-ending to-do list. That’s why I said no when my husband, Don, asked me to attend a business conference with him. “There wouldn’t be anything for me to do,” I explained. “The resort brochure lists golf as the main draw, and I don’t play.” Don didn’t give up, so I reluctantly packed my suitcase and off we went. The hotel was surrounded by the golf course. There were four swimming pools, but the daytime temperatures were in the low sixties. For the first time in years I had nothing to do. No schedule, no phone calls, no meetings. To my great surprise, I enjoyed it! I read the entire newspaper and worked both crossword puzzles. I ate lunch outdoors amid an improbable but stunning landscape of palm trees and pines, grape hyacinths, honeysuckle, and a dozen types of cacti. Afternoons, I walked the easier trails, sat in the sunshine, and watched ducks paddle around a pond. Since there was nothing productive I could do, I didn’t feel guilty about not doing it. The best part, though, was the lesson I took home: God speaks most clearly when I don’t do; I simply be. Heavenly Father, thank You for teaching me to still my soul. —Penney Schwab Digging Deeper: Ps 46:10

The [Dow-Alcoa and Alcoa-IG] negotiations [of 1929] reveal strikingly the technique of cartel diplomacy—the steady application of "pressure" and the resort alternatively to challenges and blandishments. The similarity to power politics in which trial by battle is a last resort is marked. The procedure discloses the vast gulf between big business in practice and the patterns of behavior assumed in a regime of free competition. It shows how the conference table superseded the market as the arena for decision making.

So when I am about to give a speech, I resort to the hand-brain connection. I jot down notes on my notepad, half a page, and when they go through my hand and pen, there seems to be a better link to the memory. Once I do my notes, I don’t even need to look at the paper anymore; I just know the sequence of my arguments.

It’s a dystopian nightmare, and it could happen tomorrow. An uncontrollable pandemic overwhelms public-health systems and wipes out millions of people in less than a year. Business and industry grind to a halt. Up to $3 trillion, a tenth of the country’s global gross domestic product, evaporates as fear of infection stifles travel, tourism, trade, financial institutions, employment, and entire supply chains. Children stop attending school. Rumors abound; neighbors scapegoat neighbors. Millions of unemployed poor, always hit the hardest, resort to theft and violence in an effort to stay alive. People starve, even in the U.S. Those who do survive are left with their lives turned upside down.

Although such an organized criminal gang may enter into many fields, organized crime finds its basic support in black market activities. A black market is any area of the market which is legally prohibited. If left unprohibited, it would be an area of trade involving peaceful, willing exchanges between sellers and buyers. But when government initiates force by forbidding this area of trade to honest men, it throws it open to men who are willing to take the risk of violating bureaucratic dictates and the statutory laws of the politicians. The violence and fraud associated with any black market do not spring from the nature of the good or service being sold; they are a direct result of the fact that entrepreneurs have been legally forbidden to deal in this area of the market, leaving it open to men who dare to ignore prohibitions and who are willing to resort to violence in order to do business without getting caught. Unless prohibited, every market activity is operated on the basis of willing exchange, without the initiation of force, because this is the only way a business can be operated successfully, as force is a nonproductive expenditure of energy.

Welch and others, through the 1980s, pioneered using people as an expendable resource to the benefit of investors. Since then, it has become increasingly more common for companies to use layoffs to beef up their bottom line. It is considered an acceptable business practice today to lay off people, often ending their careers, simply to balance the books for the quarter or the year. If careers are to be ended, it should be for negligence or incompetence or as a last resort to save the company. But in our twenty first-century version of capitalism, the expectation that we are working in meritocracies seems false. In many cases, it doesn’t matter how hard we’ve worked; if the company falls a little short, people will have to be laid off. No hard feelings, it’s just business. Can you imagine getting rid of one of your children because you made less money than you expected last year? Imagine how your kids would feel if that were the plan. Well, that’s how it is in too many companies today.

As the vaccinations were found to be ineffective, authorities would resort to the last available means of stopping the epidemic: mass quarantine. Public assemblies and gatherings would be banned in a desperate attempt to halt the viral storm. Airports would be closed, subways halted, and buses parked as mandatory travel restrictions would be imposed. Businesses would be forced to furlough employees while local governments curtailed their services to avoid debilitating their entire workforce.

• Lodging REITs (e.g., Hospitality Properties Trust [HPT]), which hold properties such as hotels, resorts, and travel centers. • Self-storage REITs (e.g., Public Storage [PSA]), which specialize in both owning self-storage facilities and renting storage spaces to customers. • Office REITs (e.g., Boston Properties [BXP]), which own, operate, and lease space in office buildings. • Industrial REITs (e.g., PS Business Parks [PSB]), which own and manage properties such as warehouses and distribution centers. • Data center REITs (e.g., Equinix [EQIX]), which own data centers, properties that store and operate data servers and other computer networking equipment. • Timberland REITs (e.g., Rayonier [RYN]), which hold forests and other types of real estate dedicated to harvesting timber. • Specialty REITs, which narrow in on very specific properties such as casinos, cell phone towers, or educational facilities.

The invading king, Utopus, had found the island easy to conquer "because the different sects were too busy fighting one another to oppose him,....he decreed that every man might cultivate the religion of his choice, and might proselytize for it, provided he did so quietly, modestly, and rationally and without bitterness toward others. If persuasions failed, no man was allowed to resort to abuse or violence under penalty of exile or enslavement." The king Utopus, "because he suspected that God perhaps likes various forms of worship and has therefore deliberately inspired different people with different views," allowed the widest toleration. "The only exception he made was a positive and strict law against any person who should sink so far below the dignity of human nature as to think that the soul perishes with the body, or that the universe is ruled by chance, rather than divine providence.

Started in Argentina, escrache has spread to other Latin American countries as a popular movement to oust, shame and ostracize retired generals, politicians and other powerful figures who have committed unpunished crimes. After locating the criminal in question, the organizers would inform his neighbors that here lives a state-sanctioned mass murderer or torturer, or a looter of public funds. Later, thousands of people would converge on this man's house to publicly indict the blood-drenched fat cat. Though this Latin American version of a Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush or Obama is never physically attacked, the monster will be shunned by many of his neighbors, with local businesses even refusing to sell him a meal or a newspaper. Critics of escrache have denounced it as a form of vigilante justice and, as the outburst of an angry mob, something that should be declared illegal, but the protesters are only reacting to acts that are themselves clearly illegal, not to mention outrageously immoral. The protesters' public harassment does not compare to their targets' torturing and/or raping, then throwing their victims from airplanes into the ocean, or kidnapping their children and erasing their identities. Too often, the state will use the legality argument to bind its opponents, while doing whatever it pleases, legal or not. Not satisfied with a monopoly on violence, the state also wants to be the sole interpreter of what's right and wrong, as implied by the often-bandied-about legality question, and the more criminal the state is, the more illegal, the more it will shriek about the need for everyone else to walk the straight and narrow, according to its own power-drunk markings. Talking to Borzutsky's class, I asked the students to consider escrache in the North American context. Who are our criminals in high places and what should we do about them? Unlike our southern neighbors, we have neither the clarity to identify our enemies from within, nor the courage or unity to confront them. To be fair, though, our top criminals don't move among us, with many never even being mentioned by our obfuscating media, as great a killer of brain cells as any, and worse than any glue. Even when not anonymous, however, the most malignant Americans are hidden behind guarded gates, bulletproof glass or acres of real estate, so that it would take considerable enterprise to target them. When faced with an illegal and ultraviolent enemy, we must resort to any and all tricks, be extra clever and strike hard, for real, but most of us are too tightly bound to our bifurcated harness to do more the jiggle, every once in a while, an electronic voting machine. Geez, I wonder who they'll let us pretend to vote for next time, if there's a next time?

From the Bridge” Celebrating “La Navidad Cubana” Before the fall of Batista, Cuba was considered to be a staunch Catholic Nation. As in other Christian countries, Christmas was considered a religious holiday. In 1962, a few years after the revolution, Cuba became an atheist country by government decree. Then In 1969, Fidel Castro thinking that Christmas was interfering with the production of sugar cane, totally removed the holiday from the official calendar. Of course Christmas was still celebrated by Cubans in exile, many of whom live in South Florida and Union City, NJ. However it was still was celebrated clandestinely in a subdued way on the island. It was said, if it is to believed, that part of the reason for this was due to the fact that Christmas trees do not grow in Cuba. Now that Christianity and Christmas have both been reestablished by the government, primarily due to the Pope’s visits to Cuba, Christmas as a holiday has been reinstated. Many Christmas traditions have been lost over the past five decades and are still not observed in Cuba, although the Cuban Christmas feast is highlighted by a festive “Pig Roast,” called the “Cena de Navidad” or Christmas dinner. Where possible, the dinner includes Roast Pork done on a spit, beans, plantains, rice and “mojo” which is a type of marinade with onions, garlic, and sour orange. Being a special event, some Cubans delight in serving the roasted pork, in fancier ways than others. Desserts like sweet potatos, “turrones” or nougats, “buñuelos” or fritters, as well as readily available tropical fruits and nuts hazelnuts, guava and coconuts, are very common at most Christmas dinners. Beverages such as the “Mojito” a drink made of rum, sugar cane juice, lime, carbonated water and mint, is the main alcoholic drink for the evening, although traditionally the Christmas dinner should be concluded by drinking wine. This grand Christmas dinner is considered a special annual occasion, for families and friends to join together. Following this glorious meal, many Cubans will attend Misa de Gallo or mass of the rooster, which is held in most Catholic churches at midnight. The real reason for Christmas in Cuba, as elsewhere, is to celebrate the birth of Christ. Churches and some Cuban families once again, display manger scenes. Traditionally, children receive presents from the Three Wise Men and not from Santa Claus or the parents. Epiphany or “Three King’s Day,” falls on January 6th. Christmas in Cuba has become more festive but is not yet the same as it used to be. Although Christmas day is again considered a legal holiday in Cuba, children still have to attend school on this holiday and stores, restaurants and markets stay open for regular business. Christmas trees and decorations are usually only displayed at upscale hotels and resorts.

Stay away from lawyers. Someone steal your idea? Execute better than they can. Someone misrepresent your product? Overwhelm the market with positive reviews. Taking a company or person to court should be your last resort. It will pull resources and focus away from your business, and, in most cases, the only people who really win, regardless of the outcome, are the lawyers. Traditional

Iacocca lived the fixed mindset. Although he started out loving the car business and having breakthrough ideas, his need to prove his superiority started to dominate, eventually killing his enjoyment and stifling his creativity. As time went on and he became less and less responsive to challenges from competitors, he resorted to the key weapons of the fixed mindset—blame, excuses, and the stifling of critics and rivals.

What’s the first thing you do now before you visit a new restaurant for the first time or book a hotel room online? You probably ask a friend for a recommendation or you check out the reviews online. Now more than ever, the story your customers tell about you is a big part of your story. Word of mouth is accelerated and amplified. Trust is built digitally beyond the village. Reputations are built and lost in a moment. Opinions are no longer only shared one to one; they are broadcasted one to many, through digital channels. Those opinions live on as clues to your story. The cleanliness of your hotel bathrooms is no longer a secret. Guests’ unedited photos are displayed alongside a hotel brochure’s digital glossies. TripAdvisor ratings are proudly displayed by hotels and often say more about the standards guests can expect than do other, more established star ratings systems, such as the Forbes Travel Guide‘s ratings. Once-invisible brands and family-run hotels have had their businesses turned around by the stories their customers tell about them. “With 50 million reviews and counting, [TripAdvisor] is shaking the travel industry to its core.” —Nathan Labenz It turns out that people are more likely to trust the stories other people tell about you than to trust the well-lit Photoshopped images in your brochure. Reputation is how your idea and brand story are spread. A survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey found that six in ten cruise customers said “they were less likely to book a cruise that received only one star.” There is no marketing more powerful than what one person says to another to recommend your brand. “Don’t waste money on expensive razors.” “Nice hotel; shame about the customer service.” In a world where online reputation can increase a hotel’s occupancy and revenue, trust has become a marketing metric. “[R]eputation has a real-world value.” —Rachel Botsman When we were looking to book a quiet, off-the-beaten-track hotel in Bali, the first place we looked wasn’t with the travel agents or booking.com. I jumped online and found that one of the area’s best-rated hotels on tripadvisor.com wasn’t a five-star resort but a modest family-run, three-star hotel that was punching well above its weight. This little fifteen-room hotel had more than 400 very positive reviews and had won a TripAdvisor Travellers Choice award. The reviews from the previous guests sealed the deal. The little hotel in Ubud was perfect. The reviews didn’t lie, and of course the place was fully booked with a steady stream of guests who knew where to look before taking a chance on a hotel room. Just a few years before, this $50-a-night hotel would have been buried amongst a slew of well-marketed five-star resorts. Today, thanks to a currency of trust, even tiny brands can thrive by doing the right thing and giving their customers a great story to tell.

The one that’s really new is the lowest-priced, too!” In the more rarefied sectors of Madison Avenue, a resort to rhymed slogans is usually regarded as an indication of artistic depravity induced by commercial necessity. From

Back when wizards were just crazy men with no powers and a mystical belief system that they couldn’t really prove, the clergy was their sworn enemy. Kind of like two used car dealerships set up on the same street. Both sides claimed to have all the answers, but couldn’t demonstrate that they were right without resorting to a lot of arm waving and suggesting that people look around them and think about it. They couldn’t prove themselves right, so they channeled their energies into proving the other side wrong. Then we came along, with our irritating ability to prove that we had powers. We put the fake wizards right out of business, and the more practical-minded members of the church, Bishop Galbraith among them, decided that they had to find a way to explain our existence that was consistent with their belief system.” “How do they explain us?” “They just say we were created by God.” “Fair enough. Why do they say God created wizards?” “For a reason.” “Okay, I’m still with you. What is that reason?” “The reason is . . . beyond man’s understanding.” Martin thought about this. “That’s not much of an explanation.” “No, but it is consistent with their beliefs.

PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD [business development] deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. … the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money. So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10 percent daily growth and 100 million users was good. No revenues and an exponentially growing cost structure were not. Things felt a little unstable. PayPal needed buzz so it could raise more capital and continue on. (Ultimately, this worked out. That does not mean it’s the best way to run a company. Indeed, it probably isn’t.)2 Thiel’s account captures both the desperation of those early days and the almost random experimentation the company resorted to in an effort to get PayPal off the ground. But in the end, the strategy worked. PayPal dramatically increased its base of consumers by incentivizing new sign-ups. Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts. PayPal’s explosive growth triggered a number of positive feedback loops. Once users experienced the convenience of PayPal, they often insisted on paying by this method when shopping online, thereby encouraging sellers to sign up. New users spread the word further, recommending PayPal to their friends. Sellers, in turn, began displaying PayPal logos on their product pages to inform buyers that they were prepared to honor this method of online payment. The sight of those logos informed more buyers of PayPal’s existence and encouraged them to sign up. PayPal also introduced a referral fee for sellers, incentivizing them to bring in still more sellers and buyers. Through these feedback loops, the PayPal network went to work on its own behalf—it served the needs of users (buyers and sellers) while spurring its own growth.

The major failing was that during the last years of the Batista régime, Cuba became extremely corrupt. Havana became America’s adult playground and tourists were bringing in the “Yankee Dollar.” Construction companies with the right connections were busy building new gambling casinos and hotels. Girly shows, prostitution and gaming became widespread and people in the service industry made a good income. Those people that were involved in politics or supported Batista’s rise in wealth were raking in money beyond their wildest imagination. While the good times rolled, in the Sierra Maestra Mountains things were fermenting and the revolutionaries were gaining strength. Young people throughout the island were becoming actively involved. Older people, tired of the corruption and decadence, silently supported Fidel Castro. They may not have known what was in store for them, but they did know that Batista and his followers had hijacked their country, and they were willing to back the fresh wind blowing down from the mountains. As the revolution heated up, the Policía Nacional and Batista’s spy network headed by the Military Intelligence Service, Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, resorted to torture and executions. The newspapers always cited that the bodies found alongside remote roads, railroad tracks or ditches, were shot by unknown persons. The bombs that were heard exploding at night reminded people that these were not normal times. Political enemies of the régime were rounded up and taken to police detention centers located around Havana. Special tribunals, Tribunales de Urgencia, were set up to deal with these prisoners. Since these jails were under the control of the local police, there was little or no accountability. Notorious police precincts such as the ones commanded by Captains Ventura and Carratalá prided themselves on the torturous pain they could inflict, using extremely imaginative methods. Most Cubans feared the police and it seemed that everyone knew of someone who had fallen into their clutches, many of whom were later found dead.

In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings. pg200 And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure. Pg224 The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I. This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality. Pg226 On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption! Pg227 A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.” Pg229 The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work. Pg230 “The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses. Pg237 The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. Thus ends the Sword. A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.

Old age troubled Vikki more than she cared to admit. She looked at her parents who had worked so hard all their lives and shivered when they started talking about how she would look after them, one day. They often harked back to a mythical past when older relatives lived with their extended families and didn’t have to resort to the kind of accommodation like the one she stood in front of now. They had spent almost their entire adult life running a small business and she couldn’t remember them looking after any elderly relatives.

Princeton Tries to Explain a Drop in Jewish Enrollment; or "What is Communism?" by Yggdrasil The sine-qua-non of inner party power is a multi-cultural elite alienated from its tribal and racial kinsmen. It is the native elites - the indigenous leaders who might resist the inner party's drive for power that are always the target. ... For the reform version of communism developed by the Frankfurt School that now dominates the ‘liberal democracies" and the NWO, the masses of the nations are important as consumers ... What remains relevant to the inner party are the inner party's potential competitors, the native national elites with community ties to their brethren. In the Soviet Union, the inner party elites (using Lenin and Stalin as their cover) resorted to murder and forced resettlement to remove the native national elites, a fast, direct and brutal form of decapitation. In the "liberal democracies" the inner party uses a slower and less visibly brutal method of decapitation. Thus, in the liberal democracies of today we have "affirmative action" - a set of laws that places tremendous pressure on private businesses to displace native elites at the top with minorities who will be less plausible targets of discrimination lawsuits. These laws exist everywhere in the European world, and with the exception of the U.S. were enacted long before any significant minority constituencies (other than the inner party itself) existed to lobby for their passage. The entire program of displacement and decapitation within the liberal democracies was carefully drawn up and explained in "The Authoritarian Personality" by Theodor Adorno, et. al.(1947). It is a prescription for identifying any person who displays any bond of obligation to his own kind and the will to resist those who threaten the interests of his kind. Such "authoritarian personalities" are to be denied university admission and consigned to low status occupations, which is precisely what the laws of affirmative action and social rules of political correctness accomplish. Indeed, as I read the tables from the 1939 Soviet census published in Sanning's work [The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry by Walter N. Sanning] I recalled my own research showing that the inner party, representing 2.4% of the U.S. population comprises 28% of the student body at Harvard, while the descendants of European Christendom comprising 70% of the population supply only 18% of the students. The American Majority has been effectively displaced at Harvard. Relative to their share of the Population, they have 2.4 times fewer students than do the inner party's Afro-American coalition partners. ... The United States Department of Labor has maintained a tracking study of 12,000 young people who were between the ages of 14 and 22 in 1979 known as the National Longitudinal study of Youth ("NLSY"). The CD Roms with all the data can be purchased from Ohio State University. These data show that at each given level of IQ (all participants were tested) the income and educational attainment of the descendants of European Christendom is much lower than for Blacks, Hispanics and Inner party members of the same IQ. In what will surely be a surprise to most middle and upper middle-income Euro-Americans, the effects are most pronounced at the highest IQ levels. In other words, it is the majority elite that suffers the widest disparity in income and education when compared with Blacks, Hispanics and Inner Party members within the same IQ range. When the effects are broken down by sex, we find that among males the disparity is most pronounced in the highest IQ ranges and disappears entirely by the time you descend to the 50% mark. The widest disparity exists among the top 2% of the population (those with IQs above 130).

Maybe you will think of how you treat people from now on because everyone has feelings, no matter how much money, how many friends, or how little they’ve got. They are all people like you and deserve respect and acceptance, regardless of their situation in life. Look on this as my parting gift. Work on your attitude and maybe you will be successful one day, both in business and in love.” I can’t even look at the man, how dare he preach to me as if he’s above me? I am fine as I am; I have my own business for goodness’s sake. Just because he has all this, he thinks he can talk down to me, reject me as something worthless under his shoe and manipulate me for his own pleasure just so he can feel good about one little thing that happened years ago. A sudden feeling touches me inside, and now

Cutting advertising budgets is so common. Almost 99.99% of the companies resort to this whenever any problem arises. But this actually makes the situation worse and those companies are never able to move out of their struggling phase.

jot down approximately how much time you spent in each of the following three mindsets: Job mindset. When someone has a job mindset, they resort to a “paycheck mentality,” performing their duties in return for compensation and not much else. Career mindset. This mindset occurs when an individual is focused on increasing or advancing their salary, title, power, team size, or sphere of control. Purpose mindset. Feeling passionate, innovative, and committed are hallmarks of this mindset, as is having an outward-looking focus on serving the broader organization or key stakeholders. Here, your professional purpose feels aligned with your personal purpose. Keep a log for a couple of weeks, and see whether you fall into one of these mindsets more than the others.

for survival. However, as the business grows and new people join the firm, it’s impossible to know everyone’s name, let alone to have strong relationships with everyone. The kind of super-direct challenges that are easy when people know each other well become difficult. Not wanting to lose the friendly culture of the early days, many hesitate to speak up when they see problems, backing off of Challenge Directly and retreating to Ruinous Empathy. Because Obnoxious Aggression is more effective than Ruinous Empathy, that kind of behavior has an advantage; people who behave badly begin to win, rising in the company. When confronted with a powerful jerk, many people retreat to Manipulative Insincerity, more out of instinctive self-protectiveness than intentional wrongdoing. In this kind of environment, there’s an incentive to retreat to Manipulative Insincerity in front of those who are more senior to them, and resort to Obnoxious Aggression with those who are less powerful. The culture becomes toxic—many kissing up and

When Landgren concocted false figures to explain some of the numbers in the financial statements, the auditors quickly found the fabrication and negotiations fell apart. W. E. Seatree, a lawyer and an accountant with Price Water-house, dashed off an angry letter directly to Ivar, in the formal style of someone who had proudly mastered the disciplines of both law and accounting during the early twentieth century: You will note that we did not certify the balance sheet. Mr Landgren’s letter is obviously an attempt to make it appear to you that he had accomplished something; but the fact that he had to resort to forgery to accomplish his purpose is the best proof of his failure. The euphemism, that he was going to issue a so-called copy of our balance sheet leaving out parts which were of material importance, does not disguise the true nature of his action.37 When Price Waterhouse lost confidence in Ivar, so did Fairburn and Diamond Match. Ivar tried to repair the damage by asking Jordahl to retain an independent outside accountant to vouch for their new US business. Ernst & Ernst, a reliable audit firm, completed a review of American Kreuger & Toll’s financial statements in June, but by then it was too late.38 The damage was done, and so were the negotiations.

For more than forty years the ZMC-2 languished in an abandoned hangar along the runway of a deserted naval air station near Key West, Florida. Then in 1988, the property was sold by the government to a financial conglomerate headed by a wealthy publisher, Raymond LeBaron, who intended to develop it as a resort. Shortly after arriving from his corporate headquarters in Chicago to inspect the newly purchased naval base, LeBaron stumbled onto the dusty and corroded remains of the ZMC-2 and became intrigued. Charging it off to promotion, he had the old lighter-than air craft reassembled and the engines rebuilt, calling her the Prosperteer after the business magazine that was the base of his financial empire, and emblazoning the name in huge red letters on the side of the envelope.

In solving an issue, you have three options: You can either live with it, end it, or change it. There are no others. With this understanding, you must decide which of the three it’s going to be. If you can no longer live with the issue, you have two options: Change it or end it. If you don’t have the wherewithal to do those, then agree to live with it and stop complaining. Living with it should, however, be the last resort.

Britain, though, that humor is most intertwined in business talks. The British hate heavy or drawn-out meetings and will resort to various forms of humor and distracting tactics to keep it all nice and lively.

It is a fundamental mistake when companies with leadership problems, with inconsistent or exhausting management use incentives or well-being measures as a last resort instead of changing their leadership style or culture.

Mary Carter Paint Company. Founded in 1958 as the successor to a 1908 company, it started as an acquirer of other paint companies, then evolved into a resort and casino developer in the Bahamas. Changing its name to Resorts International, it divested itself of the paint business and name. In 1972 the company had warrants that sold for 27 cents when the stock traded at $8 a share. The warrants were so cheap because they were worthless unless the stock traded above $40 a share. Fat chance. Since our model said the warrants were worth $4 a share, we bought all we could at the unbelievable bargain price of 27 cents each, which turned out to be 10,800 warrants at a total cost, after commissions, of $3,200. We hedged our risk of loss by shorting eight hundred shares of the common stock at $8. When the stock later fell to $1.50 a share, we bought back our short stock for a profit of about $5,000. Our gain now consisted of the warrants for “free” plus about $1,800 in cash. The warrants were trading close to zero but below the tiny amount the model said they were worth, so I decided we should put them away and forget them. Six busy years passed. Then in 1978 we started getting calls from people who wanted to buy our warrants. The company had purchased property in Atlantic City, New Jersey, after which it successfully lobbied, along with others, to bring casino gambling to the state, limited to Atlantic City. On May 26, 1978, Resorts opened the first US casino outside Nevada. Having received early approval, they had no competition and reaped windfall profits until other casinos opened late in 1979. With the stock now trading at $15 a share, ten times its earlier lowest price, and the warrants trading between $3 and $4, the model said they were worth about $7 or $8. So, instead of selling and reaping a $30,000 to $40,000 profit, I bought more warrants and sold stock short to hedge the risk of loss. As the stock broke through the $100 mark, we were still buying warrants and shorting stock. We finally sold the 27-cent warrants and others for above $100 each. We ultimately made more than $1 million.

Cruising down Compton Boulevard in the Catalina, Mickey sensed the charged atmosphere of the place, an energy that said anything could happen. Young men loitered in groups on the sidewalks in baggy T-shirts and bandannas while young women strolled up and down, smirking at the men hollering after them and whistling. When traffic lights turned red, blank-faced children appeared out of the darkness under overpasses like wraiths to sell drugs to drivers. Prostitutes wobbled along the streets on high heels, many of them with the vacant gaze of the addicted, while men with hard hearts and a lust for blood watched their every move. All the while well-intentioned families who called Compton home got ground up in the giant machine of this nation, slipping further toward poverty and the tragic moment when pressing need overtakes good intentions. Even still, Compton was no longer what it once was. Ten years ago, Mickey might not have driven through it, and certainly wouldn’t have stopped and wandered around. But the homicide rate had decreased steadily since ’94, down to forty-eight murders in ’98 from a peak of eighty-seven in ’91, and small businesses were slowly but surely returning to the city. It bothered Mickey deeply that the state of California, with an economy greater than that of most countries, wouldn’t help these people, or that the federal government of the United States, the richest country in the history of the world, wouldn’t help them either, instead spending hundreds of billions of dollars per year on warfare and destruction. The people of Compton could be lifted from poverty with the signing of a bill, and it was no wonder, when you got right down to it, why so many had resorted to crime.

DON’T LET YOUR CULTURE BECOME TOXIC SUCCESSFUL START-UPS often begin with a culture where people challenge one another directly and even fiercely, but also show they care personally. That’s because they start small, involve people who get to know each other really well, and are fighting for survival. However, as the business grows and new people join the firm, it’s impossible to know everyone’s name, let alone to have strong relationships with everyone. The kind of super-direct challenges that are easy when people know each other well become difficult. Not wanting to lose the friendly culture of the early days, many hesitate to speak up when they see problems, backing off of Challenge Directly and retreating to Ruinous Empathy. Because Obnoxious Aggression is more effective than Ruinous Empathy, that kind of behavior has an advantage; people who behave badly begin to win, rising in the company. When confronted with a powerful jerk, many people retreat to Manipulative Insincerity, more out of instinctive self-protectiveness than intentional wrongdoing. In this kind of environment, there’s an incentive to retreat to Manipulative Insincerity in front of those who are more senior to them, and resort to Obnoxious Aggression with those who are less powerful. The culture becomes toxic—many kissing up and kicking down, few willing to speak truth to power. This kind of behavior won’t kill a company right away. Instead, it leads to a slow, painful death of innovation, and lives of quiet desperation. That’s the bad news. The good news is that many companies large and small are now taking active measures to shift to a culture in which caring personally and challenging directly go hand in hand. When people learn to do both simultaneously, bad behavior no longer gives anyone an advantage. Bad behavior is punished not rewarded, the truth comes out, and the environment is more conducive to both success and happiness.

Regardless of what business you're in, when it comes to sales or deal-making, it's critical that you to build a detailed record of your involvement—not just to use as a last resort in court, but as a constant reminder to all the principals involved that you are/were instrumental in making the deal happen.

Jake turned to Clarissa.  “I’m sorry.  I’m just really passionate about this project.  Not only will it inject a bunch of money into the local economy, but a resort of this size will probably create a few hundred new jobs.” “I know.  And I’m very excited about this project.  The same goes for the other businesses you are working on,” Clarissa said.  “I just wish you would leave some things at the office.  After all, it’s Saturday

Have the “willingness to pay” talk with customers early in the product development process. If you don't do it early, you won't be able to prioritize the product features you develop, and you won't know whether you're building something customers will pay for until it's in the marketplace. Don't force a one-size-fits-all solution. Whether you like it or not, your customers are different, so customer segmentation is crucial. But segmentation based on demographics—the primary way companies group their customers—is misleading. You should build segments based on differences in your customers' willingness to pay for your new product. Product configuration and bundling is more science than art. You need to build them carefully and match them with your most meaningful segments. Choose the right pricing and revenue models, because how you charge is often more important than how much you charge. Develop your pricing strategy. Create a plan that looks a few steps ahead, allowing you to maximize gains in the short and long term. Draft your business case using customer willingness-to-pay data, and establish links between price, value, volume, and cost. Without this, your business case will tell you only what you want to hear, which may be far afield from market realities. Communicate the value of your offering clearly and compellingly; otherwise you will not get customers to pay full measure. Understand your customers' irrational sides, because whether you sell to other businesses or to consumers, your customers are people. You should take into account their full psyches, including their emotions, in making purchase decisions. Maintain your pricing integrity. Control discounting tightly. If demand for your new product is below expectations, only use price cuts as a last resort, after all other measures have been exhausted. We

In 1863, as Havana continued to grow, the need for expansion prompted the removal of the city walls. The Ten Years’ War ended with a cease fire from Spain. However, it was followed by the Cuban War of Independence, which lasted from 1895 until 1898 and prompted intervention by the United States. The American occupation of Cuba lasted until 1902. After Cuban Independence came into being, another period of expansion in Havana followed, leading to the construction of beautiful apartment buildings for the new middle class and mansions for the wealthy. During the 1920’s, Cuba developed the largest middle class per total population in all of Latin America, necessitating additional accommodations and amenities in the capital city. As ships and airplanes provided reliable transportation, visitors saw Havana as a refuge from the colder cities in the North. To accommodate the tourists, luxury hotels, including the Hotel Nacional and the Habana Riviera, were built. In the 1950’s gambling and prostitution became widespread and the city became the new playground of the Americas, bringing in more income than Las Vegas. Now that Cuba senses an end to the embargo and hopes to cultivate a new relationship with the United States, construction in Havana has taken on a new sense of urgency. Expecting that Havana will once again become a tourist destination, the French construction group “Bouygues” is busy building Havana's newest luxury hotel. This past June Starwood’s mid-market Four Points Havana, became the first U.S. hotel, owned by Marriott, to open in Cuba. The historic Manzana de Gómez building which was once Cuba's first European-style shopping arcade has now been transformed into the Swiss based Manzana Kempinski, Gran Hotel, La Habana. It has now become Cuba's first new 5-Star Hotel! Spanish resort hotels dot the beaches east of Havana and China is expected to build 108,000 new hotel rooms for the largest tourist facility in the Caribbean. On the other end of the spectrum is the 14 room Hotel Terral whch has a prime spot on the Malecón.

THE DEPOT at Nochecita had smooth stuccoed apricot walls, trimmed in a somehow luminous shade of gray—around the railhead and its freight sheds and electrical and machine shops, the town had grown, houses and businesses painted vermilion, sage, and fawn, and towering at the end of the main street, a giant sporting establishment whose turquoise and crimson electric lamps were kept lit all night and daytime, too, for the place never closed. There was an icehouse and a billiard parlor, a wine room, a lunch and eating counter, gambling saloons and taquerías. In the part of town across the tracks from all that, Estrella Briggs, whom everybody called Stray, was living upstairs in what had been once the domestic palace of a mine owner from the days of the first great ore strikes around here, now a dimly illicit refuge for secret lives, dark and in places unrepainted wood rearing against a sky which since this morning had been threatening storm. Walkways in from the street were covered with corrugated snow-shed roofing. The restaurant and bar on the ground-floor corner had been there since the boom times, offering two-bit all-you-can-eat specials, sawdust on the floor, heavy-duty crockery, smells of steaks, chops, venison chili, coffee and beer and so on worked into the wood of the wall paneling, old trestle tables, bar and barstools. At all hours the place’d be racketing with gambling-hall workers on their breaks, big-hearted winners and bad losers, detectives, drummers, adventuresses, pigeons, and sharpers. A sunken chamber almost like a natatorium at some hot-springs resort, so cool and dim that you forgot after a while about the desert waiting out there to resume for you soon as you stepped back into it. . . .

What makes a WHY powerful is its authenticity. Neither employees nor clients are fooled when an organization attempts to manufacture a WHY to suit what they feel customers want to hear. This is manipulation. The people you do business with, and the people who work with you, will sense a disconnect. Trust and loyalty will diminish (if they ever existed). When that happens, the company often resorts to discounts and other forms of manipulation to try to convince customers and employees to stay. This may work in the short term but it has no hope of long-term success.

Sweden’s capital is an expansive and peaceful place for solo travellers. It is made up of 14 islands, connected by 50 bridges all within Lake Mälaren which flows out into to the Baltic Sea. Several main districts encompass islands and are connected by Stockholm’s bridges. Norrmalm is the main business area and includes the train station, hotels, theatres and shopping. Őstermalm is more upmarket and has wide spaces that includes forest. Kungsholmen is a relaxed neighbourhood on an island on the west of the city. It has a good natural beach and is popular with bathers. In addition to the city of 14 islands, the Stockholm Archipelago is made up of 24,000 islands spread through with small towns, old forts and an occasional resort. Ekero, to the east of the city, is the only Swedish area to have two UNESCO World Heritage sites – the royal palace of Drottningholm, and the Viking village of Birka. Stockholm probably grew from origins as a place of safety – with so many islands it allowed early people to isolate themselves from invaders. The earliest fort on any of the islands stretches back to the 13th century. Today the city has architecture dating from that time. In addition, it didn’t suffer the bombing raids that beset other European cities, and much of the old architecture is untouched. Getting around the city is relatively easy by metro and bus. There are also pay‐as‐you‐go Stockholm City Bikes. The metro and buses travel out to most of the islands, but there are also hop on, hop off boat tours. It is well worth taking a trip through the broad and spacious archipelago, which stretches 80 kms out from the city. Please note that taxis are expensive and, to make matters worse, the taxi industry has been deregulated leading to visitors unwittingly paying extortionate rates. A yellow sticker on the back window of each car will tell you the maximum price that the driver will charge therefore, if you have a choice of taxis, choose

The casting had been more difficult. Macdonnell and Meston both wanted William Conrad for the lead, but CBS objected. Conrad was known as a heavy from his movie roles (Body and Soul; Sorry, Wrong Number; The Killers). He was also a busy radio actor (Escape, Suspense, The Adventures of Sam Spade, many others) with a distinctive air presence. As Conrad told Hickman: “I think when they started casting for it, somebody said, ‘Good Christ, let’s not get Bill Conrad, we’re up to you-know-where with Bill Conrad.’ So they auditioned everybody, and as a last resort they called me. And I went in and read about two lines … and the next day they called me and said, ‘Okay, you have the job.

Your grandpa said already that propaganda is a governmental function. It has nothing to do with business. Furthermore, the government needs to bring its ideas across to the public and needs to resort to effective methods. Therefore, it encourages gifted speakers to explain the government plans. Besides that, the government is most certainly allowed to stick signs on billboards. Since the signs reflect the doctrine of the government it is not against the law.” “Harold, think about it. Are you saying that the government can proclaim whatever it wants because it makes the laws and therefore is able to get away with outright lies?” Karl’s grandpa wanted to be sure that he understood what Harold had been taught. “I don’t know about outright lies, but yes, our government is allowed to make the laws. Therefore, it is able to proclaim or to deny without coming into conflict with the laws.” Harold was unyielding. The old man Veth nodded in agreement. “Alright, Harold, now think before you answer. Considering your previous point about advertising would you now come to the conclusion that the propaganda of our government is self-serving?” Harold did not miss a beat. “Of course our government is self-serving. I don’t think that there is any difference between our government and other governments. They are always self-serving.” “Then you don’t even think about the fact that Herr Hitler can say what he wants, but that we citizens are in jeopardy if we don’t agree with him.” Herr Veth wanted to turn this conversation into a lesson. Harold showed that he was indeed already too long in the rain. “No Herr Veth, Herr Hitler does not say what he wants. He is only taking measures to assure that we are building an eternal empire. It will last at least a 1,000 years because we will eradicate the mentally ill by not permitting them to reproduce and also by sterilizing their roots. We will also abolish any vagrants and quacks, regardless of their faith, by sending them to labor camps. If any nonproductive person does not like our restraints they are free to migrate to other countries, which will suffer by this fact and therefore will never be of any competition to our disciplined nation.” Karl was stunned by Harold’s outpouring. “Harold, what is the matter with you? Don’t you realize that you are sounding like a member of the Nazi party?” Harold turned to face his friend. “No, Karl, I don’t sound like a Nazi. Discipline and productivity are the hallmarks of our Prussian culture and upbringing. There is nothing wrong with it.” Herr Veth intertwined. “There is something wrong with using the Prussian discipline to control young minds. Herr Hitler is using the very core of our

As a lender of last resort, the House of Morgan favored like-minded institutions of similar character and background. Kidder, Peabody was just such a firm. It didn’t hustle business or steal clients and always played by Morgan rules. In 1930, it was hit by multiple blows. The Italian government removed $8 million in deposits, and the new Bank for International Settlements instructed Kidder to switch big sums to a Swiss bank. This led to another rescue at Jack Morgan’s home, chaired by George Whitney, who had started his career as a Kidder clerk. The House of Morgan arranged a $10-million line of credit. Under Whitney’s tutelage, the old Kidder, Peabody was folded.

Leadership is likely frustrated, too, with the lack of innovation from the product teams. All too often, they resort to acquisitions or creating separate “innovation centers” to incubate new businesses in a protected environment. Yet this rarely results in the innovation they're so desperate for.

Sales conversations are founded on “seduction”, a form of courtship a seller initiates in order to win the prospect’s trust in conversation before engaging into actual product selling. Marketing resorts to courtship as well when marketers gain their market’s attention with promises of a better future and more satisfactory situations. Whatever our role at work, we are all in sales and marketing, whether we like it or not. This is particularly true of technical performers who intend to hold a pivotal role for aligning technology with business needs. Mobile disposition in its higher form cultivates courtship essential for building strong and trustworthy relationships with other actors in a business enterprise.

Making the most out of every encounter to better your club’s visibility By Fred Layman Networking is as much of a strategy as it is fun. When you are researching on where to go or simply venturing out, here are some tips on how to make the most of your interactions. Seek New People – You Never Know Who You Need to Know What's the point of attending a business networking event if you don't actively seek new people to meet and discuss business with them? Set an easy minimum goal for yourself to meet at least three new people at each event you attend, or hey be bold and go for six! You will grow your network exponentially if you meet new people at every event. Business Cards – They Need to be Wherever You Are Always, always, ALWAYS have your business cards with you wherever you go. You will most likely always have opportunities to attend social activities that provide the opportunity for you to meet new people, and the ability to let your friends and colleagues know about your business. You never know who you might meet that could use your business’ service. Arrive Early for Best Benefits A good strategy for attending networking events is to arrive early. You will be less stressed, score a better parking space, and have a moment to introduce yourself to the people hosting the event who will likely in turn have time to introduce you to other professionals arriving at the event. Where Should You Network? Before joining a leads group, association or Chamber of Commerce be sure to attend some of their events and meetings as you want to make sure that the right types of business owners and professionals will be there for you to network with. Most organizations allow you to attend as a non-member or offer a few meetings to attend complimentary before they will ask you to join. The goal is to meet new people and begin developing relationships and even friendships. It is proven that the more consistency you display, the more your peers and colleagues will want to work with you. Fred W. Layman III, USPTA, NGCOA, GSGA, SCGA, USGA Director of Operations/COO, The Windermere Club, is the President of an Augusta, Georgia based club lifestyle management and consulting firm focused on supporting golf club owners, country clubs, residential developers, asset managers and community boards in the successful operation of their resort, club, tennis, golf and food and beverage operations. . Background: Golf and Tennis Club Owner, Developer, Home Builder, Hospitality, Lifestyle and Leisure

And now the reader will ask what became of the three penguins' eggs for which three human lives had been risked three hundred times a day, and three human frames strained to the utmost extremity of human endurance. Let us leave the Antarctic for a moment and conceive ourselves in the year 1913 in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. I had written to say that I would bring the eggs at this time. Present, myself, C.-G., the sole survivor of the three, with First or Doorstep Custodian of the Sacred Eggs. I did not take a verbatim report of his welcome; but the spirit of it may be dramatized as follows: First Custodian. Who are you? What do you want? This ain't an egg-shop. What call have you to come meddling with our eggs? Do you want me to put the police on to you? Is it the crocodile's egg you're after? I don't know nothing about 'no eggs. You'd best speak to Mr. Brown: it's him that varnishes the eggs. I resort to Mr. Brown, who ushers me into the presence of the Chief Custodian, a man of scientific aspect, with two manners: one, affably courteous, for a Person of Importance (I guess a Naturalist Rothschild at least) with whom he is conversing, and the other, extraordinarily offensive even for an official man of science, for myself. I announce myself with becoming modesty as the bearer of the penguins' eggs, and proffer them. The Chief Custodian takes them into custody without a word of thanks, and turns to the Person of Importance to discuss them. I wait. The temperature of my blood rises. The conversation proceeds for what seems to me a considerable period. Suddenly the Chief Custodian notices my presence and seems to resent it. Chief Custodian. You needn't wait. Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt for the eggs, if you please. Chief Custodian. It is not necessary: it is all right. You needn't wait. Heroic Explorer. I should like to have a receipt. But by this time the Chief Custodian's attention is again devoted wholly to the Person of Importance. Feeling that to persist in overhearing their conversation would be an indelicacy, the Heroic Explorer politely leaves the room, and establishes himself on a chair in a gloomy passage outside, where he wiles away the time by rehearsing in his imagination how he will tell off the Chief Custodian when the Person of Importance retires. But this the Person of Importance shows no sign of doing, and the Explorer's thoughts and intentions become darker and darker. As the day wears on, minor officials, passing to and from the Presence, look at him doubtfully and ask his business. The reply is always the same, "I am waiting for a receipt for some penguins' eggs." At last it becomes clear from the Explorer's expression that what he is really waiting for is not to take a receipt but to commit murder. Presumably this is reported to the destined victim: at all events the receipt finally comes; and the Explorer goes his way with it, feeling that he has behaved like a perfect gentleman, but so very dissatisfied with that vapid consolation that for hours he continues his imaginary rehearsals of what he would have liked to have done to that Custodian (mostly with his boots) by way of teaching him manners.

But even the biggest Wall Street banks were at a disadvantage when they went up against the traders at Koch Industries, British Petroleum, or Amoco. The Wall Street banks didn’t have access to inside information. Goldman Sachs didn’t own refineries or pipelines and couldn’t get a sneak peek into where markets were headed. The banks had to resort to second-rate information that was publicly available, like government reports on monthly energy supplies. It was a losing proposition. In the mid-1990s, the Wall Street banks came to Koch Industries, asking for help. “We kept getting approached by banks, who say, ‘Hey, Koch. You guys are so good at this physical stuff, we’d like to partner with you,’ ” recalled a former senior Koch executive who was heavily involved in trading operations. The banks came to Koch with the same pitch: the banks would handle “all this financial stuff,” while Koch handled the physical end of trading and shared information from its operations. If Koch executives were flattered by the attention from Wall Street, they didn’t show it for long. “We kind of got curious—or, suspicious is the better term,” the executive recalled. Rather than help the banks out, Koch set up a team to study why the banks were so interested in their business. Koch hired the outside consulting firm McKinsey & Company to study what was happening in commodities markets during the 1990s. McKinsey reported that the world of trading had grown even larger and more profitable than Koch Industries had suspected. As it happened, the futures contracts that Koch was trading had become the “plain vanilla” products in a rapidly booming market. Now there were more exotic, more opaque, and far more profitable financial products on the market. These products were called “derivatives.” That’s where the real money was.

But this work paled in comparison to the force and impact of A Monetary History of the United States. What had begun as a favor to Arthur Burns had become a book that would turn the conventional wisdom of academic economists, policy-makers, and politicians alike upside down. The American Historical Review put it simply: “This is one of the most important books of our time.”39 Friedman and Schwartz presented voluminous data on nearly a century of U.S. history; but beyond piling up facts, they also advanced a theory of how money worked in the economy. How did money affect business cycles? Friedman and Schwartz had an answer they considered definitive: money mattered. It was the hidden force behind the ups and downs, the breadlines and the bubbles. Friedman knew the book would make an impact. He knew it was the best work he had ever done, or would ever do. He knew that for all his deviationist politics, for all the force of Keynesian assumption, for all the habitual scorn heaped upon the quantity theory of money, their book would have to be answered. It would compel conversation. The book’s centerpiece was its stunning analysis of the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz’s data showed a precipitous 33 percent decline in the quantity of money during what they called “the great contraction.” They convincingly argued that this lack of money transformed an unremarkable dip in the business cycle into a crisis of global proportions. Here was a provocative new explanation for a disaster that continued to cast its shadow across the century. But threaded through the economic argument was another thesis. In 1914, the United States had created a central bank system designed expressly to stabilize the economy. As the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve Board could have opened the spigots and flooded the economy with cash. Why did it fail to do so?