Money Archives - Page 22 of 27 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

In my last post, we discussed the sorry state of value investing following seven years of rigged markets courtesy of our central bankers. In this post we’ll turn to another category of investing that sits right near the top of so many investors’ Sh*t Lists: hedge funds. Whole books have been written about hedge funds, …

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Creative Capital

Is Everything That Didn’t Work Worthless?

by Greg Curtis

For reasons best known to themselves and their (not very robust) consciences, America’s central bankers concluded that the best way to drag the US economy out of the Financial Crisis was to make rich people richer and poor people poorer. They therefore adopted policies—QE1, QE2, QE3—that drove up the prices of assets mainly held by …

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Creative Capital

On Karoshi, Part III

by Greg Curtis

As noted in my last several posts, Japanese salarymen worked long hours without overtime pay for a selfless reason: to pull their defeated country up by its bootstraps. And they succeeded wildly. By 1978 Japan had surpassed Germany to become the world’s second-largest economy, a position it held until it was pushed down to third …

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Creative Capital

On Karoshi, Part II

by Greg Curtis

The word “karoshi” was invented in 1978 to describe an increasingly common phenomenon: Japanese workers, mostly the venerable salarymen, were dropping dead of heart disease in the prime of life. There was a reason it all happened in the 1970s. The shocking—to the Japanese—and humiliating loss in World War II had caused the proud country …

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Creative Capital

On Karoshi

by Greg Curtis

“Karoshi” is a Japanese word that means, literally, “death by overwork.” For nearly half a century it’s been quite common for Japanese workers, usually the legendary “salarymen,” simply to drop dead, almost always from heart problems, after working long hours for many years. Other Asian cultures, especially, South Korea and China, experience a similar phenomenon. …

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Creative Capital

The Illusion of Control, Part III

by Greg Curtis

In my last post I pointed out that, contrary to the claims of Modern Portfolio Theory, families who own businesses aren’t at all uncomfortable with the “single stock risk” they are taking. (I’m not counting startup companies, which mostly fail.) I also pointed out that, once a family sells its company and invests the proceeds …

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Creative Capital

The Illusion of Control, Part II

by Greg Curtis

When I was writing my last book, Family Capital, my objective was to make it appealing—well, tolerable—for people who didn’t care much for investment issues but who knew they really should learn something about them. Adult children, for example. But also spouses, cousins, attorneys, accountants, bankers, trustees and others who needed a working knowledge of …

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Business

Whistleblower

by Jennifer Papale Rignani

In 1991, the smell of Nabisco saturated the air in Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods. The cookie factory was still just that, years away from its second act as a Google anchor. Sears was closed, but its big blue shell sat fading in the parking lot on Highland Avenue. Peabody wasn’t Obama and Bush I was in …

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Creative Capital

The Illusion of Control

by Greg Curtis

“Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee/Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep? *** In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,/And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars.” —From Lady Percy’s soliloquy in Henry IV, Part I Toward the end of World War II, and afterward, psychologists tried to come …

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Creative Capital

Happy 200th Anniversary! Part IV

by Greg Curtis

In celebration of my 200th blog post, I’m blogging about blogging. Last week I talked about my (mostly boring) writing habits. This week I’m answering this question: Many of your blog posts adopt a position quite different from those we read about in the mainstream media, left or right. Are you naturally contrarian or do …

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Business

The Puzzle of “E”

by Tom Flannery

If you didn’t read my first piece, I was prompted to consider writing this blog by my own passage through late middle age to advanced middle age. I can see the end of the road, career-wise, through the haze. My younger, more energetic colleagues are assuming more of the responsibility in our office and are …

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Creative Capital

Happy 200th Anniversary! Part III

by Greg Curtis

In celebration of my 200th blog post, I’m blogging about blogging. Last week I went over the terrifying issue of how to come up with a new topic to write about every week. This week I’m answering the question: You have a day job and six kids, so how do you find time to write …

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Creative Capital

Happy 200th Anniversary! Part II

by Greg Curtis

In celebration of my 200th blog post last week, I’m blogging about blogging. Last Friday I went over some details about the blog and addressed a question about whether I’m really writing an investment blog or not. (Read “Happy 200th Anniversary! Part I” here.) This week I’m answering the question: Isn’t it hard to come up …

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Business

Meet Jack Roseman, the Tech Whisperer

by Evan Pattak

Shortly after Keith LeJeune helped found Agentase, a company that developed tools to detect hazardous chemicals, he called on Jack Roseman. LeJeune was so impressed with Roseman that he hired him as a consultant. When Sue Parker needed an exit strategy for her software start-up, Paragon Systems, she tapped Roseman, who helped her sell Paragon …

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Creative Capital

Happy 200th Anniversary!

by Greg Curtis

No, it only seems like I’ve been writing this blog for 200 years. I’ve actually been writing it for 200 weeks. As the anniversary approached, I naturally gave some thought about how to celebrate it, and my first notion was to give myself the week off. But nobody gets time off work just because it’s …

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Creative Capital

On the (Inevitable) Donald, Part V

by Greg Curtis

We’ve talked about school desegregation and we’ve talked about the fight against discrimination, two highly desirable movements that were, unfortunately, built on the backs of working families, leaving the elites who sponsored them untouched. Unsurprisingly, many of those working families now support Donald Trump and, whether he wins or loses, will continue to support Trump-like, …

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Creative Capital

On the (Inevitable) Donald, Part IV

by Greg Curtis

Let’s talk about discrimination. I had a friend, now deceased, we’ll call Millie. Millie grew up in a wealthy and influential family and graduated from law school in the 1930s—a real gender pioneer. But getting a law degree and getting a law job were two different things. Whenever Millie would show up for a job …

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Creative Capital

On the (Inevitable) Donald, Part III

by Greg Curtis

I’ll be talking about delicate issues in these posts, so let me be clear about what I’m saying—and what I’m not. Hundreds of years from now, when historians look back on our era—say, the period beginning just after World War II—the glory of our time won’t have anything to do with technology or arts or …

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Creative Capital

On the (Inevitable) Donald, Part II

by Greg Curtis

One reason I dislike Trump but also dislike his elite critics is because I have the misfortune to live in both camps. If you merely took a quick, casual glance at my vita you might conclude (as I try to trick everybody into concluding) that I am a card-carrying member of the elite American intelligentsia. …

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Creative Capital

On the (Inevitable) Donald

by Greg Curtis

Right-thinking person that I am, I’ve spent my adult life in broad agreement with elite American opinion on all the major issues and movements of the age: opposition to the War in Vietnam, support for the Civil Rights Movement, gender equity, reproductive rights, immigration reform, environmentalism, equality for gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, etc., etc. Yet, …

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Creative Capital

Contemporary Colonialism

by Greg Curtis

“The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of … colonized people are made and implemented by the … rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.” – Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: …

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Creative Capital

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of History, Part V

by Greg Curtis

“The UK is a divided society where the richest receive the lion’s share, leaving crumbs for the rest.” – The Equality Trust I’ve argued that the Remain voters in Britain were mainly looking out for their own economic self-interest, without considering what might be good for the UK. Meanwhile, the supposed lunkheads – the Leave …

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