Would You Buy A Car From This Government?

Whether on late night TV or blaring from a radio, you’ve probably heard the pitch countless times: “Come on down to the lot and have your kids enter for a chance to win free in-state college tuition; lease your dream vehicle and qualify for a million-dollar lottery card; finance with us and we’ll give you Mets tickets; buy a car and we’ll even pay your outstanding parking tickets.” We’ve heard this schtick so often and for so long we probably don’t even register it anymore. The last new marketing campaign to come from Detroit was “employee discount” rates, and that was what, fifteen years ago? The problem here isn’t that car buying is still a weird universe of its own, it’s that local politicians are using the same techniques to encourage people to get the Covid vaccination. The four examples above are all true offers from state and local officials this past month—whether Mets tickets can be considered an “incentive” is a discussion for another day.

No matter your age, income, or neighborhood, it is impossible not to know that the Covid vaccine is around, available, and free (well you don’t get charged—our grandchildren are screwed when the financing for this hits their tax bills). And while initial lines to get the vaccine resembled refugees trying to gain entry into a friendly country, for the past few weeks the numbers have slowed down considerably. We are at the point where, for various reasons, millions of J&J shots may go unused by the end of the month and will no longer have approved viability. While I happily rolled up my sleeve this April, it seems that there is, in a Jimmy Carter kind of way, a national malaise about Covid and the vaccine. Sure there are petulant anti-vaxxers, but their total numbers are a rounding error against the general population. Perhaps we are now at a national boy-who-cried-wolf inflection point when it comes to believing anything the government says.

The populace has always been leery of boasting politicians, but they have never believed every word from them anyway. Where new wounds have been opened is from the permanent bureaucracy, and it has only itself to blame. At the beginning of Covid, Dr. Fauci’s words were as close to Moses’s tablets as we could come. A year later he’s become a caricature of himself, wearing two masks to a hearing with the national infection falling like a dead Wuhan bat and millions of people getting vaccinated. While it’s easy to whack at the Fauci piṅata, none of the political or bureaucratic institutions have gotten anything right about Covid. We can’t even figure out if the virus came from a lab or wet market. We can’t even get the Chinese to admit it came from China.

We now live in a circular firing squad of distrust. The passenger who is taken off a plane for not wearing a mask points to BLM rioters who ravaged cities for the sole purpose of stealing and destruction. The otherwise law-abiding citizen loses faith in the police when the cops did nothing about the stealing and destruction. And everyone looks at governors who arbitrarily called their jobs “non essential” and threw otherwise law-abiding and police-respecting citizens into unemployment for no discernible reason.

Traditionally, Americans in times of true crisis are willing to inconvenience themselves and temporarily subordinate their rights for the greater good because we trust a terrestrial authority. The past year has given every doubter and naysayer a lifetime of ammunition to simply ignore authority. Why trust authority when, if it comes to maintaining law and order or merely distributing a vaccine, life is just a lottery ticket? Should we care? Absolutely. Because the last thing anyone takes seriously now is the people to whom we should have at least some deferential respect and obedience. Sometimes your life, or the lives of many, depend on it. But it seems that all these leaders do is fumble around and bemoan their missing masks, from the President on down.

If there is a happy tale to tell, a friend of mine got his J&J shot earlier this year and reported unusual efficiency at the vaccine site. He also noted the National Guard was running the operation, so at least one governmental organ could show how to make things work. Perhaps we could commandeer a few car salesmen to work the airwaves, asking us how they can get a needle into our arms instead of how to get us into their cars. Sure some screamer may slap down a C-note and proclaim that for a hundred bucks you can drive away with a new car, but somehow it works. Nobody likes buying a car, and nobody really trusts the car salesmen. But they know how to make a sale, and for our collective health we can’t do any worse.

 © 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

220

 

Being blessed with good health, my annual physical tends to be a routine affair. So this past December nothing much was different with the exception of my doctor wearing his mask throughout the appointment. Obviously some of our banter centered around Covid and how the vaccine, which was just rolling out to health care workers, was going to change things. Almost to himself, my doctor asked, “Once people are vaccinated, what are they going to do with the millions of tests that they won’t need anymore?” Five months later I got the answer, and it wasn’t what I was expecting. Tests were helping the most elite institutions and hurting those who needed help the most.

While late-April baseball is always something of crapshoot weather-wise, when you get an invitation for the luxury suites at Yankee Stadium, the possibility of a rain out is soothed by guaranteed overhead cover and a private bathroom. And so my wife and I were the beneficiaries of generous friends and off to the Bronx we headed. But first, I had to get a Covid rapid test that morning to prove I was not infectious. Beyond the limited seating capacity requirements that are common in the region, New York requires attendees of these kinds of events to show proof of full vaccination (I had only had my first shot) or a negative test. As annoying as it was for my nostrils, I passed with flying colors and handed over my insurance card to the urgent care clerk for processing. I had no idea what it might cost, but I figured even if it were a $50 deductible, I would still be way ahead against the $150 bottle of Grey Goose our hosts had ordered for the suite.

It would be a couple of weeks later when I opened my explanation of benefits that I realized how wrong things were going. The “billed rate” was $350 and I figured, like any other test, the payout would be along the lines of 10-20%. How wrong I was. The “negotiated rate” ended up at $220. I didn’t have to pay a thing, but either my company’s policy did or maybe they and the government shared the bill. But stop and do the math. Even with only 10,000 fans allowed, that’s $2.2 million a game just for the fans. Multiply that out over 81 games and it’s larger than the GDP of many countries. While the season progresses and more fans get vaccinated there won’t be a need for as many tests, but you can be sure that staff will have to get tested regularly, if for no other reason to try to protect the team should somebody allege that they got Covid at the game.

And more to the point, to what end do we need this testing, if indeed the efficacy of the rapid test is to be trusted? Even if somebody came down with Covid, there wasn’t any way to trace the fact I was there: My name wasn’t on the ticket, I never used my credit card, and my ID was never recorded. Sure, we went through the kabuki of social distancing (well, those in the general stands did). We played nice and wore masks as we entered the stadium, but soon after most fans’ masks, like the Yankees offense that afternoon, never showed up again.

So why the anger at what seems what sounds like a 1% of the 1% problem? The suite attendant. In casual conversation I asked how things had been during the season. While not complaining, he said that he usually worked one suite and it kept him busy all game. Now, he hustles five suites and barely makes a payday. When you think that the stadium sometimes needs upwards of 4,000 people to work a game, and you cut that by 80%, you don’t have to guess how many families are struggling. And while Democrats have always belittled “trickle-down” economics, they might want to ask the people for whom the stream has run dry. Yet it is Democratic governors who are creating the greatest inequity, this time through a “vaccine gap,” that is hurting the people who need the most help, the ones who can’t work from home, or the ones who don’t have Giancarlo Stanton’s astronomical, guaranteed contract.

While the CDC gave its updated “recommendations” last week (and it’s telling that they phrased it in terms of can/can’t and not should/shouldn’t), other states such as Florida are ending the class, err, vaccine, wars by barring businesses from even asking about vax status. Given that over half a million Americans have died from Covid, it is abundantly clear we were never going to protect ourselves in some bubble wrap of lockdown, partial capacity, or as a neighbor in my building still does to this day, pressing elevator buttons with your elbows. Risk is a part of life, and if we aren’t going to try and move forward, we are going to bankrupt our country. $220 at a time.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

The Ides of May

 

The Old Roman Senate, Scene of Caesar's Demise 

Friends, Republicans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to explain Liz Cheney, not to praise her. Today Republicans ousted their Chair of the House Republican Conference, the number three leadership position. Over the last few weeks, like any Shakespearean drama, the foreboding was clear. But how did we get here, and what does it mean?

In Congress there are various types of members. Some see it as a steppingstone to executive power—be it Governor or President. Some wait patiently over years, sometimes decades, for a committee chairmanship. A few are just there for the publicity—seemingly (or in their own minds) owing nothing to party leadership. Think AOC for the Democrats and Matt Gaetz for the GOP. Their importance in the legislative process is inversely proportional to the time they spend on TV, Twitter, and people talking about their time on TV and Twitter.

And then there is House “leadership,” starting with the Speaker and their mirror in the minority, and then some combination of deputies and whips on each side. They come from districts that, absent indictment (although not always) or catastrophe, are so safe they don’t even have to campaign for themselves. Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities spoke of certain political types as having “favor banks”; House leaders are a combination of the Treasury printing favors and the Federal Reserve distributing them.

Against this backdrop Liz Cheney falls into the scene. Fall isn’t quite the right term—more of moving slightly from behind the curtains to the stage front. Make no mistake, Liz Cheney is whip smart and well spoken, putting her ahead of about 95% of her Hill colleagues. During the Bush 43 campaigns and administration she and her sister were a powerhouse duo supporting and defending their father in the fiercest of ways. And to add to her superpowers, she and her husband are raising their five children. At age 54 she was poised for a long run to the top, but of all things couldn’t grasp what should have come naturally—leadership.

Part of the party leadership deal is giving up some of your passions, absent anything that would hurt your constituents, for the greater good of the party. You slug out Sunday morning talk show appearances simply because you have to, not because anybody cares. You make deals between members to keep them happy, not because the greater good of the country is served. You also signal what you want, ultimately to be Speaker, and forgo other electoral temptations. While hardly monastic, the reward for this life is immense political power and national influence. So, and improbably in just her third term, Liz Cheney staked her claim.

I can’t say I agree with Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach the President either on fact or as a leader in the party, but so she did. And while riling many feathers, she defended herself in front of her conference, winning a confidence vote mere weeks after having been voted into leadership in the first place. And here is where it all goes so wrong. Instead of using that second vote to secure her power and become politically untouchable she…persisted. Why? Leaders don’t make gratuitous power grabs in public—it’s a quiet takeover that even the vanquished acknowledge was inevitable when it is over. Strength accumulates by not flexing it in public. Yet for whatever reason Liz Cheney seemed to think that the Trump fight needed constant, and public, flogging. Was there some ancient grudge break to new mutiny between the Trumps and Cheneys? Who knows. But what also became clear was that, like it or not, the Trump show remained popular within the party and it needed to be stage managed since it wasn’t closing anytime soon. So like another well-known Italian drama, Casino, the bosses had had enough with Liz Cheney. And while not buried in an Indiana cornfield, her long-term political future is hardly a sure bet.

The irony here is that Liz Cheney’s behavior of battling, battling, and battling, unable to let go, unable to see the bigger picture, was just like Trump. It’s also what brought her down.

Et tu, Donald?

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

The Evolutionary Political Tree

 

With all the money and people the Democrats can tap for professional wordsmithing, why is it that their top candidates, and now President, can’t stop pissing off the very people they need to vote for them? Between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (who have a combined cumulative public speaking experience you could measure not in years but geologic eras), these leaders of their party have given Republicans verbal fodder to last a generation or, in more familiar terms, as long as the Neanderthals were our ancestors.

Just yesterday President Joe accused the governors of Texas and Mississippi of “Neanderthal thinking” when they announced lifting almost all Covid restrictions in their states. Not since Hillary’s line about Trump supporters being a “basket of deplorables” have the Democrats given the opposition the gift that keeps on giving. To this day conservative media uses “deplorables” as shorthand for elites who look down on working class masses with only high school educations. The very people who used to vote for Democrats. The same people Hillary mocked were all too happy to put that deplorable name on t-shirts and parade around in their own form of mockery all the way to the 2016 voting booths. Even in 2020 it was a cry at the Trump rallies, and short of 50,000 votes (legal and otherwise) across three states it would have propelled the Donald to another four years in the White House.

More importantly, Joe’s words reinforce, at many levels, the difference between elites and deplorables/Neanderthals. Not two weeks ago Texas went very Middle Ages electric, which is to say the power grid went off for a variety of reasons. After the lights went back on, Texas Governor Abbott could have pulled an Andrew Cuomo—that is deny, call it politics, and then go back to business as usual. But Abbott was front and center: the system failed and the legislature will come up with a remedy. There was no blaming green energy, shared power grids, or other DC salon discussion points—just plain talk that here is what happened and here is how we are going to fix it.

A bigger question for Joe is, do you really want to give Texas Republicans more ammunition? The state is poised to gain several congressional seats, all of which are redistricted by the Republican-controlled state legislature. I’m sure somebody in an Austin conference room already has a map out with labels “Neanderthal District-1, Neanderthal District-2, Neanderthal District-3…” And let’s not forget Florida, who I guess would be merely prehistoric on Joe’s Covid fighting scale. They will gain congressional seats from failed states such as New York, and I’m guessing they aren’t inclined to hand out goodies to the Democrats either. But in Texas, where Democrats have made significant inroads during recent statewide elections, do you really need to start off every campaign stop by distancing yourself from the leader of your party? When you are measuring victory by thin slices of the electoral college, I wouldn’t start by insulting the very places where you are trying to flip votes. Even Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday said he disagreed with opening up states, but didn’t go down the route of evolutionary name calling.

There are no perfect, or even very good, answers about what restrictions have worked, especially in light of destroying “non-essential” livelihoods, wiping out a year and a half of schooling, and, as the courts keep ruling, breaking the limits of governmental authority. It’s been a fairly poor experiment, and now some states are taking bold action, especially in light of the vaccine rollout. It’s the philosophy, right down party lines, as Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves put it, “’It was never to prevent all possible spread of Covid-19, it was always about protecting the integrity of our healthcare system.’” That question will not get answered here.

Say what you will about Neanderthals, but they weren’t too shabby making and using tools and their cave drawings could hang in any modern gallery wall, especially compared to some of today’s art. And maybe Joe was just having a grumpy old man day that people weren’t staying off his mask wearing front lawn. But what distinguishes our species from others is our large brain compared to our body size, a brain that remembers things on election day. And a brain that can create some great t-shirts, t-shirts I can’t wait to see on the campaign trail.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Excelsior, Ever Lower

 

As a side hustle over the years, I’ve been a photographer at many philanthropic and political galas. It’s not my favorite work, but the pay is usually OK and if you do a good enough job, they invite you back the next year—a little like a work annuity. So it was in the early 2000’s when I was covering the annual fundraiser for a prominent local environmental group. It’s a gig I had done before, and many of the same folks were there from previous years. There’s a kind of code at these events when it comes to pictures, with photographers keeping an eye out for celebs willing to have their photos taken with civilians (those who pay to go to these things). With a subtle nod of the head, the celeb smiles and extends their arm around the civilian, and I click away.

Thus I thought nothing of it when I saw a politician, who not-so-secretly was about to launch a statewide campaign, talking with a civilian. They seemed to know each other in a vague way, so I naturally asked if they wanted a picture. The civilian, we’ll call him Bob, stood up straight, adjusted his tie, and flashed a grin across his face, and the politician…looked at me. It wasn’t a blank look, but a highly unresponsive one. He turned to the civilian and simply deadpanned, “Oh Bob wouldn’t want a picture with me” and then calmly walked away. It was hardly the usual behavior of a an out-of-office politician gearing up for a major campaign, and both Bob and I were just plain confused by the whole thing. Then again, the politician in question was Andrew Cuomo.

In the Donald Trump model of life, any news, meaning any mention of your name, is good news. Accusations of obstructing justice and illicit female relationships were swatted away like contestants on an Apprentice episode. For Andrew Cuomo, the same accusations these past few weeks have been a political nightmare, and there has been nowhere for him to simply walk away.

Perhaps it’s all genetic. Cuomo’s dad Mario, the former New York Governor, was known to be just as thin-skinned and as much of a bully to the Albany press as Andrew. He’d call a reporter at eight in the morning to complain about some petty umbrage he took to a recent article. Now complaining to, and about, reporters is an ancient political art, but calling them only a few hours after they got to bed was considered a hostile act. But even Mario had to compromise, given that Republicans controlled the State Senate and significant parts of upstate and Long Island. For Andrew, political opposition has been wiped out across the state and he has steamrolled his way to absolute control. Of course the last steamroller in Albany, Governor Eliot Spitzer, had his own control issues, namely with prostitutes, and it cost him his job.

Perhaps Andrew Cuomo thinks this will all blow over. This is the same Governor who managed to shut down the state’s Moreland commission on government corruption when the investigation started to knock on his door and that of his supporters. A few minor characters went to jail, but somehow Cuomo managed to bully and bluster his way out of the whole affair.

But then there are the women.

First was senior aide Melissa DeRosa admitting, like John Dean at the Watergate hearings, that the Cuomo administration had deliberately obstructed a Department of Justice investigation into the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents. And while Biden’s DOJ announced they would open their own investigation, nobody can figure out why it will be in the Eastern District of New York, some 150 miles away from Albany, when staff from the Northern District of New York could walk two blocks to Cuomo’s office at the state Capitol building. One gets the sense this will be as successful as a 2019 health inspection at the Wuhan wet market.

But now there are more women kissing (albeit non-consensually) and telling. Two former staffers have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, and just as I am typing this sentence a third woman has come forward recounting Cuomo copping and unwanted feel. At first Cuomo forcefully denied anything happened, sounding much like Trump in his own, weird Cuomo-esque accent. But a funny thing happened—all of a sudden Cuomo’s story is now one of being playful, adding a little humor to the serious business of government work, lightening the mood. Denials now have a different storyline, which is to say it’s not a denial.

Yet Cuomo still is grasping to whatever power he has. Instead of acquiescing to the obvious, Cuomo suggested that he appoint his own special investigator about these allegations. As a sign of his diminished standing, the entire Capital laughed that idea away and the State Attorney General will grant a private attorney, with full subpoena power, authority to investigate the matter.

There are two things I’m sure about. First, Cuomo will fight all of this to the bitter, bitter, end. His chances of higher office, heck a fourth and final term as Governor, have melted away like the winter’s snow. He has nothing to lose and may just try to run out the clock, hoping his well-practiced skills of obstruction and deceit will work one more time. We’ll see how that all goes. And the second thing—just don’t ask to take a picture with him.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

Irregular

 

A January ritual was for my mom to drag my brother and I down to Bloomingdale’s to hit the annual white sales (now a woke police non-compliant name). The only obstacle between us and a great deal was my dad’s one, immovable rule—the sheets on the bed at home could be any color, as long as it was white. This ran into the other immovable truth—white sheets never went on sale. Mom would politely ask the sales clerk about what white sheets might be on sale, and the clerk would politely shake their head that none were on sale, but “are you familiar with irregulars?”

Irregular sheets weren’t from some oddball company but ever so slightly not perfect—some finished stitching might not be exact or a hem was not quite at the right angle. Whatever the case, the manufacturer chose to sell them at a substantial discount rather than trash it and eat the entire cost. And so like your friendly bartender who remembers that they have a secret stash of your favorite whiskey, the sales clerk would reach to the back of the top shelf and produce these “irregulars.” Nobody was the wiser, the store made money, and my dad slept just fine. With tomorrow’s inauguration, I have that same feeling—I want to think that everything is right, but I need an expert to show me that what went wrong isn’t ruining the whole thing.

I’m no stolen election ranter, but there’s plenty out there that needs a better explanation, not just for the facts but to help put the nation at ease. This is a distinctly different time from 2000 where we were entertained by the site of a couple of civil servants with magnifying glasses trying to determine the veracity of a hanging chad. It was focused, out in the open, and at least somebody could come to a consensus. And while the Democrats could never seem to shake off the fact that George W. Bush won (weren’t all those polls saying Gore would dominate?), Congress got legislation passed to fund modernization of voting infrastructure. Of course Congress never seemed to get around to updating the Post Office so that they could get the ballots on time to that updated voting infrastructure, but change in Washington is not a rapid thing.

Unlike Joe Biden writing his own speeches, I’m happy to give appropriate credit to Scott Johnston of The Naked Dollar column for laying out the idea of a national election investigative commission. We’ve used this kind of vehicle before, and I think the 9/11 Commission serves as great standard. We all knew that, before the terrorist attacks, the CIA and FBI were legally prohibited from sharing intelligence. It was only after open hearings and a comprehensive report that we all found out the utter dysfunction between the intelligence agencies. More troubling was the utter lack of creative thinking going on throughout the government, that somehow 20 men with penknives and a few hours of flight school training killed more people than at Pearl Harbor. The upshot was a complete rethinking of internal and external security as well as refocusing how we view threats across the world.

Of course there are plenty of 9/11 conspiracists out there who will never be satisfied. So be it—they probably find puppy pictures and warm spring days a sign of mind control. But there is too much video out there of poll watchers being denied rightful access, ballots procured from under desks, at least one confirmed case of results flipped, and other questionable activities to be ignored. Add to that a mix of administrative fiats married with judicial ascension to change otherwise infallible state voter laws and you have the recipe for years of voter dissatisfaction. After the election the courts dismissed most of Trump’s lawsuits for lack of standing, which I leave to the lawyers to sort out. But it gives Congress a chance to put evidence under the brightest TV lights their hearing rooms can shine, to dig deep, and to call witnesses and make them squirm to justify their actions.

Most of the action would focus on states that Democrats run or in areas of their local control. The mistake for the Democrats would be to call this a partisan witch hunt as their excuse not to have hearings. In the end much of what we will find out will probably be that inept government employees chose the exactly wrong time to be inept—during a close election (wait, wasn’t Biden supposed to win by 11 points?) under the watch of grainy security cameras. Unless there was some 1960 Kennedy-in-Illinois action going on, the Democrats would have the upper hand every time the Republicans cry foul in the future. It’s my firm belief that the naked truth will clear the air and restore some, if not most, of the faith in our voting system. But takeover power has a way of clouding long-term judgement, and thin majorities find a way to slip into the minority in the oddest of ways, leaving only vengeance and more mistrust.

So tonight I’ll go to sleep more annoyed that we are in perpetual and inexplicable lock down than with Biden’s inauguration tomorrow. And while my wife and I have a comfortable bed with high-quality sheets, something tells me my rest will be a little bit…irregular.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.

The Untweeting

 

Well The Donald is now “permanently” banned from Twitter, and Apple and Google have quickly followed suit in banning some alternate social media apps from their respective stores. Many see this as some great moral victory, although for what greater good is unstated. I see it as a dangerous, short-sighted move that is going to backfire, but not in the ways many people think.

While I spend (too much) time on Facebook, I don’t have a Twitter account as anything worthwhile on Twitter finds its way into mainstream media, which is more an indictment on lazy reporting. But it wasn’t until two Christmases ago that I really understood the power of Twitter. At our neighbors’ holiday party, an investment banker admitted that he had no social media account and didn’t really pay attention to any of it.

Except for Twitter. This, he admitted, was the first thing he read getting out of bed.

Why, of all things, Twitter? As he explained, “I need to know what the President said first thing in the morning. It’s what the markets are following.” And there, in all its naked power, was why Twitter mattered, and how it had gotten completely out of control. It was also a story I had heard nearly 30 years ago when many of Big Tech’s employees were infants or not even born.

The story was in Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker, his book about Wall Street powerhouse Salomon Brothers. One particular hazing ritual was to ask the trainee class to quote the morning’s LIBOR rate. New to the industry, there was silence primarily because nobody knew what LIBOR was, and the few who did had no inkling as to why it was so critical first thing in the morning. Yelling and ranting at Marine drill sergeant levels ensued, and suffice it to say the mistake was never made again. And while the method may have been extreme, the message was clear: LIBOR was what the markets were following, and so you need to follow LIBOR.

Twitter, then, has reached the level where it is LIBOR of communication, and the problem is that those who run the company are in way over their heads. While “permanent” in the digital world is almost an oxymoron, banning Trump is the great public step in social media’s taking sides in the political debate. This won’t end well for the tech companies, primarily because they are utterly unable to take responsibility for any of their actions. In the case of Mark Zuckerberg, big tech is literally unblinking when they say their business is for the public good. To which I remind everyone that there are two options in life: clean up your act or the government will do it for you, and the latter is never the better choice.

Somewhere in Silicon Valley there’s a happy place where if the Democrats run everything, their businesses will be protected. By the paper width of a few ballots, some of questionable veracity, they got their way for now. And I wouldn’t bank on now lasting that long, and when it ends, the loss of Section 230 protections, among others, will be devastating. The bigger loss will be in talent and vision. At what point will the best and the brightest in engineering start looking elsewhere for unicorn paychecks? The point when it stops being engineering and starts to be a social movement, like banning a prominent public official. It’s the point where you are no longer what the employment market follows first thing in the morning.

What happens next? If I had to guess the finance folks at Twitter will take a long look at how banning Trump, and the loss of his followers, will affect the bottom line. You’ll know how that analysis went if Trump is reinstated because he “has agreed to reform his behavior” or some such nicety in the press release. But don’t look to Salomon Brothers or LIBOR for answers either. A few years after Liar’s Poker came out Salomon became embroiled in a scandal where they fixed the price of government bonds. The government does not look kindly at that, and Salomon was swiftly absorbed into another bank. And the paramount LIBOR? The banks colluded to fix that rate for years and it had to move to another exchange before it will be decommissioned in the next few years. Nothing may be forever, but for Jack Dorsey he might remember that Myspace was the dominant, unbreakable leader with money pouring in and talent beating down its doors. That is until it was gone in less time than it takes to type 280 characters.

© 2021 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.