• EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP USUALLY NECESSITATES SKILLS IN NEGOTIATION, which can be optimized by anticipating ‘what-if’ scenarios which may develop. Tactically, critical factors in conducting optimal negotiation include environment (agenda/ timing/ venue/ seating), and sensitivity to parties’ signs of uneasiness (like tonality/ speech patterns/ hand movements/ physical positioning). DCG can help Leaders & Managers, as well as facilitate optimal planning for negotiation and/or mediation.
  • CRYPTOCURRENCY, created after the 2008 financial breakdown as a contemplated bypass of our regulated banking system, had an awkward start. But last year, institutional investors traded trillions of dollars in cryptocurrencies and, at this point, the blockchain system is being backed by major Wall Street firms (including Goldman Sachs & Blackrock). While eventual regulatory uncertainty is high, those firms are “pushing to catch up with ‘Cool Kids’ – over a dozen executives have been lured by potentially richer rewards, flexible work, and front-row seats to innovation… as well as banks now developing offerings, trading in non-deliverable forwards, and lending against virtual currencies.” [BLOOMBERG NEWS – 4/26/22]
  • AMERICANS ARE WITNESSING “AN ASTONISHING LEVEL OF DISCONTENT in the midst of astonishing wealth and power… John Adams, among the country’s founders and 2nd President, wrote: ‘Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Because we have no Government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion, Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.’ In plain English, this means that when public virtue fails, our constitutional government does not possess the power to preserve itself … Our nation seethes today, with politics gripped by deep hatred and abiding animosity, and our culture groans under the weight of human despair… We have created legal systems and doctrines that are designed to rip invidious racial discrimination out of American institutions, root and branch… The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived.  They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet…—a collection of human beings who suffer from all the same character defects and cultural maladies as the rest of us, with many of America’s most prominent postliberal pundits and politicians who have proven themselves to be dishonest and craven, the last people you’d want to trust with expanded power.”
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:  

          Why America’s Culture Wars Will Intensify – from an article 18 months ago: “Today’s political parties are almost wholly aligned along cultural and ideological fault-lines. Most senators and representatives hold safe seats where they have more to fear from a more radical primary challenger within their own party than an opposition candidate. And, no politician or political party can force views on people inhabiting different universes and increasingly distrusting each other.”  [ECONOMIST – WORLD IN 2021]

          Analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that Cancellation of Debt for nearly twelve million borrowers, currently under consideration based on the President’s campaign promises, would exceed $320 billion. So far, the Education Dep’t has already cancelled debt of nearly $17 billion for 725K borrowers, 113K public servants, and 105K in loans for students who claim to have been defrauded. 

          Scientists studying highway collision data from Texas found that motorists who passed a message board announcing annual traffic fatalities were actually 4.5% more likely to get into an accident over the next 6.2 miles than drivers unburdened by the information.  [LBN EXAMINER]

         Our world keeps getting weirder and weirder…