• MOST LIKELY, OUR SLOW ‘RECOVERY’ IS THE RESULT of a “prolonged period of interventionist monetary, fiscal and regulatory policy…which distorts capital allocation, increase uncertainty, and massively redistribute wealth and income… The Fed that is now ‘saving the financial system’ is the same body that failed miserably at bank oversight prior to the Crisis, and that triggered the housing bubble by keeping interest rates far too low for far too long. And Congress is the same body that forced Freddie & Fannie to take on huge amounts of seriously sub-prime loans. Add to this an endless stream of high-profile failures in every branch of the government. Solving market failures by intervention is simply going from the skillet into the fire… The simple truth is that moving resources from the private sector to government control moves them from relatively high productivity to a relatively low productivity sector and negative arbitrage necessarily reduces growth.” [THE LINNEMAN LETTER – Winter 14-15]
  • WHILE SMALL BUSINESSES CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE, ‘RECOVERY’ is at least, to some degree, finding its way to mid-sized companies. A Q4 Vistage survey of nearly 1,500 CEOs found half “expecting the economy to improve next year” and over 60% expecting profitability to increase – even with half of those planning to hold prices stable. However, more than a third identified “finding, hiring, training and retaining employees” as their biggest problem. DCG can help. In Financial and Management areas, we have decades of experience developing effective job descriptions, screening applicants to fit the functions, developing compensation & work-balance programs for retention, and systems & training programs for efficiency and effectiveness.
  • “THE CENTRAL CONUNDRUM OF OUR TIMES IS TO PROTECT LIBERAL IDEALS FROM ILLIBERAL FANATICS… When the European Union knit the continent into a single, postmodern entity, nationalist and religious affiliations from centuries past were supposed to give way to a broader more enlightened identity…failing to anticipate the influx of millions of immigrants uninterested in assimilating Western ideals of secularism, women’s equality and free speech… For decades, they naively invited Muslims assuming they would integrate with the host culture, but the exact opposite is true – as many have roundly rejected the Western way of life, and surveys show that one-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks… Will modernity ultimately outsmart and outlast Dark Age fundamentalism? We will not have an answer for decades.” [THE WEEK – Jan 30, 15]
  • AN UGLY BUT CERTAINLY POSSIBLE 15 YEAR FORECAST from the board senior fellow at Council on Foreign Relations: “…Littered with rebellion and repression… societies deeply fragmented and overwhelmed by irreconcilable religious and political groups, disparities in wealth, ignorant citizenry and states’ impotence to fix problems… Social media will be able to prompt mass demonstrations in public squares, but oligarchs and dictators will have the force and power to prevail… Muslims will be the principal disruptive factor, whether in the Islamic world, where repression, bad governance and economic underperformance have sparked revolt, or abroad, where they are increasingly unhappy and distained by rulers and peoples. In America, blacks will become less tolerant of their marginalization…will challenge authority, and authority will slam back with enough force to deeply wound, but not destroy, these rebellions. A long period of worldwide economic stagnation and even decline will reinforce these trends… with sustained economic gulfs between rich and poor… Unfortunately, the next years will see a reversal of the hopes for better government and for effective democracies that loomed so large at the end of the Cold War.  [POLITICO.COM MAGAZINE – Jan 1, 15]
  • WEARING HEELS HIGHER THAN A COUPLE INCHES CAN LEAD TO KNEE JOINT PROBLEMS FOR WOMEN. Research at Stanford University found that knee strain occurs because “the knee is still bent when a heel hits the ground… which can wear away cartilage, the body’s natural shock absorber, leading to osteoporosis.” Three-inch heels effectively ‘age’ the joints by twenty years, increasing as heels get higher. [THE WEEK – Jan 30, 15]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK: “Out of more than 3,000 American counties, only 65 have “fully recovered from the recession, meaning they’ve met or exceeded pre-recession jobs, unemployment rates, economic output, and home prices.”

     “None of the terrible things happening in the world today – intolerance, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, violence,   or manufactured offenses – have anything to do with Islam, outside of the real world. Pat Condell again puts reality into perspective:   http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/pat-condell-just-ended-the-1-debate-going-on-in-the-world-right-now/?omhide=true&utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Breaking+News+Video%3A+IDF+Deploys+Largest+Force+on+Lebanon+Border+Since+Second+Lebanon+War&utm_campaign=20150123_m124107015_1%2F23+Breaking+News+Video%3A+IDF+Deploys+Largest+Force+on+Lebanon+Border+Since+Second+Lebanon+War&utm_term=patcondell-islam_jpg_3F1422011459

     And a New York City Councilman puts much of the underlying cause (“that Hitler didn’t finish the job”) in amazingly simple perspective:  https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152664570752689&fref=nf

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