Friday, January 1, 2010

A new and as always uncertain decade begins...

As we set out upon this new year and new decade who will be the winners and losers when we look back. What trends have started at the end of '09 that will gain momentum or die on the vine during the early part of the year.

Probably the story that had the most impact ( on the pocket book ) was England and France rearing their ugly socialist heads in hopes of appeasing the throngs of people who like lemmings to the slaughter lost most of their decade long stock market gains let alone their jobs. Is this a one year wonder to try and curry favor with the electorate at the expense of their highest paying taxpayers or are we to see the beginning of a trend that in the end would mean some other city with a more tax friendly regime could begin to pick up talent and businesses. I mean other geographically similar in proximity to London or Paris. While there are number of mindless people that actually believe that North America remains an alternative, I guess they are not very familiar with the theory of time zones. You see I was around back in the early 80's (old enough that is) when Citibank (Walter Wriston) thought about how to utilize thier trading room in NYK on a 24 hour basis by having saleman and traders come in at night to cover asia and post midnight to cover Europe. The difficulty was find people to fill those spots, let alone getting together for a quick mtg or a bite of lunch or dinner.
It's just like fashion, a retread of old ideas, makes for good converstaion but definitely not likely.
What they should be worried about is not the front office but any and all not essential geographic services. They will be toast in the UK and France in this new decade of taxing the rich. (BANKS), let alone there must be team of international tax accountants and lawyers burning the midnight oil, figuring out a way to ensure thier most talented people and the institutions don't have to pay the outrageous taxes being levied by the socialists...

Who will win the battle of growth, are there earning to come, will unemployment return to previous levels or are some of those jobs gone forever, is the world ever going to be the same again...the answer is no, it never is that's what makes progress, winners losers and bystanders that eventually are losers...Every crisis makes us stronger and creates new opportunity to profit from the future, so be open, ditch the rear view mirror, the future is forward, always has been and always will be. The opportunities are on the front page of every newspaper or online not the business page.

I will as my New Years resolution commit to blogging more regularly which will make Lee my PR partner much happier and to bring forward the things that I see fron the catbird seat that I am very fortunate to occupy.

Good health, fortune, wisdom and luck to all that I am lucky enough to know and have had the pleasure to work with. As for the rest of you we have a year ahead to get to know each other and I look forward to it...

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