Dr. Al explains the so-called “so-called fiscal cliff”

forkintheroadMost of us have had mentors and when it came to becoming a writer three of mine were the late Bill Rivers at Stanford who taught me to think and not just report, legendary book editor Bob Loomis at Random House who felt I might be able to stack enough of those thoughts together to fill a book, and a guy most of you know as Adam Smith, who let me copy his style. 

Smith, named after the English economist and writer, helped start both New York and Institutional Investor magazines while at the same time punching out books like The Money Game and Paper Money — huge best sellers that taught regular people how the financial […]

By |December 16th, 2012|2012, Banks, Breaking News, Business, Economy, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Government, Politics|Comments Off on Dr. Al explains the so-called “so-called fiscal cliff”

Ticked off: How stock market decimalization killed IPOs and ruined our economy


Well it took me more than the one day I predicted to finish this column, which purports to explain that dull feeling so many of us have in our hearts these days when we consider the U.S. economy. Our entrepreneurial zeal is to some extent zapped. For a decade it seemed we needed to jump from bubble to bubble in order just to drive economic growth — growth that ultimately didn’t last. What happened? Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) went away, that’s what happened.

I wrote several columns on job creation over the last year, columns that explained in great detail how new businesses, young businesses, and small businesses create […]

Motivating Miss Daisy

Driving around America for nine weeks and more than 10,000 miles, I’ve had a chance to see how our economy does and doesn’t work. The startups I visited were all good companies — reader favorites, after all — so they tended to shine. And their glow was generally green and even a bit altruistic, yet still based in for-profit philosophy. These are the kind of companies that create industries, build or renew cities and industrial centers — companies that create jobs in the kind of abundance needed to keep our nation prosperous. Yet in terms of government policy, it is as if they are unknown. The Obama Administration just successfully passed important small business legislation, […]

By |September 16th, 2010|2010|157 Comments