First Blog

Chexit is the business exit from China.   There was no vote in China or elsewhere to sanction this.   Chexit is a “vote with your feet” exercise.   China’s world-wide reputation has become so sour that many businesses will leave China if they can. Moreover, few new businesses will come.   As well, Chexit is a matter of fashion.   Like popular night-spots that rise to great popularity and then simply fade, China’s popularity for foreign business interests has peaked and now is fading. (Remember Studio 54?)   As with night-spots, the foreign business attenuation in China will continue.   It is not clear to this author China can really do anything about it.   Apparently doing business in other countries on the Pacific Rim is simply easier, more business friendly, and with full corporate ownership.   Chexit is real and is accelerating.   It may well be most business and manufacturing in China will ultimately be owned completely by Chinese.   In fact, it is the historical na

At my high school (Pulaski) graduation in Milwaukee many years ago, the guest speaker was a local judge, Christ D. Seraphim.  Odd name I know – thought so even back then.  But one comment he made has served me well over the decades.  He instructed us with, “No one owes you anything.”  This advice, I know, is totally out of fashion now, but it served me well. We now live in a world where many expect the government to give them opportunity, safety,  and success. It is also counter to the admonition that came just a few years later at the Presidential inauguration speech of John F. Kennedy, when he counseled us, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  Widely quoted for years afterward, this resonant call is hardly heard anymore. Conditions in the USA have changed fundamentally from an era of independence and self-reliance to one of dependence and safe-spaces, and yes, variations of self-styled utopias*.  In fact, I do not feel I