Thursday, October 16, 2008

Thought of the Day

On Tuesday, the United States moved to buy stakes worth up to $250 billion in the nation's nine leading banks, an operation that closely mirrored British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision Monday to partly nationalize three struggling banks, according to The Christian Science Monitor which said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I am reminded, however, of the Peter Principle, named after Dr. Laurence Peter who wrote with Raymond Hill in 1968 a book under this title. The principle is that "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." Gordon Brown was a very effective secretary of the treasury and a poor prime minister. So it may be that he rose to his level of incompetence; his only clever decision as prime minister being a financial one.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Thought of the Day

I read the other day that Clarence Darrow said during the 1928 presidential campaign: Hoover, if elected, will do one thing that is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: he will make a great man out of Coolidge.
He was and he did. Would history repeat itself if McCain is elected president come Nov. 4? Short of a Biblical miracle I doubt that anyone or anything can make a great man out of George W Bush.