This was a technical discussion on how to handle stock options from an accounting point of view. At the time, the issue was whether stock options should be expensed. I was overruled by the accountants, but my arguments were better.
President Obama made a number of speeches about the need, as he sees it, for high income earners to pay more in taxes. Warren Buffett, a long time friend and a person I greatly admire, supported Obama’s assertion with an extraordinary example. He pointed out that his secretary had a higher income tax rate than he did and this was wrong. I thought the whole discussion was nonsense. If you read all my essays, you’ll see I dealt with this version of class warfare a number of times. When Warren made his public comment, I thought a rebuttal was in order. The number and vitriol of the letters written in response to my op ed was really interesting. I enjoyed reading all those comments at the time. My op ed in the WSJ certainly got people’s attention
I wrote this article for the WSJ 20 years ago. I took on the FASB on a technical ruling concerning accounting issues in a merger. I don’t remember whether my point of view prevailed, but I guess I’ve always been somewhat cynical towards experts, since they often get upset when asked to explain their logic..
During one of the perennial discussions about whether globalization was good or bad, I decided to enter the discussion and did so with this essay. I think my points are valid today, particularly both parties are becoming more populist in their thinking about trade.
I wrote this article in 2012 dealing with two issues – whether or not the “rich” paid their fair share – which I dealt with quite briefly and deserves more detailed analysis in another essay and secondly, my view of what a fair and efficient tax code would look like.
This is a revised post from Facebook I wrote several weeks ago pointing out how the Biden strategy came to be and what might go wrong.
I wrote this editorial about the Obama economic recovery three years after he was elected to his first term. At the time, he commented continually how he inherited the worst recession since the 1930’s and how well his policies were working. He ignored the fact that, by definition, every recovery after a recession reflects economic growth. He also ignored the assistance given by the Federal Reserve with historic low interest crates.
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