I’ve always marveled at how remarkable our brains are. As a
kid, I found it fascinating that my dad could remember his high school Latin,
which he learned 50 years earlier in his lifetime.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve discovered that my own personal
warehouse of obscure facts holds a LOT of information. I can still name many of
my teachers and classmates from grade school, which I graduated from in 1961.
Another mystery is why songs or people from long ago suddenly
materialize out of the clear blue, and for no apparent reason.
It happened again this morning.
During the period of time that I worked for Fireman’s Fund Insurance
Company, it was purchased by the American Express Company. Like many corporate
takeovers, it caused some anxiety among its executives. One of them, at the
time of the merger, is alleged to have said, “ Since the merger, I sleep like a
baby. I wake up crying every couple of hours”.
Not long after the merger, the chairman of the American
Express Company came to Milwaukee to present details of the merger with the
Wauwatosa branch of Fireman’s Fund. His name is Sanford Weil – and he is the
guy that popped into my head this morning.
During one of the breaks in the meeting, I found myself
standing less than 10 feet away from him, and I could actually feel the
POWER of the man by his body language.
He spent his entire career in the investment industry. His
first two clients were his mother and an ex-boyfriend of his wife, but it took
off quickly from there. Over the years, he was associated with numerous well
known investment firms (including Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Shearson
Lehman Rhoades, American Express, and Saloman Inc.)
In 1998, he was the chairman of the Travelers Corporation, but
wanted to merge with Citicorp. However, since the 1927 Glass-Steagall Act prevented
mergers between insurance companies and investment firms, he lobbied a number
of prominent business and political figures (including Gerald Ford) to repeal
the act – and he eventually succeeded. By 2012, he was having regrets:
"What we should probably
do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit
takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do
something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not too big to
fail," Weill said on CNBC. "If they want to hedge what they're doing
with their investments, let them do it in a way that's going to be
mark-to-market so they're never going to be hit.
Today,
he is 86 years old, but still very active, although his interest for the last
20 years of so has been philanthropy. Since 1998, he and his wife (who he
married in 1955) have given hundreds of millions of dollars to a wide variety
of causes – but he is still worth more than $1 billion.
If
you carefully read his biography, you’ll quickly realize that they guy REALLY
knew how to make a deal.
He
is a sharp contrast to Donald Trump, who has literally been a failure at everything
that he has done – including his current position.
Trump: The Art of the Deal is
a 1987 book credited to Donald Trump and
journalist Tony Schwartz. Part memoir and
part business-advice book, it was the first book credited to Trump,[and
helped to make him a "household name". It reached number 1 on The New York Times Best
Seller list, stayed there for 13 weeks, and altogether held a
position on the list for 48 weeks. The book received additional attention
during Trump's 2016 campaign for the
presidency of the United States. He cited it as one of his proudest
accomplishments and his second-favorite book after the Bible.
Schwartz called writing the book his "greatest regret in
life, without question," and both he and the book's publisher, Howard Kaminsky,
said that Trump had played no role in the actual writing of the book. Trump has
personally given conflicting accounts on the question of authorship. Schwartz
later suggested that the work be "re-categorized as fiction"
In addition to “Art of the Deal” there are 28 additional books
that are attributed to Trump.
In total, there are 136 books either by, or about, Donald Trump
on Goodreads, and I’ve read at least a dozen of them.
Trump has had 6 bankruptcies, numerous failed businesses, two
failed marriages (so far), and the political experts have ranked him as the
worst president in the history of our country, but he is VERY GOOD at one thing
– and that is selling books.
THAT’S where he knows how to make a deal!
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