Sure, it lacks the slow pace of life and comfortable weather of Miami or Scottsdale, but at least Brooklyn has plenty of places to play shuffleboard? Marty Markowitz makes a not-altogether-unpersuasive argument that downtown Brooklyn is a good place to retire, The Brooklyn Paper reports. Read More
The Magic of Belle Isle is a warm, human, feel-good experience about bringing out the best in people, one that brings out Morgan Freeman’s best performance in years. He plays a grizzled old drunk named Monte Wildhorn, a once-revered author of epic western novels suffering from writer’s block who has become so miserable and depressed since losing his wife to cancer that he has retired his career to the inside of a bottle of sour mash whiskey. Cynical, reclusive and partially dependant on a motorized wheelchair, he has come to a small lakeside community in upstate New York to escape from the pressures of responsibility, reality and people—by drinking himself into a stupor. Unfortunately, the summer house his nephew has found for him to hide away in comes equipped with a dependant dog named Ringo the owner left behind, an annoyingly friendly community of covered-dish suppers and a compassionate next-door neighbor named Charlotte O’Neil (Virginia Madsen), a single mom with three daughters. Read More
It has become clear in recent months that City Comptroller John Liu lives in an alternate universe. He seems to think he still is a credible candidate for next year’s mayoral election. He apparently believes that the public will forget about his false promises to identify his fund-raising bundlers—as the law requires. He presumes to lecture Wall Street about ethics, even though his campaign treasury is under federal investigation.
And now Mr. Liu, in partnership with his friends in the labor movement, seems intent on blocking public employee pension reform—which is nothing less than a financial life-or-death issue for both the city and the state.
If Mr. Liu had any shame, he’d keep his head down and hope that the ongoing probes of his murky fund-raising practices don’t hit too close to home. If he had any self-awareness, he’d know better than to go public on an issue that both Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg rightly see as absolutely critical to New York’s fiscal health in the 21st century.
But Mr. Liu seems intent on calling attention to himself. Read More
America’s load of old people — already large and getting larger — could spell shrinkage for the economy, according to an analysis by Lombard Street Research reported by the Financial Times.
As the first wave of baby boomers turns 65 next year, many of them will be unable to retire, because their main sources Read More
In today’s Observer, I wrote about the strange wave of hedge fund retirements. Between Stanley Druckenmiller’s now-famous letter, Arthur Samberg’s collapse, Steven A. Cohen’s dour Vanity Fair interview, Paolo Pellegrini’s failure and the retirement of Richard Grubman (the key-thrower, allegedly), it’s been a strange summer.
But one important thing to keep in mind is that farewells from big Read More
