“I dedicate this book to every hardworking American who wakes up in the morning asking themselves what went wrong.”

Danielle DiMartino Booth worked on Wall Street and as a financial columnist at the Dallas Morning News, then worked her way up at the Federal Reserve District Bank in Dallas, eventually advising Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher. Now she’s President of her own economic consultancy and media commentator on all things financial. She is indeed an insider, well-positioned to tell us what’s gone so very wrong in America’s financial system.

And boy, does she tell it. This is no dry recitation of high finance minutiae. It’s a fast-paced look at the events surrounding the 2008 economic meltdown, before and after, along with a character study of each of the big players, both government and corporate. Danielle DiMartino Booth pulls no punches here, God bless her.

When I first received this book (a requested Father’s Day present this year, which made my wife remark how weird I am), I promised my old friend Professor Howie Baetjer (Lecturer at the Department of Economics at Towson University, and author of Free Our Markets: A Citizen’s Guide to Essential Economics – another must-read book) that I’d share my thoughts about it with him. Here’s what I posted as a first-blush opinion for him on LinkedIn:

Howard Baetjer, you asked me to tell you what I thought of Danielle DiMartino Booth‘s book, Fed Up: An Insider’s Take on Why the Federal Reserve is Bad for America. I just finished it and it’s marvelous (and infuriating). She doesn’t favor abolishing the Fed as you do – but you’ll find a treasure trove of ammunition for your point of view in her pages.

That ammunition is the very clear evidence Booth presents showing the staggering incompetence (and at times what I’ll call cozy corruption) driving the decisions made by the Federal Open Market Committee. She has nothing good to say about the latest few Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan (about whom I wrote caustically some years ago here), Ben Bernanke, and current incumbent Janet Yellen (who comes off perhaps worst of all in these pages). From Greenspan’s clueless inflation of the housing bubble, to Bernanke’s slavish devotion to Greenspan’s easy money policy and his own unilateral expansion of the Fed’s mandate, to Yellen’s academic obliviousness to the real world, this trio of “leaders” richly deserve all the brickbats they receive in this book. So do most of the other committee members who enabled the years of horrible decision-making, along with the multitudes of analysts supporting them, whose PhDs seemingly blind them to the fact that their “mathy” econometric models are pretty much never right, and oftentimes disastrously wrong.

Booth does a great job educating the reader about the multitude of different organizations, regulations, relations and corporations that drive America’s financial policies. That she does this without boring the reader to tears alone makes this book a gem.

But as I said in my initial thoughts, the book is indeed infuriating. Nobody normal pays any attention to the Fed, which is a shame because the ordinary people to whom Booth dedicated her book have been, and continue to be, robbed blind by the very institution that’s supposed to protect them. Booth shows exactly how, and continues to be a vocal advocate for reforms to get the Fed back to serving the country rather than impoverishing it, and serving the common man rather than the untouchable bureaucrats and fabulously wealthy game-riggers.

Richard Fisher is one of the few who tried to get the Fed back on track during the times Booth covers, and is one of the very few heroes in this otherwise bleak book. He retired two years ago, so the reforms Danielle DiMartino Booth spells out in her closing chapter are all the more critical. Or perhaps my friend Howie Baetjer and his latter-day abolitionists should win out…

Okay, that’s click-bait.

You should really treat your people like I treat my dog. (Well, not literally, because there are those people who consider belly rubs in the workplace inappropriate.)

I try never to walk past my dog Hunter without at least giving him a pat on the head. Most of the time, I take several minutes to give him that workplace-inappropriate belly rub. What if, every single time we encountered someone we lead, we invested time to express our sincere appreciation (appropriately)?

I provide for all of Hunter’s basic needs: food, shelter, veterinary care, exercise, and so on. But my family and I also give him a treat fairly frequently, whether it’s a snack or some scraps from a plate or his favorite, a pizza bone. Sometimes it’s because he performed a trick, but most of the time it’s just because everyone should get a treat every so often. What if we gave our workers not just their basic earnings and benefits, but also something special on a regular basis, just because we appreciate them?

Hunter has had a couple of episodes that cost me dearly. Both were visits to the emergency vet, where you don’t walk in the door for less than a couple hundred bucks. I gladly paid it both times. When the people who spend at least a third of their lives helping us succeed run into those enormous challenges we all eventually encounter in life, whether a health crisis or a tragic personal loss, what if we were equally willing to pull out all the stops to get them what they need, whether extra time off or financial assistance or just a shoulder to cry on?

Hunter is enormously loyal to me, and is usually beside himself with joy to see me when I return home after being gone. That’s just great. But I don’t do all these things because I want that loyalty or face licking – it’s just an extra benefit of having the best dog in the world.

I’m willing to bet that workers treated the way I describe would also be fiercely loyal employees. But that shouldn’t be the reason to act the way I describe – it should also be just a tangential benefit, an especially valuable one in today’s brutally competitive marketplace.

We should treat people that way because decency and kindness and a desire to be the best leaders we can – or really, the best people we can – all say that’s how we should treat people.

I’m in the midst of reading *Coral and Brass* by General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith, his account of his many years of helping to shape the modern Marine Corps. Last night I was reading how the Marines, as WWII broke out, had wanted an amphibious tank, and that their wishes were fulfilled with the development of the amtrac, or LVT (Landing Vehicle Tracked) – invented as the “Alligator” by one Donald Roebling.

That name caught my eye. A quick Web search, and I knew: he was the great-grandson of John Roebling, and grandson of Washington and Emily Roebling, the father-son-daughter-in-law combination that envisioned and built the Brooklyn Bridge.

What a great family.

What with the popularity of the WWII history of Dunkirk thanks to the recent movie, plus my longtime obsession with the stories of that war, I figured I’d read a book about it. I happened upon Dunkirk by Lt. Colonel Ewan Butler and Major J. Selby Bradford. I’m just about to finish it, and it’s proven to be a riveting tale of unwavering, unfathomable courage on the part of the men of the British Expeditionary Force, the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and most remarkable of all, ordinary British citizens. I republish here a whole chapter that, to me, represents the very essence of the everyday heroism that saved everything in those bleak days:

CHAPTER XXVII

ON the evening of Sunday, 26 May, 1940, Mr. Alfred Harris was drinking a double whisky in a Twickenham public-house. It was unusual for Mr. Harris to drink whisky — indeed, he was no great frequenter of public-houses at any time. Bank clerks, even when they have risen to be Chief Cashiers, are not given to high living.

On that evening, however, Harris had felt that he must have a drink. The news from France was terrible. It gave a man a horrible tight feeling in the pit of the stomach. There was nothing, of course, that a retired Chief Cashier could do about it — that was the maddening thing. People like him could only wait and listen to the wireless and pretend to go about their business as though everything was normal, as though a whole British Army — the only Army we had — did not face annihilation.

By that strange bush-telegraph which operates in moments of great crisis, the news that an attempt would be made to take the Army off by sea, had already reached the saloon bar. “Operation Dynamo” had been officially ordered only three hours before, but already people knew about it and were talking about it.

“I reckon they’ll need every boat they can get,” somebody said.

“What about Berkshire Lass, Mr. Harris?”

There was some laughter at this, for everybody knew about Berkshire Lass. The fruit of many years of painful saving, Harris had bought her at last early in 1939, in time to enjoy one season of blissful cruising in the still reaches of the Thames before war put an end to such pleasures. She was a 35-ft. cabin-cruiser, somewhat dubiously powered by a converted Morris car engine, and she was the pride of Mr. Harris’s heart. Through the long years in the bank he had dreamt of retirement and of a boat of his own. Berkshire Lass had not even been second-hand when he bought her, and there were some in Twickenham who held that he had been swindled by her former owner, but Harris had laboured joyfully, painting, caulking, polishing, and tinkering with the old engine, until his boat, as he was not afraid to tell anybody who cared to listen to him, was as smart as anything of her size on the river.

The laughter round the bar irritated Harris. Why not Berkshire Lass, if it came to that? Probably they’d want every boat they could get over there. Mr. Harris finished his whisky quickly and went home.

Mrs. Harris, after whom the boat had been named (she was a Reading girl when Harris had married her), made all the proper feminine objections to the plan, Harris, let alone Berkshire Lass, had never been to sea. He had little idea of navigation, a science which, his wife understood, was very necessary in the English Channel if not in Twickenham Reach. She made no mention of her real objection to the plan — that her husband might get killed — in fact, almost certainly would get killed as far as she could see. Other women’s husbands were being killed at that moment over there, and Mrs. Harris would have felt it shame to mention that aspect of the problem.

In the glorious days when he had bought Berkshire Lass Harris had made certain pleasant but unnecessary purchases, suitable, as he vaguely felt, for the master of a boat. At the bottom of a drawer were two pairs of thick sea-boot stockings, greasy and strong smelling, a sou’wester and a tremendous turtle-neck sweater. These had never yet been worn but now they were brought out and stowed in an old kit-bag, a relic of Harris’s service in the First World War. More with a view to humouring her husband than because she believed that these precautions would serve any practical purpose, Mrs. Harris made out at his dictation an elaborate shopping list and undertook to buy all the items which it contained at the International Stores on the following morning. Then they both went to bed, but neither slept much that night.

On Monday morning Harris went down to the yard in which Berkshire Lass was in dry-dock for the duration of the war. Three other men, hated rivals in peace-time, were already there tinkering with their boats.

“Not off to France by any chance?” said the most hated of all, a fellow who, last summer, had made unpleasant remarks about Berkshire Lass.

“That’s right,” Harris admitted — somehow the chap seemed less unpleasant now — “any objection?”

“I gather they’ll tell us what to do at Westminster Pier,” said another of the men.

“Can you take your boat out alone? Looks as though we’ll need all the space we’ve got when we get there.”

“I can take her anywhere,” Harris asserted stoutly, not without a slight sinking of the heart, and he set himself to examining the engine.

They reached Westminster Pier on the morning of 28 May, and placed themselves trustingly in the hands of the Royal Navy. A Sub-Lieutenant, R.N.V.R., won Harris’s heart with his approving comment on Berkshire Lass’s appearance, although he cast a dubious look at the engine.

“Think she’ll make it?” he asked. “It’s about fifty-five sea miles from the North Goodwin to Dunkirk.”

“She’ll make it,” said Harris.

In a strange ill-assorted flotilla they made for Ramsgate, Harris nobly oil-skinned and sou’westered, though the sea was very still, seated tensely at the little wheel on the port bulk-head of the cabin. Although for any considerable ship the weather was virtually dead calm, Berkshire Lass pitched and bucketed round North Foreland, throwing spray back as her bows dipped to a slight head sea. This, Harris decided, was the life. He watched the sky narrowly for any of these dive-bombers of which one had read so much in the newspapers recently, but saw only sea-gulls, wheeling and screaming over the little ships. The dive-bombers were to come later.

It was at Ramsgate that certain deficiencies in Berkshire Lass’s equipment first made themselves evident. Hitherto, they had sailed in  convoy, but now it was a matter for charts and for that navigation of which Mrs. Harris had spoken so doubtfully. Moreover, the compass, proudly bought, second-hand, proved to be, if not inaccurate, at least none too trustworthy. Nevertheless, the Naval Control Service, crisp, efficient and not even contemptuous, as Harris had feared, provided charts and routeing instructions. Once more the engine came under critical survey.

“I hope you can rely on that engine of yours,” an officer said to Harris, “because if it packs in and you lose contact with your convoy, heaven help you. With that compass you’d probably fetch up in Calais, and that would be just too bad.”

Harris, lovingly cleaning a spark-plug, and speaking with an assurance which he did not really feel, promised that the engine would not fail. Another trouble was the absence of water tanks. On the Thames there had been no call for such things, since river water, properly boiled, makes an excellent cup of tea, and there are riverside pubs a-plenty. But now, Berkshire Lass was bound for a beach where many thousands of thirsty men awaited deliverance, and accordingly a galvanized tank was, with great difficulty, rolled aboard, and somehow edged into the cabin amidships. At last they sailed, on the morning of 30 May.

Due east to the Gull, and thence to the North Goodwin light, they sailed, the little ships plugging along, some of them making no more than four or five knots, while all about them were larger vessels — drifters, trawlers, odd-looking Dutch coasters, pleasure-steamers, and big yachts. Like sheep-dogs running round a slow-moving flock a destroyer or two, and a few motor torpedo-boats swept about the convoy.

The first attack came as they crossed the Sandettie Bank, south-east of the North Goodwins. Ships were coming back from Dunkirk. A large steamer which, to Harris, looked very like the dear old Maid of Orleans in which he and his wife had crossed to France for a happy holiday two years before, her decks crowded with troops, was attacked suddenly by dive-bombers swooping from a clear sky. Although the westward bound steamer was a quarter of a mile away from Berkshire Lass, a bomb destined for her fell so close to Harris’s boat that the spray of its explosion came down into the cockpit like rain, and ran in little rivulets from the skipper’s sou’wester as he huddled against the cabin bulkhead. A burst of Bren-gun and rifle fire from the steamer met the raiders, who replied with their forward machine-guns. Then it was all over, and the Ju. 87s were climbing steeply. They banked and wheeled eastward — towards Dunkirk, whither Berkshire Lass was also bound.

So this, Harris thought, was it! Not much to write home about so far, though a good deal more than anybody in Twickenham had yet seen of warfare. Still, it would be hotter when they got there, and every turn of Berkshire Lass’s little propeller brought them nearer to the beaches. One or two boats fell out with engine trouble, and Harris could not resist a feeling of malicious satisfaction when he observed that the big cruiser belonging to his rival and neighbour — he who had spoken slightingly of Berkshire Lass in the days of peace — had fallen out of station ahead. She was a comparatively powerful craft, and towed two dinghies. With real delight Harris managed to put himself alongside, condole with the mortified skipper, and somehow himself grasp the painter of the leading dinghy and make it fast to Berkshire Lass.

They were coming in now, across the Outer Ruytingen, and there, ahead, over on the port bow, was a great pall of smoke, which seemed to blot out the whole sky. There was mist, too, and, as far as Harris could judge, enemy aircraft were not busy.

When Harris at last came into Dunkirk Roads it was already evening. His two dinghies were bumping along cheerfully in the wake of Berkshire Lass, but now, here and there, were abandoned row-boats, ships’ cutters, drifting in the light swell. At Ramsgate they had carefully explained that the difficulty of evacuating troops from the beaches lay in the fact that the sand shelved away so gently into deep water that only boats of the shallowest draught could approach the shore. Surely, Harris thought, the more of these boats the better, and somehow he managed to make fast one of the derelicts to a cleat on Berkshire Lass’s stern. Here they were, at last, the men whom Harris had come to save, the men whose fate had given him that nasty tight feeling in the stomach, back there in Twickenham. As Berkshire Lass made in towards La Panne at sunset, they were standing waist-deep in water, singing. Somebody had got a mouth-organ and, above the chug of his engine, Harris heard the melody of the “Londonderry Air”, inexpertly played, but, at that time and place, infinitely touching.

They piled aboard Berkshire Lass, heavy boots playing havoc with the precious paint-work, hobnails gashing the afterdeck and the white canvas roof of the cabin. They piled into the three boats, so many of them that Harris feared they would overturn the little craft, but an officer, who did not himself go aboard, saw to it that this did not happen. Then Harris put about and made for a drifter which lay out to sea. This was the moment against which Mrs. Harris’s shopping list had been drawn out. Harris had worked it out with care — a life of banking teaches a man to be scrupulous where details are concerned. Tinned foods, he had decided, would be difficult to distribute, since how should the tins be opened? So to the sopping men on Berkshire Lass he handed out dried figs, bread, chocolate, water, in paper cups, and cigarettes. They loved him for it.

That first trip out to the drifter seemed to take a very long time, and, indeed, the little cabin-cruiser, with three loaded boats in tow, and herself overladen, made slow going, yet at last the passengers were safely delivered, and Berkshire Lass turned back to the shore. Then the shelling began — a screaming whine, a fountain of water, and, much later, the report of the gun. Harris decided that this was horrible. When he reached the beach again shells were falling steadily, spattering him with sand. A splinter, humming like a hornet, ripped through the cabin top and buried itself in the settee beneath. Nevertheless, Berkshire Lass took another load out to the drifter.

The shelling ashore was very heavy now, and the drifter’s skipper, a real sailor, the sort of sailor whom Harris had always admired and envied, spoke to the captain of the little craft which lay under his counter:

“You won’t get anybody much off, now, not while this shelling’s on,” he said. “Better come aboard, and have something to eat.” Harris suddenly remembered that he had not eaten since leaving Ramsgate. He felt very hungry, and very proud. That skipper had spoken to him as an equal, as though he were a sailor too. Well — so he was, after a fashion, now. The stew and coffee tasted wonderful.

At 3 a.m. shelling stopped, and away went Berkshire Lass again, until, by 5.30, she and her consorts had taken off almost all the troops then waiting on the beaches. The air attacks and shelling began again after that, until, as machine-gun bullets zipped into the water round his ship, Harris felt a numbing blow on his left shoulder, and then great, sharp pain. Blood began to trickle down his oilskin.

It was then, too, that a sharp wind, blowing in from the sea, began to toss and batter the little craft, and the boats that she was towing. One of them, filled with troops, capsized, and Harris, with only one arm capable of handling the wheel, somehow brought Berkshire Lass round to the men in the water, so that their comrades could haul them aboard. When he got back to the drifter he fainted.

It was afternoon when he came to in the forecastle of the drifter. Someone had given him an opiate, and his shoulder was bandaged and in a sling. Harris’s first words were for the Berkshire Lass. She was still on the job, refuelled, and skippered by a member of the drifter’s crew. Harris went on deck and saw her making for a long pontoon on which troops were crowded. The beaches were empty now, and when Berkshire Lass returned, Harris insisted on taking over. The pontoon made things much easier. One could bring the boat right alongside — almost as though one were coming up to a Thames landing-stage. The enemy were still shelling the beaches.

It was at 8 p.m., just after Vice-Admiral, Dover, had warned all ships that the final evacuation of the B.E.F. was expected on the following night, that the end came for Alfred Harris and Berkshire Lass. A single dive-bomber, swooping out of the afterglow, seemed to bear the little ship a grudge. He attacked twice with the machine-gun, and at the second attack Harris was hit again. They picked him out of the water, and took him to a hospital ship. This time he had been hit in the lung, and, in an operating theatre as calm and hushed as any in a London hospital, the bullet was taken out. When Harris came to this time he was told that they were nearing Dover. Wildly he asked after Berkshire Lass, but nobody knew what had happened to her. However, as Mrs. Harris pointed out when, still bandaged but on the road to recovery, her husband greeted her in hospital: “After all, lots of people have lost much more than that in the war — why, you were nearly killed. I wouldn’t worry so much about an old boat if I was you.” Harris found it difficult to explain that he was not exactly worrying about Berkshire Lass — he was mourning, as one mourns someone very precious, who has died bravely doing her duty, and whose place can never be filled.

From Dunkirk by Lt. Col. Ewan Butler and Maj. J.S. Bradford. © 1950 Hutchinson & Co. © 2017 Sapere Books.

Do read the whole book – it’s a beautifully written, concise tale of a far too little-known bit of history, when Western civilization as we know it teetered on the brink and was saved by impossibly brave people like Mr. Harris.

Printed by permission of the publisher, Sapere Books. My thanks to their Marketing Director, Caoimhe O’Brien.

Reports this morning say that Google has fired the engineer who anonymously published a screed against the company’s diversity and inclusion dogma.

I find the furor over the article rather informative. Most telling of all has been the response from those invested in the status quo, evidenced primarily by the official Google response to all the hullabaloo from their new VP and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Danielle Brown, but also by responses from across the tech and broader business world.

Both the original manifesto and the Google response are here.

I’m flummoxed by the vitriolic reaction to the original article. It is written respectfully and from a position I see as, “hey, here’s what I think, I may be wrong.” It includes some undeniable truths. I think it’s a sober and worthwhile cataloging of very serious problems with current thinking and actions regarding diversity, and that an honest discussion of and debate over those issues is beyond overdue.

One topic in particular I find simply galling. Many commentators have excoriated the author for daring to suggest that men, on average, have innate superiority over women in particular skills required for coding. Their essential argument is that it is unspeakably immoral and simply beyond the pale to suggest that any such gender-based differences in abilities might exist. (“Sexist diatribe” is now the pejorative of choice among the left-leaning chattering classes on this one.) Yet these same people have endlessly extolled the superiority of women in skills required for leadership and management. Hypocrisy, thy name is progressivism…

This excerpt from Ms. Brown, though, says it all:

And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages… Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

This is a prettified way of saying that all opinions are welcome, so long as they’re exactly what she and the company officially espouse. It’s clear that to Ms. Brown, there’s only one allowable point of view – hers and her ideological fellow-travelers’ – and she will actively silence, and threaten the livelihood of, anyone who has the temerity to publicly state any other perspective.

The author of the anonymous article is remarkably courageous. He has brought up very serious issues that deserve a proper open discussion and debate, rather than the usual threats and silencing Ms. Brown and her cohort have become all too accustomed to imposing. You’d think someone with the word “inclusion” in her title might realize a great many of those under her charge feel just the same as the screed’s author – demonized, discriminated against, threatened, marginalized and silenced – and take action to fix things. You’d be horribly wrong.

Ms. Brown, Orwell did not pen how-to manuals.

I’m a “novitiate” in the Boy Scouts of America Wood Badge advanced leadership course. Six weeks ago I finished the “practical phase” of the program, which consisted of two separate, very intense, 3-day weekends of training. At the very end of the second weekend, our Course Director Brent Loudin wrapped it up with his message that our success with the boys in our charge came down to one concept: “lead from the heart.”

Three weeks ago I happened across this article, which centers around this premise: “The best way of influencing human beings to excel in their jobs is to intentionally and positively affect their hearts.”

A couple weeks ago I attended diversity and inclusion training at my company. I went in very dubious, since so much that goes by that label is based on the same “in-group” and “out-group” evil that has forever bedeviled mankind (only with different “ins” and “outs” than before). But instead I was treated to a program that, in its essence, delivered the message that it was all about taking great effort to make everyone feel welcome and valued, and it came right down to the same “lead from the heart” concept.

Coincidence? The Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon? Divine providence? (I favor that last one…)

Note: This is a post I originally published on LinkedIn in February 2015. Yesterday I got the news that my old friend Pat Dowd had just died after a long battle with cancer. I’m republishing this here in his honor. My mind is running through a whole bunch of high school memories of Pat, not least of which is the basketball game mentioned here.

“Gentlemen, you don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.” – Herb Brooks

Thirty-five years ago today the US Olympic hockey team beat the Soviets in one of the most spectacular upsets in sports history.

A year or two ago I watched a replay of the whole game. What I took away is that, logically, there is no way on earth the US team could have won that game. They were outskated, outmaneuvered, and generally outclassed by the Soviets, who were an obviously better team. But it was the pros from the USSR who were the ones outscored in the end.

The difference was heart. The US players to a man believed they could win and willed themselves to win. The USSR players? Meh.

Heart is a game-changer. I saw it for myself around the same time our Olympians pulled off their famous upset. My Ironwood Catholic Ramblers JV basketball team was playing a school we were used to beating, the Marenisco Milltowners. But we came out flat and they didn’t, and we were completely outclassed in the first half. We found ourselves down by nine and on our way to our own upset, but the other way around. Suddenly we were the underdogs.

My buddy and fellow guard Pat Dowd and I got chatting after the coach chewed us out in the locker room at halftime. We decided there was no way we were going to lose this game, and that we would each personally make a very different showing in the second half than we had in the first.

And we did. We went out there and played like demons possessed. Our fire was contagious, because within a short time the rest of our ICHS team started playing that way too. We roared back and won the game by thirteen points.

It wasn’t by any means the Miracle on Ice. I’m pretty sure it lives on in my memory alone. But man oh man, did that win feel great.

Whatever you’re doing, find that fire. Find that heart. It’ll make all the difference in the world.

“Boys, we went to the well again, and the water was colder and the water was deeper.” – Herb Brooks

PS – Coach Herb Brooks is remembered by his players even today for his many aphorisms. Lest you think I haven’t experienced (oh so many times) the flipside of heart and victory, be aware this “Brooks-ism” hit home for me too: “You’re playing worse every day, and right now you’re playing like the middle of next month.”

I started out several times to write a caustic post addressed to America’s business elite about their histrionic reactions over the past two weeks to President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. But what’s the point? It’s not like they’re going to listen to little ol’ me.

Perhaps for other folks who’ve been cheering them on, though, a little additional information may be of value.

A quick note up front: this post has nothing to do with the merits of the science regarding climate change. You can be 100% convinced that global warming is a real and immediate threat to humanity, and still fully agree with President Trump’s action.

Next, a dose of harsh marketplace reality: for some of the CEOs in question, their signing a letter urging the President against his action beforehand or issuing an emotional “resistance”-style missive afterward is just marketing, a virtue-signaling means to increase their companies’ appeal to their primarily urban liberal customers. As such, it has absolutely nothing to do with “saving the planet.” Cynical? Sure – but what’s a little cynicism when it comes to making money?

But General Mills? Kellogg? P&G? Staples? For these kinds of companies, whose primary customers are the struggling moms and dads in “flyover country,” it looks like more of the ill-advised hyper-partisan Ivy-League-bubble obtuseness that cloyed so heavily around the many “Letters to My Team” our business elite issued after the President’s election in November or after his Executive Order on immigration some months ago (which looks increasingly sensible, given the spate of recent terror attacks). As I pointed out then, for firms such as these, such pandering to extreme “progressivism” is likely to go over just as well with their customers as it did for the Democratic Party with voters the last couple of election cycles.

Through a less partisan lens, however, I’d like to point out another reason last week’s pronouncements by top executives were so wrongheaded. I didn’t see a single one (and I read a good many) that offered any facts whatsoever. There were lots of admonishing, near-weepy pronouncements about “the global community,” “being in this together,” “taking care of the planet,” “competitiveness,” “efficient technologies,” “setting clear goals,” or loads of other claptrap. Many expressed “disappointment” with the President’s decision, without offering any reason why. A few offered opinions about the Paris accord creating millions of “green” jobs without any evidence to support the notion. Not one made any mention of the downsides of the agreement.

I offer you this thought: when one side of an argument offers only emotion or unsupported opinion, and the other side offers cold, hard reasoning and fact, that’s a telling indicator of the solidity of each position. The folks agreeing with the President, and the President himself, offered the following:

• Were the US to keep its commitments in the agreement, it would have cost our deeply indebted nation trillions of dollars and an overall loss of jobs – specifically, as documented by the Heritage Foundation:

• • An overall annual average shortfall of nearly 400,000 jobs;
  • An average annual manufacturing shortfall of over 200,000 jobs;
  • A total income loss of more than $20,000 for a family of four;
  • An aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) loss of over $2.5 trillion; and
  • Increases in household electricity expenditures of between 13 percent and 20 percent.

• The agreement is a treaty, yet ex-President Obama attempted to cement US commitment to it by executive action only, one of his many abrogations of his Constitutional responsibilities. Obama sidestepped his clear duty to  submit it for the advice and consent of the US Senate. Why? Solely because in the Senate, the Paris Agreement would die quickly and ignominiously, since it’s such a patently awful deal for the US.
• Finally, and most important, even if all nations kept all their commitments (which they won’t, since there’s no enforcement mechanism in the agreement), the Paris accord would theoretically reduce global warming by 0.2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 (as detailed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). This fails the statistical null hypothesis test – the touted “benefit” doesn’t even reach the “background noise” of statistical uncertainty, much less do anything at all to change the planet’s climate.

To summarize: our business elite would have the US abandon proper treaty negotiation and passage, upending centuries of legal and political norms, to force the country and individual citizens to pay trillions of dollars for absolutely no measurable benefit whatsoever. Huh?

This reinforces my belief that there’s a dangerous partisan echo chamber at executive levels of US corporations. To any CEOs who might accidentally be listening: about half of your customers and employees on average, and a sizable majority in America’s heartland, believe that a lot of what you’re outspoken about is pure rubbish. Continuing to ignore or belittle those people, rather than stepping outside your bubble to learn about, value, and address their viewpoints and concerns, is poor leadership indeed.

Some years ago, when I was working at General Mills headquarters in Minneapolis, I began a new project and had as a Sourcing Department team member a young man named Nick Ariens. At dinner during our first project business trip, I asked him if he was related to THE Arienses, of mower and snowblower fame, and he admitted he was. (He avoided telling me he’s the son of the CEO, Dan Ariens, though.) I asked him what he was doing with General Mills and he explained that no Ariens family member is allowed to go to work for the company until he’s proven his chops elsewhere. I found that awfully impressive. I just discovered this old article recently that spells this philosophy out in more detail.

I’ve stayed in touch with Nick as he left General Mills to get his MBA in Europe, went and helped run a part of the family business in Australia, and finally came home to Wisconsin, where he’s now Director of Product Management. I also had the pleasure of trading some electronic communications with his dad Dan a few years ago on the very important topic of whiskey. Both are salt of the earth types I’d love to have a beer with (or maybe some of that fantastic Bulleit Rye…)

You don’t hear too much about Ariens in the national news. In a world where big companies seem to talk more about “Corporate Social Responsibility” than about actually running a working business, I find this impressive too. All companies talk about their values; from everything I can find about the Ariens family and employees, they actually live them. And rather than trying to save the world, it seems, they’re much more interested in what they can do to strengthen their own communities. The Fab Lab the company supported at the high school there in their headquarters town of Brillion, Wisconsin, looks “fab” indeed.

Here’s a great video of my pal Nick’s dad Dan talking about all of that. Nice work.

To those who poo-poo the notion of a manufacturing renaissance in the USA, I give you Bob Jacquart and the Stormy Kromer.

Bob’s dad ran the tiny little local fabric and sewing shop in my hometown of Ironwood, Michigan. Bob took it over many years ago and steadily expanded it into a full-fledged sewing factory.

Meanwhile, the Stormy Kromer, a winter hat invented by a railroad man in Wisconsin, George Kromer, in 1903, had hit its zenith and was declining for many years. In 2001, word came that it would no longer be produced.

Bob saw an opportunity, bought the rights, and restarted production of the hat in his shop. He’s grown the line to include offerings for women and children, clothing, and even luggage. And it’s all made right there in little Ironwood, Michigan, by about 120 people who can’t possibly compete with offshore workers or robots, right?

Except they do compete – seemingly very well.