I am thankful that Citibank will not fail. I’m a sissy. The idea of big institutions lumbering to their death scares me, particularly when they hold my life savings. 

In a stunning example of science telling us something we already know, a new study finds that bad management may be bad for your heart.

The BCC reports that “A Swedish team found a strong link between poor leadership and the risk of serious heart disease and heart attacks among more than 3,000 employed men.” The study found that people with lousy managers had higher stress, were more likely to smoke and suffer from high blood pressure, particularly when they were yelled at.

“The staff who deemed their senior managers to be the least competent had a 25% higher risk of a serious heart problem. And those working for what was classed as a long time – four years or more – had a 64% higher risk,” the BCC reports, citing the study, which was originally published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which will clearly be on our mandatory reading list along with “Who Moved My Cheese” from here on in.

We were there first, of course. But it’s always nice to see science catch up with reality a little bit.

Now get back to work, you lazy slugs!!

I flew from here to there last night. As sometimes happens in Business, I ran into somebody who is in business. We swapped a few observations for a while. After some time, I felt so appalled that I was forced to feign sleep. I think it was over St. Louis.

I should have known I was in some trouble when we were still on the ground in Los Angeles. The chief flight attendant had just announced that turkey wraps were available for $10 each to people in Coach. “Boy,” he said. “Why don’t they just charge an extra $10 for the ticket and give the things away for free?” I didn’t know and told him so. “These guys who run the airlines are so stupid at that kind of little stuff. What makes you think we can trust them to service and fly airplanes with all these people on them?”

This violated the first rule of in-flight discourse: No talk about anything related to airplane malfunctions.

It developed that we had both been in the same business at one point. I asked him what he did now. “I sold my business a little while back for a small fortune,” he said, indulging in the kind of bragging you get used to after a while. Not. “Now I’m an investor.”

“You must be taking it on the chin,” I said, possibly to get back at him for being so forthcoming about all that “small fortune” stuff. He allowed that he had been hurt, but was still investing. We then discussed a variety of issues relating to a number of business sectors. By the time we got over Nebraska, it was clear that this guy knew absolutely nothing. I’m not talking about insight here. I’m talking about events. Facts. Things that are happening. Mergers that took place and rocked the world. Companies that were no longer in business. Guys who had died. I’m not going to go into all of it. It was when he expressed surprise that you could download movies and watch them on your computer that I tuned him out.

Perhaps he’s smart and informed in other things. He seemed up on politics. He did seem knowledgeable about Warren Buffett’s less successful investments. He was reading an intelligent book, I saw, over which he fell asleep two or three times. Perhaps he’s just one of those people who do nothing but watch CNBC and read soft economics and analysts’ reports from firms that are now receiving bailouts. Maybe he knows a lot about cheese futures or something.

A few years ago there was a big debate about “Who owns the corporation” and all the wizards who know nothing at a very high level came to an agreement: It was the shareholders who owned the company. Not the employees who make the product, who work over years to build the value of the operation and live and die by its fate. Not the customers who use the stuff they make. No, it was guys like this one, who have a little bit of the enterprise and can unload it at any time without feeling a pinch.

Look at the paper. This is where that kind of thinking has led us.

At this point I believe that Wall Street and our entire stockholder-centric culture is killing American business. What’s good for investors is not always good for the companies and the workers who have to live in the system, not just feed off it after paying a small price for admission. Is it possible, that at some time in the future, the welfare of the companies we serve could be divorced from the fear, the greed, the feral hysteria of the securities marketplace?

When I was a much greener geek, I wrote for the Ziff Davis magazines. The book was called PC Computing, and I really loved doing it. There was a smell of everything new in the air back then, and a sense of amazement at what computers could do, an expanding consciousness that all kinds of stuff that used to be boring was suddenly exciting and cool. The greatest magazine in the field was not the one I was working for, however. It was its sister publication: PC Magazine.

PC Magazine ruled. It had John Dvorak, who extruded two terrific, high-energy columns in each issue, and a bunch of other guys who pretty much defined the interface between nerdy and awesome. And it was fat. Some issues were so fat they had to split them into two.

The PC business was exploding, and this was its bible.

Many of you may be too young to remember that there were once many, many beautiful charting programs, for instance, all of which have been replaced by the infinitely less lovely and more tedious PowerPoint. There was Harvard Graphics, and Persuasion, and many others. They came in big boxes with dozens of big floppy disks holding huge amounts of programming data you had to install over a period of hours. There were a lot of word processing programs, too, not just Word or Word Perfect, and a nice selection of spreadsheets. All we have now is Excel. It’s good. We use it. But some of the fun is gone.

Back then Macs were mostly for schools and spiky people. Real computer lovers were totally PC. We swapped cards in and out of the machine. We were unafraid of opening the box. We tweaked our software and knew which cables went to which arcane interface. It was the closest I ever got to feeling like one of the jocks with whom I went to high school, the guys who slicked their hair back and knew their way around a transmission.

Yesterday it was announced that the paper edition of PC Magazine would cease publication, and that the product would now be totally online. I’m sure they’ll do fine. It’s probably the right business decision. But it made me sad. Not because the magazine itself has been important to me recently, because it hasn’t. I own Apples now. PCs bore me completely. I haven’t installed a new video card in years.

But the idea of never holding that big fat paper dream machine in my hand again is a little hard to fathom. What’s next? No more General Motors?

Just a question I’ve been thinking about since yesterday… What do you think the boys at the Big Three auto companies were thinking about when each took his own private jet to Washington to ask for help? A number of subsequent queries suggest themselves:

• Are they stupid?
• Assuming that they are NOT completely stupid, didn’t anybody consider this might not be the absolutely best move, at least in terms of the optics?
• If somebody DID think about it, did they voice the opinion and were then overruled?
• Why were they overruled?
• If nobody thought about it, WHY didn’t they? Granted, the thousands of dollars spent in this form of transport have no discernible impact on the billions that are under review, but still…
• If they were going to fly private, why didn’t they all go in ONE jet? Do they hate each other that much? Or couldn’t they agree on which jet they would take?
• Did they think nobody would find out?
• Why do senior officers of corporations get so out of touch? Is it a part of the job description, or do they devolve as they serve their terms?
• Do politicians fly commercial? If so, why don’t I ever see any?
• Are senior officers of Detroit auto companies considered part of Middle America?
• Should we blame an entire industry for the failings of its senior officers?

Tell me what you think.

It is my belief, based on a day-by-day analysis of the situation as it pertains to my own sector and the economy as a whole, that Wall Street should be shut down immediately and re-opened to people who can prove their sanity on January 2.

We don’t let people drive who are drunk. We don’t allow people to operate heavy machinery when they’re on psychotropic medication (except in California). Wall Street and its associated analysts, brokers, traders and investors are simply too stupid to operate at this point. So let’s not let them.

Everybody should take a month or so, celebrate the holidays with their families, take a look at the genuine value of the companies on the various exchanges, and then come back with a clear head. It’s hard to have a clear head when it’s shoved firmly into the darkest place imaginable. Let’s wait until we get a little light.

This is not an academic proposal. What we have here are a bunch of guys potted on fear, thwarted greed, grief and short-termitis, rampaging through the forest with shotguns. Not since Dick Cheney went duck hunting have we seen such danger to all in the vicinity.

Companies that are actually performing quite well are zooming down to incomprehensible lows, with market caps lower than the value of the real estate on which their operations perch. Anybody with half a brain is sitting things out until the madness is over. This leaves those with less than half a brain on the field.

Let’s send them all home. Now. Let the season of cheer and good-fellowship start immediately. And take the guns out of the hands of these children.

One of my very hostile but articulate readers, Mike from Spokane, gives me both barrels between the eyes this morning. I think Mike thinks I won’t publish it, because I’m a panty-waist business type swilling gin at breakfast. Here’s what he says:

Bing…with all due respect (as you recently stated to me), you have no idea what you’re frigging talking about. You, and corporate America, are so far removed from the realities of Main Street America, that you continue to confuse your personal financial comfort concerns with those of middle America.

I fully expect that you will delete all posts contrary to your limited and self-serving view, but at least you (or one of your corporate lackeys) will have to read statements that reflect what most of America regards as self-evident…that expanding and supporting corporate greed through taxpayer handouts for incompetence is no path out of the mess we’re in. Not much satisfaction from this end, but at least you, or one of your timorous syncophants, will know that your world has finally sunk below used car salesmen in terms of universal public esteem.

Finally, fearing being one step from flinging fries at the local ‘In&Out’ joint may play well while swilling $20 cocktails in some high-end Manhattan watering hole, but it is a daily reality for millions of Americans who invested billions in now collapsed 401K plans.

Mike, it’s always a pleasure to hear from you. But sometimes it’s hard to see things clearly with so much blood in your eye. I sent my corporate lackeys and timorous sycophants out of the room. This is between you and me.

First of all, this ”corporate America” that’s on a different plane that “Main Street America” is a myth. I have worked in theaters, as a cab driver, in small companies, large corporations and mega-watt global behemoths, and they are all the same. They are people working for a living. And in one and all, it’s the most dysfunctional that run the place. Whatever the gig, we work, we try to enjoy our jobs, and we go home. Guess where our homes are? Main Street.

Secondly, I come from Illinois. So I don’t want to hear a lot of pompous, self-aggrandizing bushwah about middle America, either. We all live here. We are all Americans. None of us are more American than any others. We are all equally American. Let’s move on.

I understand that you need to see people like me, because I sometimes wear a tie and work in an office, as rich, shallow mofos who deserve to be pilloried, in order to keep on feeling that righteous anger of yours. But in my opinion you’d do better to see all of us (except the very rich and unsuccessful putzes who whipped up this soggy mess) as citizens of the same troubled system. Everybody I know is very nervous about their jobs. Nobody I know has a pension. We worry about our stock price, and our families, and our friends, and what the hell is going to happen to us if the big companies that provide so many people with jobs aren’t helped out right now.

We don’t sympathize with the idiots who have gotten us all into such trouble. And we certainly don’t want THEM to benefit from any assistance that is given to these failing auto makers, banks, insurance companies, whatever. We just don’t want the entire ship to sink, taking the lives of all on board, because the captain and his crew are dolts, numbskulls and screw-ups, or because politicians, responding to the anger of their constituents, continue to follow instead of lead.

Take the miscreants out behind the barn! Line them up against the wall! Pepper them with heat-seeking projectiles! But when you’re done with that satisfying exercise, let’s try to save the American auto industry, the banks where we keep our money, and probably the mortgages of all those people who believed they could buy a home with no money down because a greedy guy in a suit told them they could.

Personally, at this point I’m not a big believer in the “free market” approach. It seems to benefit the guys in charge of the marketplace. And that’s not us. And by “us” I mean we, the people. And by the way: MY 401K blows, too.

Thanks for writing, Mike. Say hi to Spokane.

Yesterday Mr. Paulson told Congress that the bailout was working and that he was “very proud of the decisive actions by Treasury, the Fed and the FDIC to stabilize our financial system,” adding, ”We have done what was necessary as facts and conditions in the market and economy have changed.”

I am put in mind of two things.

The first is what happened when this nation finally found it impossible not to exit the War in Vietnam. Given a number of other alternatives that would not have played very well in the media, the Nixon Administration simply decided to declare victory and go home. The guys who didn’t believe we had actually achieved victory weren’t fooled. Those who wanted to believe we had in fact done so were mollified somewhat. And we did what we did. So it’s kind of like that.

The second thing Mr. Paulson’s statement conjured up, like a madeleine dipped into a glass of tea, was something said by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the middle of the worst part of that same war, well before it was coming to its eventual denouement. ”War is over if you want it,” they said. Of course, it wasn’t. It was just a slogan… propaganda… but since John was a smart guy, I always believed that he was sort of saying that intentions and positive thinking sometimes yields results. So… right on, Mr. Paulson. Power to the people and all that.

Except not. Because on Monday, that very same Mr. Henry Paulson told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council that he intended to keep the more than $400 billion left in the bailout fund in reserve. He said, somewhat in line with his statements to Congress, that things were going well, that the economy was stabilizing, and that, now that the banks and AIG (AIG) are partially taken care of, he’s going to leave it up to the Obama administration to figure out what to do with the rest of the dough. So no handouts from Paulson for GM (GM), which employs all those poor people, and no immediate money for anybody else, either.

This disappointed me. I was so looking forward to my share of the payout just in time to save Christmas. Weren’t you?

Good morning and welcome to another rollicking week in the world of free enterprise.

I have a question for you this morning. Yesterday I gassed up my car and found that, for the first time in a while, the tab came in at under $25. I have become accustomed to the habit of not looking at the price on the pump when I make my occasional visits, any more than I watch the Dow every day now. There no point in rubbing one’s nose in the gravity of our situation, don’t you think? At any rate, I looked at the pump and it said that the price of a gallon of gasoline was $2.21. 

Wow, I thought. That’s cheap.

And then I wondered. I mean, we’re so conditioned to the price of things spiraling ever-upward that eventually we become totally desensitized to the reality of things. Is $2.21 per gallon really cheap? I just paid $13.34 for some cereal, milk and a banana at Oakland International Airport. Was that cheap? The cab I will take to get from Kennedy Airport to Manhattan will cost me $60. Is THAT cheap? 

In the case of gasoline prices, it’s clear to me that the market is totally jobbed, and we are hosed. When the economy is flush, the “law of supply and demand” that governs “rational markets” hoists the price of gas to heights that are so ridiculous they don’t bear scrutiny. When the economy tanks, whoops, lookie here, the “law of supply and demand” suddenly drives the price of a barrel of oil downward for exactly as long as it will take for us to regenerate our situation. Somewhere, I am convinced, there’s a bunch of guys in a room somewhere (with a hard line to conference rooms around the world) playing canasta and toying with the price of a gallon of gas. 

At any rate, I have a question before I board: When the price of a gallon of oil was below $57 the last time, or hovering near that number, what were we paying for gas at that time. Was it in fact $2.21 or thereabouts? Or was it some other rational number? Like, was it way higher because they were squeezing us around Katrina at that time? Was it lower, because nobody realized at that point just how deeply we could be gouged and still keep our SUV’s? Is there somebody keeping score on this thing?

Word comes from an official at the Bank of America that the decompression that we’re in right now will end in the fourth quarter of 2009.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait that long.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the prediction, though. I was in a staff meeting last week and a financial type iterated the same supposition. I asked him whether, since he had a handle on the whole prognostication gambit, he could arrange for the turnaround to happen a bit earlier. He said no.

But my question remains. If a consensus of opinion is now building on the issue of resurgence timing, why shouldn’t some of us stake out a bullish position at this juncture. I’m positing that the voices now being heard are from the more conservative members of the sector, who are gently and tentatively sending out feelers, as groundhogs do on their given day, for signs of spring. Is it possible that some of the more bold among us, who have not been shy for the last ten years or so, motivate themselves to do what they do best?

On any given day, there are indeed signs of regeneration in the metrics supplied by the vast river of information extruded from the Internet. I’ll admit to you, today doesn’t look so hot. All the more reason for those who make predictions for a living to step up to the bar and take some control of the situation.

Let me be the first to put my toe in the water. The current systemic breakdown of international corporate capitalism and its associated markets in credit, debt and consumer goods will begin showing signs of improvement by the first quarter of 2009. By early summer, with oil prices quite low, vast segments of the economy will be kick-started into moderate growth. The worst of the mortgage meltdown will be past by that time, and consumer confidence will be beginning to grow. Europe now in free fall, the dollar will be stronger against the Euro and the credit markets will start humming into action again. By early third quarter ‘09, signs of Greed will once again appear on Wall Street, with the expected, simultaneous reduction in Fear.

Once Fear is replaced by Greed, as you know, we are truly back in business. The tipping point of that metric will occur on July 23rd, 2009. It will be all uphill from there.

Sounds as good as any other prediction you’ve read lately, right? Let’s get behind it!

I thought might share with you one of the most entertaining lawsuits I’ve seen in a long time. Given the seriousness of our global situation, it’s nice to see there’s somebody who has his head on straight.

Variety reports today that the Mayor of the city of Batman, which is in Turkey, is suing Warner Brothers movie studio and the director of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, for improper use of the name, Batman. The suit alleges untold pain and suffering brought down upon the citizens of Batman by Batman. Variety notes:

The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.

In a related story, word comes that lawyers at Butterball are considering taking steps against the President of that very same Byzantine nation for copyright infringement. Feelings are reportedly quite tender, if not juicy, on both sides.

Wherever you go, there you are. It doesn’t matter how far you fly, how many time zones you traverse, how odd the stated agenda or proposed workflow, the land of business is the same the world over.

The same gentlemen strutting around in suits whose quality bespeaks the wearers’ level of power. The same little shoulder bags filled with orientation material. The same attempt to wring joy from the everyday work that must be done. The same white wine. The same canapes – although in this case I will say that the pistachio puffs were a new experience. The same jitters around speechtime. The same bonhomie afterwards. The same feeling that rises in a room where alcohol and long associations mix. The same sense of content being stuffed into a carapace of form. The same business life, in short.

After a period of ice-cold shivering that always attends a plunge into a new pool, you warm up almost immediately. Ah, you think. This is just swimming again. I know how to do this.

I will report to you that I believe it is FAR more pleasant to have visited Europe after the election of Barack Obama than it is before. There are two headlines that leapt out at me from the newstands covered with Obamamania of one sort or another. One was from a British paper, and simply said: “THANKS, YANKS.” The other was also in English, but looked local. It said: “Welcome back, America.”  During the conference, at which there were but two other Americans among a crowd of some 1500, a number of folks came up to me and congratulated me on our new president. The only one who expressed serious reservations, quite interestingly, I think, was a pleasant, very thin, very gray Russian fellow. Shades of the Cold War. I don’t think they like us very much. Again.

The picture you see at the top of this little report is the hall in which I gave my speech. It’s called the Palazzo Dei Congressi, and it was built by Benito Mussolini in the mid-1930s as part of a great exposition he wanted to hold in 1942 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Fascism. The area is called E.U.R., and it’s a little distance outside of Rome proper and a world away. Wherever else you walk in the Eternal City, the architecture makes you feel more human, more in touch with other people, their appetites, desires, enthusiasms and beliefs. Even when you are dwarfed by the size of things, as one is at St. Peters, for instance, you are seized by an admiration for the things humanity can accomplish over time, and the power of beauty to last beyond the petty cruelties, fads and idiocies of any given era.

In Mussolini’s E.U.R., you feel precisely the opposite. The buildings rear up, huge, white and implacable, and each person scuttling beneath and between them seems meek, tiny, insignificant in the shadow of the State. The plazas stretch out, unarticulated blank spaces spread between gigantic avenues impassable to any pedestrian who dares to disobey the precisely-timed traffic lights. There are enormous museums there that nobody attends - they are simply in too inhospitable and cold a setting. There is something they call “the square Coliseum” and many other government buildings dedicated to Labor, Health, Public Safety.

The night after I spoke, as we walked to the cab stand through the wierd, glowing landscape, a small group of merry Romans found their way into a corner restaurant that was tucked into the ground floor of a towering edifice near the main drag. It had the checked tablecloths, the mandatory bottles of red wine on every table… but it had all the authenticity of a Bennigans at your local super mall.

And then it hit me. This was what the architects that served Il Duce had done, and it was no mean feat. They had created the first urban mall, and pointed the way to a future that is far more representative of the world we know today than the alleys, byways, cathedrals and bistros of the ancient city that gave it birth.

My speech went very well, by the way. I got a bunch of business cards afterwards and intend to stay in touch with quite a few of the nice people I met there. On the way out of town to the airport, we did get into a traffic jam – the first I had experienced since arriving in Rome. It was about a mile of tiny cars lined up impatiently, each filled with a business person or two waiting to get to the office in the area most congenial to what we do - E.U.R.

I just logged my two millionth mile. I hasten to add that the vast majority of those miles I paid for myself. I say this because some of you think I ride around in luxury all the time with the corporate teat between my teeth. I assure you I do not. I am, for better or worse, insanely bi-coastal, with one half of my existence on the left coast and the other, on the right, necessary to pay for the whole deal. Hence my millions — not bucks but miles. 

The crazy size of my achievement comes with some benefits. Primarily, it has boosted me to Executive Platinum status on American Airlines. This confers access to the first-tier lounge at most airports. This is why I am writing you right now from the British Airways First Class Lounge at Heathrow Airport. It is among the nicest spaces — public, semi-public or private — I have ever been privileged to be in. 

There are coffee machines dispensing all sorts of cool stuff, and teas, of course, and an assemblage of the bizarre things that British people like to eat, all very nice. Fruit and baked goods and jams and meats and porridge and warm bubbly drinks, even top-shelf booze if you’re in the mood at this hour of the morning. Many residents are on their laptops, working. Business never ceases. 

The news here this morning is that the British banks are reaping the benefits of new, lower interest rates, which were slashed 1.5 percent recently… and not passing the savings along to their customers. Shocking, wot? 

In a little while, we move on to Rome. We’ll see how good the free wi-fi is from there.

Just a note to say so long for a couple of days. I’m taking off for Rome this afternoon to speak at a large conference of project managers.  It’s a bit weird, I know. But a few years ago, I wrote a book called Rome, Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation. A very nice gentleman in Rome who is associated with the conference thought it might be an interesting spin for the assembled multitudes now gathering, and asked me if I would like to come and speak. How many times does one have the opportunity to do this kind of thing? I’ll tell you. Not many. So here I go.

The thesis of the book is that Rome was the first corporate entity in history. It began as a mom-and-pop enterprise. Two brothers ran it. They hated each other and one eventually killed the other. Sounds like the garment business, doesn’t it? After that, the new company engaged in an aggressive push for expansion, both through friendly and unfriendly acquisitions, eventually rising to the position of #1 in its chosen marketplace. At that point, it devolved into a CEO-centric organization ill-suited to manage its ill-considered expansion into new venues, and was eventually brought down by its own size and incompetence, and by a group of hostile start-ups that ate its lunch.

There are many lessons that may be learned from Rome by those of us who work for similar organizations, as well as by the larger eco-system of which we are all an increasingly nervous part. The similarities between that corporate organization and ours are interesting, if not disquieting.

But frankly, I’ve had enough disquiet for a while. I think I’ll have some pasta instead. The good news is that due to the incipient collapse of our own global empire, the value of the dollar seems to be a bit better against the euro than it has been for quite some time. So I’ll only have to put two coins in the fountain when I make a wish.

Ciao for now.

It’s morning in America. I say this without irony, because it’s not a time for irony, or cynicism, or fear, as inured as we are to those emotions, as easy as they are to achieve. The president-elect talks a lot about hope. For the majority of Americans, that seems to be an attractive proposition.

There’s often a feeling for people in business that we exist in a bubble, separate from the rest of the world. We have our own books, many of resplendent fatuity, that goose us up and tell us how to win friends, influence people, and retire either rich or poor, depending on the current fetish of the time. We have our own schools that teach us how to push people and assets around like figures in a ledger. Often, we wear uniforms that distinguish us from civilians, from ripped tees, jeans and stubble on the left coast to ultra-shined wing-tips and pinstripe on the right and everything in between. When we fail, people do not mourn. In many cases, they cheer, and deplore any efforts to save us from our self-inflicted doom.

Last night, at least for a moment, that bubble burst, and suddenly everybody was just an American, no matter how we make our living. Momentous events do that to people. Draw them together for a time. In that brief interlude, much is possible.

I’ll tell you what I mean. I was in a room with a whole bunch of business types. We don’t talk about politics most of the time. When you have to live with people, you don’t want to descend into substantial conversations very often. That’s true of families, corporate and otherwise.

We were watching the results come in. None of us wanted to go home. At 11 PM, the outcome was at last official. Elegant speeches were made on both sides. There was a scent in the air, as there is after a great rainstorm, the smell of ozone and fresh cut grass. We all kind of just stood around, taking it in. Faces appeared slightly different… more open, less guarded. We were, in a way, in uncharted territory. It felt a bit like the 60s again.

“Well,” said one guy who already pays about 50% of his income to one form of Federal, State or Local authority or another. “I never thought I’d be so pleased to pay even more taxes than I do right now. But I gotta say, this is great.” Then he got on the phone to his son, who was at that moment in Times Square with a mob of celebrating young people.

Like I said. It’s just a moment in time. Perhaps we should all consider how it might be possible to extend it for a while.

The other day I was having lunch with a couple of guys I know. The check came, as it will. Only two of us reached for our wallets. “I’m an elderly gentleman on a pension,” said the third of our number. The other two of us put down our cards and split it down the middle, things being what they are in the corporate realm.

Afterwards, I thought about the situation a little. How did Klein, who is fully as flush as just about anybody out there, who has a home in an affluent and bucolic ski town out west, who has a nice pension he will live off for the rest of his days quite comfortably, get away with what he did — sticking me and Brewster with the check?

I’ll tell you how: he played the Not Paying card. He didn’t go to the restroom while others sorted things out. He didn’t promise to pay next time. He didn’t slap his pockets and say, “Whoa, left my wallet in my other suit!” or any lame thing like that. He just implemented Recession Skill #1: He declined to pay, citing indigence. It’s interesting. If he’d been less staunch about it, Brewster and I would have yanked his chain so hard he’d have been kissing dirt for a year. But he was clear. He was determined. He was not paying.

As this economic situation cascades down on us, we’re all going to need to develop certain new capabilities to manage our way through the crisis while still doing business, still enjoying life a little bit, still traveling for our work in some comfort. Klein has discovered one important weapon in the battle. There are others that will take shape over time, I am sure.

All ideas are welcome. We’re clearly on the frontier of a relatively new area of study here, one that will be of interest for quite some time to come.