Free Enterprise -- We for get how well it works.

There was a tv commercial. I saw it as a kid back in the seventies. It showed a kid who was delivering newspapers and told you how he made more money than 2/3 of the people of earth or something like that. At the end, the voiceover said, Free Enterprise -- We forget how well it works. This post reminded me of that. Thank you, Jonathan Schwarz.

oh god. yes. now this is the kind of "trickle down" i can get behind!

$3.6 billion down to $25million? Who suffers on $25million dollars?

Oh, the humanity!

Tell you what, I'll settle for 10% of that.

This is precisely the market outcome economic theory predicts if you assume all agents are rational and are perfectly informed by Thomas Friedman columns.

friedman can piss away 25 mil in a couple of weeks. I am loving this big time. Next time I visit my parents in bethesda, I hope I see Friedman somewhere so I can laugh in his fat face.

hahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Easy come, Easy go...
And DO NOT COMPLAIN.
What did you expect MR. KNOW IT ALL?

Here's hoping the Bucksbaum family trusts are the overwhelming majority of the GGP shareholders.

You may hate TNR, but its review of Friedman's "The World is Flat" by Ronald Steel--titled "Birth of a Salesman"--is pretty good.
Basically: F is pompous, windy, with little to say, and what he says is superficial or wrong.
Problem in making reporters into columnists remains. And their "serious" books might make decent articles but are three quaters bloated padding. The curse of think-tank thinking, most of which is throat-clearing babble.

Yeah, well, as much as I may laugh at Friedman, he's still sitting on a cushion of $25 million dollars that most of us don't have. He still gets to get paid for his banal observations about the world - no matter how wrong-headed his analysis may be. And he still gets somewhere in the neighborhood of $50K for a single speaking gig, despite being Thomas Friedman.

So the schadenfreude is fun and all, but the fact that people still take Mr. Tom "Suck on this" Friedman seriously blunts it quite a bit for me.

On the other hand, he is (now) in favor of developing renewable/sustainable energy...

Like everyone else who isn't a damn oil or coal company. Seriously, why do his books sell?

I didn't know the guy was a billionaire. It's kinda surprising, actually; it seems to me that writing a weekly column, even a stupid one, is relatively hard work. That's some impressive ego.

$25M may not be enough to pay for the taxes and upkeep on that mansion..... so maybe he will lose it. If he ends up homeless, he would still get no sympathy from me.

A couple of years ago, C-Span aired a debate between Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz. What I remember best was the "What the fuck?" expression on Stiglitz' face whenever Friedman would spout one of his frequent but meaningless aphorisms. I'd certainly heard of the guy before that, but had never actually read anything by him (except the cover of a copy of The World is Flat that a guy I worked with carried around) and had never heard him speak. He reminded me a little of Chauncey the gardener from Being There.

to add insult to it, rumor is all his books were printed on toxic paper and they are also worthless.

"Friedman would spout one of his frequent but meaningless aphorisms."

Like this:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/5a1c40ba1b/global-peace-and-prosperity-with-tom-friedman-joe-stiglitz-and-ted-koppel-from-stevebrant55

Will they be wanting to sleep under the bridge I call home?

I'm investing in cardboard refrigerator boxes. Its the new housing bubble and will work well with micro-financing.

You're just jealous. I'm still awesome.

The flat earthers should learn about diversification.