Topic Category: U.S.

Our nation was founded by risk takers who dared to take on a challenge without any guarantee of success. They failed, time and again, but somehow found the courage to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get right back into the fight. This is the essential American story and, as a recent commencement speaker, one I shared with 350 graduating MBA students.

The skepticism was evident in conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham’s voice when she referred to the working relationship between President Obama and Senate Majority Leader McConnell as a “burgeoning bromance.” Her sentiment is shared by a number of Republicans in Congress, who are unhappy that Senate and House leadership is working with the president to secure Trade Promotion Authority.

French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century has given widespread attention to the rising gap between the world’s rich and poor, and to populist calls for government action that lead to more equal distributions of income and wealth. That rhetoric, however, overlooks the reality that any major state role in leveling income-wealth differences risks eroding economic freedom, which is the true engine of economic progress for all people.

On Christmas Eve 1968, NASA astronaut Bill Anders, orbiting the moon on board Apollo 8, took the first photo of Earth rising over the horizon of another celestial body. Known as Earthrise, that photo is widely regarded as one of the most iconic photos of the 20th Century and is believed by many to have been the impetus for launching the environmental movement.

While many people around the world are counting America out, I'm not one of them. My message to America: it's time to re-establish ourselves as a global powerhouse of trade and industry. That includes the creation of millions of good-paying jobs, a sound energy policy, access to capital for small business and, most of all, embracing one powerful tenet: America must believe in itself again.

Google just dodged a bullet. But their Achilles heel still can be exposed by the European Union’s monopoly litigation. Ninety five percent of Google’s revenue comes from Ad Words. They are a brilliantly successful revenue generator. The profit in Ad Words comes from Search. However, this amazing revenue generator is also Google’s Achilles heel.

As expected, the dramatic drop in crude oil prices is having a deep impact on the American Oil industry. As prices for Brent Crude dropped to $44.13 on January 13th, daily industry reports began to reveal the bleak picture for producers and related companies. Despite prices seeming to recover and level off around the $60 range throughout February, the reports of losses, layoffs, and CAPEX cutbacks continue.

As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I, like everyone else working here, is cheering that we are finally going to get Net Neutrality. The question I have is this: why do Silicon Valley businesses, companies that depend heavily on the internet, care so much about Net Neutrality, and why is Fox News and many vocal republicans, so adamantly against it?

The new Congress has come ready with some fresh ideas for immigration reform. Freshman Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said in a recent interview, “We have to start with a secure border, we have to start with a guest worker program.” Gardner is right to link border security with a guest worker visa program. The former cannot be achieved without the latter.