In my desperate attempt to see a path for business growth in these tumultuous times, sometimes I read the FOMC meeting notes (or the comments on them, which are boring enough to masquerade as the actual minutes), or my Yahoo! horoscope (it was really a sad day when Excite stop publishing the personal, love and career energy meters), or hospitality news and daily real estate digests.
I might as well read tea leaves or coffee grinds. Because I am as good as Ben Bernanke or Angela Merkel or Mario Draghi at forecasting and certainly no worse than the deranged homeless man who “lives” on 109th just off Broadway.
In fact, the preacher man who sometimes cries out in the subway, “Jesus Christ is coming!! He is coming today!!” has a good chance that one day he will be right.
Sidebar: At least, as to the part of his predictions that inherently require an apocalypse; the savior part of his story requires really going out on a limb. I am not ready for that level of commitment. Marrying a mortal is about as far as I can go with a full and open heart.
Look, I don’t need to be rich. I just need my savings when I am ready to retire. And, I don’t even need all of my savings. I just need to keep my righteous indignation at companies like Walmart without secretly hoping that when I am 80 years old there will be a “greeter” job available at a nearby store.
But I really need that righteous indignation. I really can’t retire without that.