There is no question that, today in February 2010, my family and I are better off materially than we were at the beginning of the last decade. As a late baby-boomer, I thought I had hit my peak earning years last decade during the 2000s. However, as I gain more experience and knowledge, and as I learn how to leverage my network even more and in better ways, I find that I have a higher income and more capital, enjoy more leisure time and am more creative, and appreciate better the way I spend my time and with whom I spend it.
Looking back nearly thirty years, I recall working excruciatingly long hours as a young tax attorney in a large firm in San Francisco, learning my trade and honing my skills. Then, at the end of my first decade as a lawyer, after becoming a top corporate partner in a multi-national law firm, I left the establishment law firm to become an entrepreneur, utilizing all of my skills to structure deals, to buy companies, to sell companies, and to operate on a global scale.
By then end of my second decade after graduating from law school, and after having founded three med-tech service companies (sold two of them as private companies and took a third one public and then sold it in a friendly tender offer), I became an investor and that is what I have been doing for the last ten years - my third decade since leaving law school.
During my third decade, I saw the emergence of the Internet Bubble and experienced its aftermath; I have participated in the Greenspan Put or Monetary Bubble as it built into the sub-prime mortgage debacle in 2007 and 2008; and today in 2010 I am witnessing another bubble - call it the Commodity Bubble or the Bernancke Put.
During all of these periods, I have consistently made money, while avoiding becoming greedy, arrogant and self-important. While not exactly modest, I try to keep my winnings in perspective. It has been difficult, but throughout these various stages, I have maintained the highest ethical standard, maintained my principles of self-reliance, and treated people with respect.
Most recently, as I enter my fourth decade, I have become a managing director of a multi-strategy hedge fund, a private equity/venture capital fund, and a real estate fund. Looking forward over the next ten years, as my two children graduate college and enter the "real world", I remain unusually optimistic about the future.
Some pundits say we are entering a long period of the decline of America's influence. Despite the Obama Frolic - a joy ride in a "borrowed" car and a risky flirtation with an outsized debt burden and government intervention that is weakening our capitalist system - I remain optimistic. Although too young to remember Lyndon Johnson and the advent of The Great Society, I was mature enough to appreciate what Ronald Reagan and William Clinton did to dismantle some of the most ill-designed programs that the liberal Congress foisted on us in the name of a Liberal / Progressive Agenda.
The pendulum swings back and forth, and it is swinging now in the direction of Obama's "Progressive Programs." With any luck it will not swing too far in the one direction before swinging back in the other. But again, let's hope it does not swing too far. Despite the current political climate, I believe that in America it will be possible to identify opportunity, to seize the advantage, to build wealth and even to prosper.
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