Next week, during the Clinton Global Initiative, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Banker to the Poor, Muhammad Yunus, will be meeting with heads of state, CEOs of some of the world's largest corporations and many, many bankers from across the planet. While bankers in the West are presently worried about...

Two weeks of bliss, sunsets that never end, farmers' markets, vineyards, children playing in the waves, the Democratic convention speeches on tv, fresh seafood, friends, conversations on the beach...and the knowledge that we will return next summer. This sums up my late August vacation on the East Coast of the...

The first time I met Jim Gabour, it was at a party I hosted on a canal boat on the Seine in Paris... for the French Bicentennial almost twenty years ago. A bearded wild man throwing dubloons and Mardi Gras beads arrived at 1 AM from London and announced, "I...

What do Snowmass, Colorado and the Cote d'Azur have in common? Just like the Texans who, when I was a child, were disliked in Colorado because they had bought up all the prime real estate for ski resorts, Russian tycoons are buying up select properties from some of the largest...

A few years ago I began spending more time in the U.S., after many years living and traveling abroad. I have always been a fan of the BBC and its calm, cool, and collected presenters. I trusted that the BBC was delivering to me vital information about the world. But...

Having grown up in Texas Bush oil country, and later living and working in and around entertainment and technology economies such as Seattle, Los Angeles and abroad, where a more liberal mind-set supports a future with Obama as the leader of choice, I keep trying to figure out how this...

My father can never stop talking about the small town in Northwest Louisiana, where he is from, to the point that when my parents were searching for a name for me, they named me after his hometown, Vivian, in Caddo Parish. There is a Piggly Wiggly, a Walmart, a First...

I have recently received requests to better explain how microfinance, specifically microcredit loans to the poor, has also become a "good" business for the more well-off humans on this planet. The point, as Nobel Peace Prize winner, Prof. Muhammad Yunus argues, is not to always look at financial profits and...

Let's see, I walk about an half hour to work, then jump in the metro for the last fifteen minutes. A yearly metro pass costs approximately $400 per year and my employer pays for it. If I feel like it, I can take a "Velib", a "free" bicycle, the yearly...

Having grown up in Houston, surrounded by the oil business, and the kinds of personalities which create both wildcatters and Baptist ministers, I guess I feel I know a thing or two about hyperbole. But what happens when those who struck gold, be it black gold, or fees on deals...

In this globalizing world, there are those who operate in the spotlight, and those who work diligently to make it a better place, receiving next to no recognition. I work for a man, who for over thirty years, was known mostly to the poorest of the poor, and those who...

"There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Sitting at the American Pavillon in Cannes, I realize that very few of the people here are speaking English. The same goes for the beach terrace at the Majestic, the lobby of the Martinez and inside the Palais itself. The Opening Night statement, made by French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann --...

I am recently back from a trip back to my home state of Texas, where former President George Sr. and Barb attend the Astros games and no one thinks twice about the adverts for Halliburton on the walls of the Minute Maid stadium (formerly known as the Enron stadium), unless...

Recently I wrote about the French banks and companies which have been supporting Muhammad Yunus' microcredit and Social Business ideas with concrete projects and real investments...now a few words about some of the US financial institutions which have taking steps towards including these new models, and thus becoming more visionary...

Today was eye-opening to say the least. Muhammad Yunus is in Paris for the French release of his book entitled, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism...and spending two hours listening and exchanging with this visionary human being gives me more hope than anything...

Just look at the following article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled, "For Bankers, Trust Becomes a rare Commodity."

This is why trust needs to be brought back into the equation. The thing is, some banks still operate with large prfots and high payback rates...they...

The front page of Saturday, February 16th's Financial Times announced that a Bangladeshi microcredit bank, Grameen, was coming to the aid of impoverished people in the United States. One of the poorest countries in the world has set up shop in Queens, New York to help extremely disadvantaged women and...

This crowd was much younger than those I used to see voting at the embassy twenty years ago. The generational change in the Democrats Abroad in Paris was actually very uplifting and the few older faces in the crowd were smiling because of it. Being an American in Paris with...

Last time around, many thousands of Americans living abroad, or simply out of the country at that time, filed for and did NOT receive their absentee ballots for the U.S. presidential elections. I myself filed several months in advance, stating and signing that I would be out of the country,...