Veep & Forbes…

Well… I owe some updates from the several days. Last Friday I hosted the Vice President of El Salvador, Ana Vilma de Escobar. She was fantastic, and we had a lot of fun. More on that later…

Tonight our local Entrepreneurs’ Organization hosted Steve Forbes (CEO of Forbes Magazines and also former presidential candidate). To be honest, I thought the event was overpriced and would be somewhat of a letdown. I was wrong.

Steve was engaging, funny, insightful, and probably the best speaker we’ve had ever in our local chapter. (Maybe that’s too big of a statement… but he clearly ranks up there with or above Frank Abignale, with or above Jack Daly, etc… and even in the same neighborhood as Jack Welch.) His thoughts on world affairs: watch out, Iran will be a big problem — bigger than N Korea — in the next year … and probably Israel (or we) will take out their leadership. On the Fed: If you want to know if our economy is being managed well, look at the price of gold… if it’s in the mid-$300s, then inflation (and the economy) is good … and if it’s lower or higher, there are problems. On oil: Oil and gold prices are pretty closely linked. He covered far more, but it’s bedtime … I have an 8:30 am press-check way up in Santa Fe Springs… ugghh.

Oh yeah… the venue (the Nixon Library) was impeccable, beautiful and very interesting… the food was perfect … and seeing all the EO members from OC, LA and SD made it all worth the expensive price of entry.

I’ll leave you with one more pic… here’s me; Mike Caito (Restaurants on the Run); Rachel Koenig (President of EO Orange County); Mr Forbes; Adam Glickman (President of LA); and Schmiddy (Pres. of San Diego) for the “official shot.” (Forbes must have posed for a thousand pix… but he was a good sport.) And somehow or another, I kind of feel like I wasn’t dressed appropriately.