Welcome to FiftyThousandFootView! This blog is intended to be a collection of interesting news, thoughts, facts, and theories relating to matters of the day. FTFV will attempt to deal with the economy, markets, and current culture, such as it is. While religion and politics could consume the site we’ll try to keep things in perspective. Given that your trusty blogger was born and raised in Chicago and lives in one of its suburbs, count on an occasional Chicago-related post.
Why FiftyThousandFoot View? The term is used to mean speaking in general terms, lacking precise specificity. That’s not a bad thing—it just is what it is. Information in FTFV will always have a factual or citable basis—and then may or may not be colored by the views of the author of the post. The intent is to engage in a general fact-based discussion without getting into the fourth place beyond the decimal point. In fact, let’s just agree that all percentages will include nothing to the right of the decimal point unless the number to the left is a zero. (Then, unfortunately, we’ll be forced to split hairs—but it won’t happen too often.)
The heady world of the markets and the economy is either presented entirely too broadly by the mainstream media or, often, too esoterically by the academic or practitioner press. The idea here is for us to end up somewhere in the middle. We won’t be using Greek letters here at all, but for the occasional reference to alpha, beta, and delta, often required by mid-level finance. Should you happen upon gamma, chi, or rho you’ll know we’ve gotten off path. Entries related to Chicago, culture and other subjects that arise from time to time are intended to keep things interesting and because, heck, none of us is one dimensional.
Your Blogger. My name is Pat Pollard. I manage a family office-based private equity and venture capital fund in Chicago’s North suburbs. I spent 15 years in the investment banking and consulting businesses prior to entering the private investment business in 2000. Armed with a B.S. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA (M.M.) in Finance and Management Policy from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, a healthy measure of skepticism for conventional wisdom, and a modicum of Chicago-learned street smarts, I remain a curious student of the markets and the economy. The current environment is a great one for learning—I invite and welcome companions to join in my exploration of the view from 50,000 feet.
