Dr. Jonathan Tiemann Barron's, the Dow Jones business weekly, published its annual investor survey of America's most respected large companies this week. I was one of 112 investors responding to the survey. It's important to note that the survey asked what companies we respect. I chose to interpret the question narrowly, recognizing that not every successful enterprise — and not [...]
Dr. Jonathan Tiemann Would it really be possible to replace our existing energy system with renewables? Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford, thinks we can do so by 2050.1 Prof. Jacobson has done an impressive job of synthesizing demographic, economic, and engineering data to develop a formula that seems to show a path toward a fully [...]
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann, January 24, 2017 Presidents, especially new ones, make headlines, and the current holder of that office is generating his through a peculiar combination of outlandish statements and high-level meetings with business leaders. Today (January 24) the President summoned to the White House executives from the major US automakers, ostensibly to urge, or perhaps cajole, them to [...]
In a special 132-page report published in August 2015 entitled "ENERGY DARWINISM II: Why a Low Carbon Future Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth," Citigroup, one of the world's largest financial insitutions, reported that it had studied the financial impacts and feasibility of whether we could afford to address climate change. It found that, in fact, opting to address climate [...]
Today, I'm calling on the Department of Labor to update the rules and requirements that retirement advisors put the best interests of their clients above their own financial interests. It's a very simple principle: You want to give financial advice, you've got to put your client's interests first. – President Barack Obama, February 23, 2015 We are thrilled [...]
We are pleased to announce another exciting development at Tiemann Investment Advisors. Stan Thomas, Managing Member of Thomas & Atkinson Capital Management LLC (formerly Thomas Capital Management LLC) and Dr. Jonathan Tiemann of Tiemann Investment Advisors, LLC have agreed to a new strategic relationship. Commencing September 2015, Stan Thomas (individually) will join Tiemann Investment Advisors as a Managing Director, [...]
Is it time to think about how climate change might impact your portfolio? Apparently, some 120 CEOs and investment managers representing more than $12 trillion in assets think so. They were worried enough to send an open letter on May 25, 2015 to the Group of Seven (G-7) Finance Ministers to urge them to commit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [...]
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann I’ve written on this theme before, but it bears repeating. As often as we hear politicians, venture capitalists, bankers, corporate managers, and even economists extol the virtues of free market competition, business leaders know better: Competition is bad for business. And every once in a while, one of the designated cheerleaders of American capitalism suffers a [...]
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann, March 23, 2015 While we're on the subject of fiduciaries (see the post just before this one), there's another important principal (owner) - agent (person acting on owners' behalf) relationship in finance. That's the relationship between shareholders and corporate managers. The extent of managers' fiduciary duty to shareholders isn't really clear under the law, especially since [...]
By Dr. Jonathan Tiemann Last month, a general election in Greece brought to power a leftist party called Syriza. Syriza’s leader — Greece’s new Prime Minister — Alexis Tsipras, campaigned on promises to roll back the severe economic austerity the previous government had accepted as a condition for continued financial support from the rest of the Eurozone. But while Mr. [...]