As you might suspect, I have developed a number of hypotheses for this deplorable lack of feedback from you Dear Readers, which I am happy to share.
1) Many of you did indeed try to select the best of my posts, but were overwhelmed by their uniformly superb quality, and abandoned any effort to differentiate among the jewels on display.
2) Some of you were inspired to write in, but were terrified that I might sic Equity Private on you if I found your entries displeasing, as I had indeed threatened. I must say that your fears were probably unfounded—I am more of a pussycat than I seem—but I agree that it was tactically unwise of me to dangle such a harrowing prospect over your heads. (EP can be a bit of a Gorgon sometimes, can't she?)
3) A far higher percentage of my audience than I had previously suspected do not have opposable thumbs.
4) As I feared, all six of you were indeed out of town.
In any event, I no longer have any reason to perpetuate the sham of soliciting your opinions, so I will do what I had originally planned to do anyway and choose the winners myself. Without further ado, here they are:
THE CANON
Mine's Bigger than Yours: Investment bankers compare size, and clients look on appreciatively
Dance, Monkeys, Dance: TED revels in the beauties of the Internet, and later gets depressed
Jabberwocky: The Blackstone Group lifts the kilt to show all of us what's underneath (with support from Crooked Timber and Would You Buy Stock from this Man?)
L'État c'est moi: Little Stevie Schwarzman throws himself a party (with follow up in The Self-Made Man Club)
Life During Wartime and Woe is me: The sad story of the investment bankers everybody loves to hate
A Simple Request, A Modest Proposal, and Not Far Now: Sundry shots across various bows
Consider this a reading list for those long, boring conference calls on supply-demand dynamics in the Norwegian herring fishing industry.
You are welcome.
© 2007 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.
