Here is something you almost certainly did not know.    Pascale Christine Baeriswy l of Switzerland is now President of the United Nations Security Council.  Do you know who she replaced?    Vasily Nebenzia , Russia's ambassador to the UN.  Somehow, the World survived his month in office.  Another thing you did not know.  This position changes monthly.   Surely you must know that the ninth Secretary-General of the UN, who took office in 2017, is Antonio Guterres of Portugal.  But if this position is for 5 years, why is he still in office?  Because you can get a second term.  So he's good until the end of 2026. Next, a graphic from the morning  New York Times .  The previous  Great Recession  was from December 2007 to June 2009. The U.S. GDP did not recover until the third quarter of 2011.  Unemployment rose to 10% in October of 2009 and took until May of 2016 to drop back to 4.7%.  The  NYT  article nowhere hints about any coming 2008 recession, but.... I woke up this morning t

I saw two films this weekend:                      ROTTEN TOMATOES                                               Reviewers  Audiences  My Grade Mank                   88               72               B Citizen Kane      100               91              B- Mank , premiered on Netflix Friday, while CK was released just around the time Pearl Harbor was attacked today, 79 years ago.  The two films are similar in various ways.  First, one led to the other.  Second, both are in black and white.  Third, it is entirely possible that, like Orson Welles gaining an Academy nomination for Best Actor, so will Gary Oldman.  It was three years ago that he transformed into Winston Churchill in the Darkest Hou r , and won the Oscar.  Among his past portrayals include Beethoven, Dracula and Lee Harvey Oswald. Mank was as much the life of Herman Mankiewicz as the writing of Citizen Kane .  He got his start in Hollywood in the 1920's after an earlier life with newspapers.  Known to be a functi