By Pierre G. Villere The COVID-19 pandemic just rolls on, continuing to disrupt our lives, and now much has been written about what we can expect in the months and years to come.
Read MoreCategory: The Strategist
Tax Law Changes and the Presidential Election
By Pierre G Villere By the time you read this, we will be days away from electing our next president. And believe me, I learned in the 2016 election results that pollsters are missing their election calls more and more these days, as voters become harder to predict, and voter turnout is impossible to gauge.
Read MoreThe Mixed News of Autumn
by: Pierre G. Villere As we finish the third quarter of 2020, a year for the history books, I continue to puzzle over the dichotomy in the current American economy. In a career approaching five decades, all of it spent in the financial and deal world, I can’t figure out how so much prosperity and pain are co-existing side-by-side.
Read MoreA Look Back at Our Interstate Highway System
Next year, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System that crisscrosses our nation turns 65, and I recently learned a great deal about its history and how this remarkable system came to be, and what a major catalyst it became for the post-war aggregates industry.
Read MoreA Change in the Future of Urban America
I have written in the recent past about what the COVID-19 pandemic has left permanently etched in our lives and culture, and as the scourge drags on through these summer months, it is starting to extend its cultural tentacles, reaching other areas of our lives and undoubtedly changing them forever. Two of the greatest truisms that have come out of…
Read MoreWhat Lies Ahead: Lessons from the Hurricane Katrina Recovery
By: Pierre G. Villere At this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic just drags on and on.
Read MoreThe Longer This Goes On, The More It Will Hurt
By: Pierre G. Villere Last month, I began this column by saying that I was speechless and in a state of shock. I still am.
Read MoreThe World Turned Upside Down
By: Pierre G. Villere I am speechless, and in a state of shock.
Read MoreThe Goodwill Conundrum
As we all know, the construction materials industry, which in part includes construction aggregates, ready-mixed concrete and concrete products, has been consolidating rapidly over the past three decades, and the pace of that consolidation shows no signs of abating anytime soon. So it is worth understanding how purchasers in our industry, usually large multi-nationals, treat a purchase of a smaller…
Read MoreHow Jobs Continue to Drive Our Economy
2020 is here, and now we are starting to read some of the statistics that are emerging as the various agencies of the federal government release accumulated data from all corners of our economy for last year, as well as the decade that just ended.
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