Postcards

Power Point: Get the people on your side

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

-- Abraham Lincoln, from the "Lincoln-Doulgas Debate at Ottawa," as recorded in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume III. Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the 16th President of the United States. See Harvard professor Nancy Koehn's guest post for insights into the parallels between Presidents Lincoln and Obama.

Lincoln's wisdom is also MORE

Viacom's ex-CEO on Kabul's front lines

While the global economic crisis consumes our focus, did you realize that Afghanistan is sliding into greater chaos? Yesterday, on the eve of U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke's visit, Taliban suicide bombers and gunmen attacked three government sites in Kabul and killed 19 people.

Personally, the news out of Kabul captivates me because I've been there. It was January 2003, and I was part of the first official delegation of women - MORE

Power Point: Accountability starts at the top

"We will hold ourselves accountable for what we do, and that starts with me."

-- Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit testifying before Congress on Wednesday. The heads of eight of the nation's top banks, which have collectively received $165 billion in government rescue funds, appeared together before the House Financial Services Committee to explain what they've done with the money so far.

The CEOs—including Goldman Sach's (GS) Lloyd Blankfein, Wells Fargo's (WFC) MORE

Tom Freston's Supreme Court surprise

Since Tom Freston got blown out of Viacom (VIAB) - ousted by hard-to-please chairman Sumner Redstone in 2006 - he's been doing lots of things that other ex-CEOs wouldn't fathom getting into. Working with Oprah Winfrey and Bono. Making films in Afghanistan, where he once lived. Funding humanitarian projects in Kabul and southeast Asia too.

You can read about all this in my profile of Freston in the current issue of MORE

Power Point: Restore faith

"Our challenge is much greater today because the American people have lost faith in the leaders of our financial institutions and are skeptical that their government has – to this point – used taxpayers' money in ways that will benefit them. This has to change."

-- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a speech introducing the Financial Stability Plan. Geithner said that the government will "require banking institutions to go through a MORE

How to market in a recession

A squad of smart marketers gathered for an NBC Universal-sponsored breakfast this morning atop the General Electric (GE) Building at Rockefeller Center. The topic du jour: "Marketing to Women in the Recession." Turns out, the discussion, moderated by CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, was about marketing to all consumers in these dire times. I walked out with a few bits of wisdom:

Ogilvy & Mather (WPPGY) chair Shelly Lazarus played, as she often MORE

Power Point: Amazon introduces Kindle 2

"It isn't as though the two things—books and the Kindle—are in conflict. It's like peanut butter and chocolate. When you put them together, you get a whole new taste treat."

-- Best-selling author Stephen King at a press event announcing the Amazon Kindle 2 in New York City on Monday. King's comments underscore what Amazon.com (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos has said since the Kindle, an electronic book reader, was introduced in MORE

Meg Whitman runs to save California

by Patricia Sellers

Former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman today announced plans to run for governor of California, to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger in what's sure to be a hotly contested 2010 race.

And though it's rare for Fortune 500 bosses to become the CEO of a state, California's disastrous financial condition gives Whitman, a political rookie, a clear opportunity to sell herself on management skill and discipline.

If ever California needed that, it is certainly now. MORE

Power Point: Gotta spend

"You get the argument, 'Well, this is not a stimulus bill; this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point."

--President Obama, in a feisty address Thursday night at a House Democratic Caucus retreat in Williamsburg, Va. Frustrated by the quibbles of Senate Republicans, Obama called the delay to pass the $800 billion stimulus bill "inexcusable."

Today's bleak jobs report--the worst since December 1974--added to MORE

Guidance, good riddance!

Guidance--the revenue and profit forecasts that companies divvy out to Wall Street analysts--is dying a slow death. Hooray for that!

As a slew of big names--Wal-Mart (WMT), Costco (COST), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), among them--announced in the past two weeks that they would suspend or limit guidance because of economic uncertainty, analysts who follow these companies have reacted skeptically. Not giving 2009 guidance "hardly instills confidence in the business," Sanford MORE