President Nixon

"I’m not sure where my life would have led had I declined President Nixon’s offer and stayed on the comfortable road I was following on Wall Street. But by listening to my instincts, taking a risk, and beginning a new journey on an unknown path, I learned more about life, discovered more about myself, stretched my horizons farther, and savored experiences far richer than I would otherwise have ever known. Some people might call it fate. Some might call it luck. But I would call it God’s plan."

"In 1973, inflation was starting to pick up, and the stock market was beginning to sag. If the economic cycle was on schedule, the downside of expansion was about to take hold. Sometimes, an event will accel- erate the process; for example, the demand for military hardware at the start of World War II lifted the country out of the Depression of the 1930s. Once again, war would play a role, but with the opposite economic effect. On October 6, 1973, Israel’s Arab neighbors attacked the Jewish nation. As Larry Tisch spearheaded a $25 million fund-raising drive to help Israel in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, Presi- dent Nixon committed the United States’ unqualified backing to Is- rael. For Nixon’s transgression, the oil-exporting Arab nations in the Mideast launched a devastating economic war by imposing an oil em- bargo on the West. The embargo was custom-made to accommodate the cyclical trend. It sent the price of a major inflation component soaring. Motorists lined up for hours at gas stations for the privilege of buying increas- ingly rare gallons of gasoline at two to three times the previous price. Consumer confidence was destroyed. Car sales plunged. Factories were shuttered. Unemployment climbed. Air went out of the stock market and its premium-priced Nifty Fifty. The inflation run-up forced inter- est rates higher. The first oil-shock recession was under way."