US elections

yesterday morning I sent a message to my friend Juan Verde, responsible for Obama campaign outside the US (he was previously State Secretary Deputy for Europe in his administration).

I shared with him "betting on the winner on tuesday"  written by another friend, Marvin Zonis, who was my professor at the University of Chicago Booth business school: please suscribe to his newsletter service (it is free).

Thus I asked for Juan to start celebrations NOW (yesterday morning, when people started voting in the US), for Marvin never fails in his bet (well he failed in predicting the deaths of very bad dictators, but that was was wishful thinking).

Marvin is right when he says the real winners are (Hillary) Clinton and the Republican Governor: they will probably fight for the next presidency and Mr. Romney is already part of the history.

This is a great learning in a democracy system like the US.

If you loose, even for one per cent of the votes, you will not have another chance: even though you got 100 million votes, if the other candidate got 101 millions, you lost for ever and his party will prefer to present a new, unkonwn  candidate, than repeate with Mr. Romney.

This is the game rule and please think about how far it is from the European/Spanish system (Mr. Rajoy presented himself 3 times after loosing two while Mr. Rubalcaba probably lost the count of his failures and success in his long political life).

I am not saying one system is better than the other: in the US failing in business is considered a learning experience and normally people will not penalyze you for that, but politics is another story.

In the past many candidates lost his chances to run for President because they were caught in a delicate situation (like with a blonde who is not your wife sitting on your knees on a boat): they were rejected not for moral reasons, but for lack of trust.

If you are not able to keep private your private life, how can we give you the control of the nuke bottons?

At the end, everything is a matter of trust.