So-called “superbugs” – bacteria that have grown resistant to antibiotics – are not a new phenomenon. However, a newly discovered gene called New Delhi metallo-beta- lactamase-1 (or NDM-1) has accelerated the resistance of all sorts of bacteria, making them able to withstand even the high-powered antibiotics that are currently reserved as last resorts.

India has been hit particularly hard by NDM-1 strains because of the combination of its population size, its infrastructure and sanitation problems, and the abundance of antibiotics available there. However, such resistant bacteria have been found in a variety of other countries as well, including France and Canada.

In a recent editorial, Bloomberg suggested facilitating the release of new antibiotics, since old ones may fail catastrophically against new germs. They theorize that this would help solve the problem of making antibiotics profitable, and would ensure companies continue to develop new drugs to keep up with the new bacteria.

Everybody wants faster and cheaper delivery of better drugs. New drugs will undoubtedly save lives, and encouraging companies to develop them is desirable. But starting with the first batch of penicillin, every new antibiotic has initially been a wonder drug; in turn, every new antibiotic has been susceptible to nature’s vast power to adapt.

The faster a new drug is available, the more rapidly bacteria will gain the exposure necessary to become resistant to it. This is why patients infected in hospitals often face especially virulent strains of disease. It is also why India, with a history of making drugs – including antibiotics – rapidly and cheaply available to its population, is currently the epicenter of the resistance problem.

The ethical, and political, question that arises is this: Should advanced countries develop secret strategic reserves of unreleased antibiotics to be used only in case of dire national or global emergency?

This would mean allowing a certain number of people, mostly people in less developed countries, to die when infected with diseases that freely available antibiotics can no longer treat. But once the strategically protected medicine is released, it will eventually lose its ability to save lives, as other antibiotics have and will.

It’s inevitable that a country, such as India, will release a life-saving antibiotic to its population if it has the means to do so. The only way to prevent India from responding to the needs of its own citizens is to develop such a last-resort antibiotic someplace else and keep it in a vault.

Of course, this plan would still face the hurdle of supply. No drug company wants to develop a drug it can’t sell. Either governments would need to enter the pharmaceutical business themselves, or they would need to fund private companies’ research. In the latter case, governments would subsequently become the sole customer for the resulting drug or drugs.

This scenario would also create a host of political and moral dilemmas. What, precisely, would be enough of an emergency to justify tapping the reserve? In the U.S., would it be American citizens dying? Citizens who hadn’t traveled out of the country, or any citizens? How many citizens? A child? The president’s child? We don’t have enough space in nuclear bunkers for everyone, and similarly, even a large supply of strategic antibiotic reserves would not be enough (or could not be distributed quickly enough) to protect all Americans. Who would decide who has access to the limited supply?

After all, existing strategic reserves of even mundane commodities such as oil are not always tapped for the best of reasons.

There is also good reason to question the government’s ability to buy, store, manage, and refresh a supply of any given drug. Antibiotics expire, and often require storage under very specific conditions.

Additionally, government pressure on private companies to increase supply can only do so much. In the wake of 2001’s anthrax panic, the U.S. government attempted to encourage Bayer, the company that produces the antibiotic Cipro, to increase production to meet demand. While foreign companies were already making ciprofloxacin (the generic form of Cipro), patent laws kept the U.S. tied to Bayer. In order to make developing a strategic reserve antibiotic attractive, the government would have to commit to honoring such a patent. It’s hard to imagine that a private company would not be aware of the lucrative nature of a product with one giant customer who literally could not go elsewhere to refresh expired supplies.

Medical ethicists would, I suspect, be outraged by the thought of keeping a life-saving drug under wraps while risking the death of millions of people abroad. But if countries like India, or more developed nations for that matter, can’t enforce the appropriate and limited use of antibiotics, there may not be another way to prevent global disaster. Mark Toleman, a molecular geneticist at Cardiff University, told Bloomberg that it’s “a matter of time and chance” before NDM-1 reaches pathogens like Yersinia pestis, the cause of bubonic plague.

Keeping a new antibiotic secret is far from ideal, but is it the only way to ensure that a global pandemic does not turn into biological Armageddon?

Political journalism isn’t always much better. It’s a sphere that draws people with strong opinions, and those opinions can get in the way of things like “what actually happened.”

I read a lot of political coverage, and among the most refreshing sources I consult is The Washington Post’s column “The Fact Checker,” which is hard to beat in its impartial advocacy of the truth.

The Fact Checker is written by Glenn Kessler, and first appeared in 2008. It became a permanent Washington Post feature in 2011. Kessler evaluates claims made in interviews, speeches and ads, ultimately assigning a rating: one to four “Pinocchios,” which cover selective truth telling up through “whoppers.” He also awards the elusive “Geppetto” checkmark, for statements that check out as entirely, objectively true, and the occasional “judgment withheld,” for situations when the truth behind a statement simply isn’t clear.

Of course, how many Pinocchios a given incident garners is subjective, to a point. In responding to reader questions last year, Kessler said, “[…] one has to keep a sense of proportion about what is a gaffe and what is a deliberate misstatement.” He also points out that “[…] a really bad fact in a prepared speech would probably fare worse than something said in an interview. Context is important.” The difference between three and four Pinocchios is often a matter of timing, proximity to other questionable assertions, or importance in a broader context.

Perhaps most tellingly, at the end of the Post’s introduction, “About the Fact Checker,” the paper exhorts readers: “If you feel that we are being too harsh on one candidate and too soft on another, there is a simple remedy: let us know about misstatements and factual errors we may have overlooked.”

In today’s hyper-partisan Washington, both sides tell four-Pinocchio-whoppers, and Kessler consistently calls out both sides for doing so. He’s also quick to clarify that two wrongs don’t make a right, as in this Obama campaign ad, which bent the truth while responding to an ad Kessler had previously dismantled.

Kessler avoids challenging candidates and office holders on their opinions, interpretations and policy positions. The impulse to critique an ideological stance is what colors so much of the political discourse, even – perhaps especially – among journalists. Kessler, instead, concerns himself only with verifying, as best he can, factual claims. He grants candidates the right to favor what they want; he just does not grant them the right to mislead, confuse, or lie to the public.

Two examples from earlier this year demonstrate Kessler’s process. In February, he tackled a statement from White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, in which Lew claimed “You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes,” suggesting that bipartisan gridlock might make passing a budget impossible. Kessler took the opportunity to elucidate the process of budgeting at the federal level; he went on to explain that Lew’s statement was frankly wrong, in its sense and its particulars. Kessler wrote that “the former budget director twice chose to use highly misleading language that blamed Republicans for the failure of the Democratic leadership.” As a two-time budget director himself, Kessler argued, Lew should have known better.

A little over a month later, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., leveled a serious charge at the Obama administration. “Stimulus was supposed to be quick. In fact, they never intended to spend it and will not completely have effectively spent it until after the president’s re-elect. Always looking at how do you get the maximum hit when the president was up for re-elect.” Kessler lays aside the question of the stimulus’ effectiveness as irrelevant to the issue at hand. Instead, he tracks the allocation of stimulus funds, concluding that most of it has been allocated. The response from Issa’s staff offers no supporting evidence to back the representative’s claim, though it compliments the Fact Checker’s earlier work. Kessler expresses the sentiment, again, that two wrongs don’t make a right, “[…] much as we appreciate the reference to our previous work.” Citing Kessler’s previous criticism of the Obama administration is not sufficient evidence for a baseless claim.

It’s nice to be reminded, now and then, that our political-journalistic complex still has room for those who want to hold politicians responsible for the statements they make. Here’s hoping Kessler will keep checking the facts for a long time to come.

Five of the state court’s seven justices recently expressed their disapproval of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision by announcing that, due to Montana’s special history, Citizens United does not apply beneath the famous Big Sky.

There is no chance that this position will stand. There will be no need to send in Federal troops, notwithstanding an old saying, dating back to the Gold Rush of the 1860s and 1870s, that “the Confederate Army never surrendered; it just retreated to Montana.” But the state court’s action, and the encouraging response it received from two members of the U.S. Supreme Court, is still disturbing.

Montana is one of a handful of states that have a highly developed sense of being unique by virtue of geography, history and local culture. I know Montana’s perspective because I lived there for nearly seven years while I went to college and started my working career.

In 1972, shortly before I arrived, Montana wrote itself a brand-new constitution, filled with cutting-edge innovations such as guaranteeing the public’s right to attend government meetings and see government documents. Montana has a deep-seated interest in maintaining clean, responsive and open government.

This is largely a reaction to the state’s political history of corruption and exploitation at the hands of out-of-state corporate interests, which has gradually enlarged to a sometimes self-defeating mythology. Such corporate interests ran rampant in the early 20th century, most notably in the case of warring “copper kings,” whose feuds ultimately resolved in the consolidation of power by the Anaconda Copper Company. Anaconda controlled most of the state’s leading newspapers, and many facets of state and local government, until the late 1950s.

Steve Bullock, Montana’s Democratic Attorney General, told NPR, “Our legislature, our judges, down to the local county assessors, were almost bought and paid for. Mark Twain even said that, you know, the amount of money coming in in Montana makes the smell of corruption almost sweet.”

In response, Montana legislators passed the state’s Corrupt Practices Act in 1912. The law prohibited corporations from spending money to promote or attack political candidates, a position that Citizens United overturned by holding that corporations and labor unions have a free-speech right to spend their own money on political advertising.

Of course, Montana being what it was in 1912, there were ulterior motives for the passage of the Corrupt Practices Act. By that point, the state’s most powerful interests had gained control of Montana’s politics and newspapers. They did not need to spend money on political advertising; their editors, who ran the newspapers I later worked for, hyped or killed the stories they were told to hype or kill. The Corrupt Practices Act was designed to entrench Montana’s then-existing power structure.

But the Montana Supreme Court cited the purportedly pure goals of the 1912 law when it took the position – one that it knew full well it had no power to take – that Citizens United has no force within Montana’s boundaries. The Montana justices, in a 5-2 decision, argued that the state law somehow superseded the federal decision.

It is as though Mississippi had rejected Brown v. Board of Education, or as if California had ignored Loving v. Virginia. Imagine if the Florida Supreme Court had contended that the U.S. Supreme Court had no authority to rule on Florida’s election recount in 2000’s Bush v. Gore.

The justices in Washington rightly stayed the Montana court’s decision. But two justices, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer, foolishly encouraged the state’s position by arguing that the Montana case is a suitable vehicle through which the U.S. Supreme Court might revisit Citizens United, a decision from which both Ginsberg and Breyer dissented.

Would they feel equally disposed to review a state Supreme Court decision holding that Roe v. Wade is of no force and effect? I highly doubt it.

Reversal of the Montana ruling is a foregone conclusion. Even the Montana judges know this. Montana Justice James C. Nelson was clear about his personal issues with Citizens United in his dissent, but went on to write, “Like it or not, Citizens United is the law of the land as regards corporate political speech. There is no ‘Montana exception.’”

The question, then, is whether the Montana judges can get another shot at the Supreme Court simply by brazenly defying a two-year-old holding. It is noteworthy that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who dissented in Citizens United along with Ginsberg and Breyer, did not join Breyer’s memorandum calling for a rehearing. Neither did Justice Elena Kagan, who was not yet on the court when it decided the case.

A rehearing would be exactly the wrong response to Montana’s defiance. The right response would be a summary reversal.

Assuming none of the justices who were in the Citizens United majority are inclined to revisit the issue, both Sotomayor and Kagan would have to join Breyer and Ginsberg in voting to hear the Montana case in order to get it before the court. Here’s hoping at least one of them has enough sense not to do so. If we start inviting state courts to disregard Supreme Court holdings, there is no telling where that path could lead, other than “nowhere good.”

I have a lot of affection for Montana and its residents, but the state is not nearly as special, nor as oppressed or vulnerable to oppression, as its people think it is. In the 30 years since I left Montana, its neighbor to the west, Idaho, has developed a significant technology industry. To the east, South Dakota has made itself a banking center, and North Dakota has become headquarters to an energy boom. What industry has Montana itself developed since I departed? Not much, except electronic gambling. Almost every bar in the state (this is a state with an amazing ratio of bars to people) has video poker and similar machines.

That’s not oppression by out-of-state money. That’s a symptom of a state that is too busy pitying itself to fully participate in the 21st century. I visit once or twice a year, and I feel sad for this place that I still care about.

Out-of-state money doesn’t vote in Montana elections. It buys ads, as it does everywhere else, and those ads represent nothing more than political speech. For good or ill, Montanans will decide their own elections and their own fate. But Montana is still one of the 50 states, and the U.S. Supreme Court has legal jurisdiction over all 50 of them.

Welcome back to the fold, Montanans.

Europe has officially reached that point. Sunday’s elections in France and Greece, following earlier balloting in Spain, Portugal and other struggling eurozone nations, signaled that voters across much of the continent – with the conspicuous exception of Germany – are at their wits’ end over high unemployment, shrinking government services, rising taxes and cuts in pensions and other benefits. There may be no quick cure for their economic ills, but like a frustrated patient who turns to “alternative” medicine when science cannot help, they will give a shot to anyone who says he can make them feel better fast.

French voters ousted President Nicolas Sarkozy and replaced him with François Hollande, a Socialist. Hollande promised to push for “pro-growth” policies, which in his view include higher taxes on corporations, still higher taxes on targeted industries such as banks and oil companies, and a 75 percent tax on individuals who earn more than €1 million (about $1.3 million) a year. He wants to raise the minimum wage in France, and he wants to re-negotiate the budget tightening rules that Sarkozy agreed upon with Germany just five months ago.

In Greece, Sunday’s parliamentary elections produced chaotic results, in which the two dominant parties received only about one-third of the total vote between them, while about eight other parties – including the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn” – won enough votes to claim seats in the incoming legislature. Most of the fringe parties campaigned against Greece’s crucial agreements with its creditors, and it is not clear whether the new government will be strong enough to honor the country’s commitments.

If Greece reneges, it may very well be forced out of euro currency zone, and conceivably out of the European Union itself. It would also find itself cut off from the new borrowings that are keeping the country afloat. Greek voters have heard all this, but their frustration with the governing parties is so deep, and their denial of responsibility for their country’s condition is so strong, that they just do not care. German money is keeping Greece in business, but the Greeks resent the Germans so much that they have just put neo-Nazis into their own parliament.

The idea behind Europe’s recent balloting is that prosperity can be bought with government spending, even though the money governments spend must either be taxed or borrowed from the private sector. European leaders did not originally choose fiscal austerity because they wanted to retard growth. They chose it because there was no other option.

Europe’s themes will be echoed in our own upcoming election. President Obama and his supporters will make arguments similar to Hollande’s: that growth can be bought with more government spending and with higher taxes on business and the rich.

The difference is that Obama has implemented those policies – at least the spending part – for more than three years, to little effect. Mitt Romney will spend much of the campaign pointing this out.

He’ll be betting that American voters are as sick of their sick economy as Europeans, and that, having tried the Obama prescription of unbridled spending, they might be ready for different medicine.

Let’s take, for example, the case of a man called Brian. In August 1997, Brian met with his estate planning attorney. Because he was a widower with a net worth of $3 million at that time, and only a $600,000 federal unified gift and estate tax exemption, the attorney convinced him to transfer his $1 million home into an irrevocable trust (a QPRT) with a 15-year term. During the next 15 years, Brian continued to live in his home rent-free, and assuming he was still living at the end of the term, ownership of the house would then transfer to his children.

Since Brian gifted a future interest in the property to his children, the Internal Revenue Service granted him a valuation discount for the value of the interest he retained in the home. If he had died before the end of the QPRT term, the home and any other assets in the trust would have reverted back to his estate, essentially canceling the trust without realizing any tax savings. The IRS also granted Brian an additional valuation discount for the possibility of this reversion. These valuation discounts were calculated based on Brian’s age, the IRS-approved Section 7520 applicable federal rate of interest at the time he created the trust, and the length of the QPRT term.

Due to these valuation discounts, the value of Brian’s gift was only about $460,000 for federal gift tax purposes, even though his home was worth $1 million. Because the value of the gift was below Brian’s $600,000 lifetime exemption, he owed no gift tax upon creating and funding the QPRT. Thus, the QPRT provided the potential for significant gift and estate tax savings, not only on the value of the house at the trust’s creation but also on any future home appreciation thereafter.

Fast-forward almost 15 years – 14 years and eight months, to be exact. Within four months, the QPRT term will end. Brian is currently in good health; his home has a current fair market value of $2 million; and his net worth excluding the value of the home is now $4.65 million. With a current federal unified gift and estate tax exemption of $5.12 million, if Brian passed away after August, he would have shielded over $1.5 million from federal estate taxes. Establishing the QPRT was a great decision.

However, he wants to continue living in the house after the trust term ends, so he visits his estate planning attorney to consider his options.

The attorney informs Brian that in August, at the end of the QPRT term, his children will replace him as trustees. At that time, his children will most likely dissolve the trust and transfer title of the property into their individual names or into an entity, such as a limited liability company, that they own equally. If Brian continues to live in the house at that time, he will need to start paying his children fair market rent. Otherwise the IRS will contend that there was an understanding between Brian and his children that, at the time they took ownership of the home, he would retain use of the property rent-free for the rest of his life. Such an arrangement would result in the residence being included in Brian’s gross estate at his death, and all that great estate planning would go to waste.

Further, the attorney mentions the possibility that Congress will allow the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act (“TRA 2010”), which President Obama signed into law in 2010, to sunset on January 1, 2013, causing the estate tax exemption and top estate tax rate to return to $1 million and 55 percent respectively, resulting in a much higher estate tax bill if the house is included in Brian’s estate.

Because of his net worth and the possible sunset of TRA 2010, Brian decides that he has no qualms about paying his children fair market rent. Not only will he avoid undoing his estate plan, he will also benefit from transferring additional wealth to his heirs, in the form of rent, without incurring gift tax. However, depending on the amount of deductions related to the property (such as real estate taxes, insurance, repairs, maintenance, and depreciation), the rental income may generate additional income tax liability for Brian’s children.

To ensure that Brian receives the benefits of the QPRT, he will need to take the following steps.

• If he has not already done so, Brian should inform his children that the QPRT exists, and that they will become the owners of his home when it ends.
• Before the trust term ends, Brian will need to enter a lease agreement with his children. (This will demonstrate to the IRS that there was no implied agreement between Brian and his children that he would continue to reside in the home rent-free at the end of the trust term, and further, that Brian’s children have sole right to possession of the home.)
• After the deeds have been signed and recorded with the county, Brian will want to contact his insurance company to cancel his homeowner’s insurance and obtain a renter’s policy.

Brian should also make sure his children know to take some steps of their own to ensure the transfer goes smoothly. They should:

• Either obtain a letter stating the fair market rent from a local real estate broker or pay for a fair market rent appraisal. (The payment of fair market rent will help avoid an IRS challenge that Brian continued control and enjoyment of the home, so as not to bring the home back into his estate.)
• Hire a real estate attorney to draft the formal lease agreement. The agreement should be for at least one year and provide for automatic renewals unless canceled by either party. Further, the rental amount should be revisited at the end of each lease term to ensure that Brian continues to pay fair market rent.
• Have the real estate attorney draft the necessary legal documents to allow the children to accept trusteeship after the QPRT term ends, and to transfer title of the property from the trust to either their individual names or to the entity they establish to hold the property.
• If the children plan to hold the property in an LLC, to limit their liability against a lawsuit from someone that gets injured on the property, they should also have the attorney draft the LLC formation documents.
• Obtain an appraisal to determine the home’s fair market value, since they will be converting the property to a rental home. They will need the market value in order to claim a depreciation deduction against rental income.
• Obtain new title insurance on the property once they become the owners.
• Once they own the house, they should also obtain homeowner’s insurance and inform the insurer that the home will be used as a rental property. This may increase the cost of insuring the property. However, the children should also mention that they will be renting it to their parent, the previous owner, and not some unrelated third-party, as this may result in either minimal or no increase in premium.

A well-managed QPRT can provide substantial estate tax savings. However, if you do not take the necessary steps to wind it up properly, Uncle Sam may still get a stake in the house.

The cynical view is that, when left with no alternative, even the most self-interested politician will do the right thing.

The idealistic view is that democracy really does work, that the American people have a deep though imperfect respect for civil liberties, and that ultimately our politicians must at least try to be as good as we want our country to be, even when doing so is politically inconvenient.

Obama embodied the cynical view, yet his abrupt change of heart proves that at the end of the day, citizens determine government policy.

As a little-known candidate for the Illinois Senate, Barack Obama supported marriage rights for gay couples as early as 1996. This was the same year the issue exploded on the national stage, when Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, the Defense of Marriage Act to deny federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

By the time Obama ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004 (the year Massachusetts became the first state to actually allow same-sex couples to wed), he opposed same-sex marriage but supported civil unions. Obama maintained his opposition throughout his bid for the White House in 2008 and continued to do so once in office. He had a massive Democratic majority in both houses of Congress during the first two years of his term, during which time he opposed gay marriage while his administration defended DOMA. His position on the subject began “evolving” in 2010, when Republicans took back the House of Representatives and made inroads in the Senate. By last year, after a series of court defeats, the president was calling for DOMA’s repeal, but that was a nonstarter in the current Congress.

Obama clearly hoped to bury the marriage issue until after November’s voting. While much of the country has embraced marriage rights for everyone, there is still substantial resistance – especially in certain swing states that will be crucial in choosing the next president.

One of those states is North Carolina, whose voters just this week endorsed a change in their state’s constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. The Obama campaign hopes to carry the state, which is also the site of this year’s Democratic National Convention. Supporting same-sex marriage will not be helpful.

The president’s effort to “evolve” silently on this issue until after November fell apart this week when Vice President Joe Biden and a member of Obama’s cabinet, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, both said they personally support same-sex marriage. This led to demands from Obama’s core backers, many of whom support gay marriage, for him to clarify his position and contrast himself with Republican Mitt Romney, a gay-marriage opponent.

Romney probably also wishes the issue would go away, even though his campaign undoubtedly relishes the president’s discomfiture over it. Social conservatives opposed to gay marriage may not love Romney, but they also probably saw through the president’s effort to wait until after November before coming out, so to speak, on the other side. Romney wants to attack Obama’s record on federal spending and the economy rather than get mired in a social-issues quicksand that imperils both candidates with the few, but all-important, uncommitted voters.

As I have written before, this ship has sailed. Same-sex marriage exists, it is not going away, and North Carolina’s vote this week notwithstanding, state and federal rejection of it will not matter in the long run. Either the courts will continue to strike down such restrictions as unconstitutional violations of fundamental rights, or public opinion – which has been moving steadily in favor of gay marriage since the issue emerged less than 20 years ago – will ultimately make the restrictions go away. It is simply unworkable to have marriages recognized in some jurisdictions and not others.

So as Romney and others like him wait for the courts to take matters conveniently out of their hands, Obama deserves at least a little credit for finally taking the plunge. Whether he jumped off the diving board or got pushed ultimately does not matter. Now, at least, every American has a president who publicly supports his or her right to share a life with the person of their choosing.

The motives matter less than the result. In the sweep of history, Obama will be credited with having done the right thing.

That was one of the first signals I picked up that something was wrong with the way the firm was organized.

As time passed, I became convinced that there are some flaws inherent in running a big business (and, as the biggest accounting firm in the world, Arthur Andersen was a very big business) as a partnership. When a professional firm has offices all over the world and hundreds or thousands of partners, those partners represent middle management. They don’t set policy or get involved in the firm’s finances or strategies; they just go about their business, which mostly means selling and rendering services to clients.

But unlike middle management in corporations, partners have the power to elect the firm’s senior managers, usually consisting of an executive board that in turn selects the firm’s top executives. The company’s entire power structure becomes an exercise in politics. It is an environment in which tile-counting can flourish.

Internal politics certainly still exist in corporations, but in most corporations there is a separation between the privileges of ownership and the obligations of management. A corporate CEO is chosen by a board of directors that is elected by shareholders. The majority of shareholder votes are usually held outside the firm. In theory, at least, ownership sits at the top of the pyramid, and authority flows downward through the board and CEO to the rest of the company’s management. The CEO and the board are empowered – even obliged – to make tough decisions that may be unpopular with the people they manage. Business lines can be closed or sold. Redundant employees, including middle managers, can be let go. Such moves are much harder to accomplish in a partnership.

Another problem with professional partnerships is that the skills that earn accountants or lawyers partnership in the first place – technical excellence or rainmaking ability – are not the same skills that are most useful in running a global business. It’s a tough job, made tougher by the power of rank-and-file partners, and made tougher still because the pool of potential CEOs is limited mostly to people who have grown up within the organization. Fresh perspectives are rare.

The law firm of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP seems set to become the latest professional firm to fall victim to its own poor management. The firm warned employees last week that it may soon have to close, the result of a wave of partner defections and an unsustainable burden of debt.

It makes no sense for a law firm to rack up huge debts. Law firms don’t need much capital equipment beyond offices, desks and computers. They can slow their hiring or lay off associates if work dries up. And, since partners share the firm’s profits, cash flow should automatically be cushioned when business is slow, since partners’ earnings will be reduced.

But Dewey apparently went on a hiring binge that included huge multi-year income guarantees to new partners, with no requirement that those partners bring in enough business to justify those guarantees. Because new partners got big guarantees, incumbent partners at the firm also wanted their share – and they had the political clout to get it.

Interestingly, the firm’s former chairman, Steven Davis, is reportedly under investigation in connection with the firm’s finances. Bad management, however, is not a crime in itself, and nothing that sounds criminal has surfaced thus far in press reports about the firm.

I left Arthur Andersen in 1992 to start my own business. Andersen imploded a decade later because it did not have anyone with enough foresight and authority to quit working for Enron Corp., a $50 million a year client. The partners in the Houston office could not give up their biggest client without ending their careers. The firm’s managers at its Chicago headquarters had reason to worry about Enron, but they had bigger reason to worry about the reaction of partners around the globe if they walked away from so much business. So they gambled with the future of the entire organization and lost.

I don’t have partners at my firm, and I don’t intend to have any. I am open about our finances with our employees. They share in our profitability and success, but I still have the authority to do whatever I think is in the best interests of the firm. We have succession plans to pass on this responsibility if something happens to me.

You can’t run a very large company this way, but (except for the fact that many state laws essentially force partnerships upon some professions) you don’t have to run it as a partnership, either. Ownership and management are separate functions. Employees and managers should be paid based on the value of their work, which can include a share of profits. Owners keep whatever profits are left. But although owners get paid last, managers still should be working for them. There is a big risk that decisions will be skewed to satisfy managers’ demands, rather than owners’ needs, when partnership agreements combine the two.

Middle managers should be tending to business, not counting ceiling tiles.

Rivera was catching fly balls during batting practice (“shagging flies,” as ballplayers call it) when he twisted his right knee and crumpled to the ground on the warning track, obviously in great pain. Later that evening, doctors confirmed the worst: a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which would require surgery and end Rivera’s season.

The 42-year-old relief pitcher had already said he would likely retire after this year, so my first thought upon hearing this news was that we had probably seen his fluid, deceptively easy-looking motion and his trademark cut fastball for the last time.

Just like that.

In my line of work, worrying about “just like that” comes with the territory. Financial planning is about playing the odds of success while defending against the risk of rolling snake-eyes.

Most people who consult financial advisors – generally a pretty successful group – are going to have long careers, followed by long retirements in which they will try to maintain a good standard of living. So we try to help them save, invest, plan their estates and otherwise organize their affairs to deal with this likely outcome.

But there is always the risk of the unexpected calamity. In my office we call it “getting hit by the beer truck,” in honor of a longtime client (a gentleman from Alabama) who often uses the phrase. We have to help our clients prepare for premature meetings with the beer truck, even though for most it will not happen.

Life insurance – the right amount, the right type, from the right company – is a starting point. I used to say that most people just out of college didn’t really need life insurance, a situation which changed when they started families or took on mortgages and other obligations. However, with college students and graduates holding more than $1 trillion of education debt, on which their parents have often co-signed, this is not always the case nowadays.

Disability insurance covers the biggest emergency need for wage earners. I have seen too many previously healthy people, in the prime of life, develop brain tumors, or have strokes, or find themselves with cancer or other potentially disabling diseases. Even single adults need some means of support if they can’t work.

Parents of young children often struggle with the question of who should raise their kids, and who should handle insurance or other money that is left for the kids’ support, if the beer truck catches both parents at once. It’s a difficult issue, yet it is one that must be considered.

Business owners like me often think of themselves as indispensable to their company. But the beer truck can find us, too. It’s difficult to ask customers to commit themselves to our care, or employees to commit themselves to our firms, if we don’t have a good succession plan laid out – just in case. Even large corporations often do a surprisingly poor job of preparing for the loss of a CEO or other key executive. Sometimes the beer truck comes in the form of a scandal or burnout that abruptly takes that key executive out of the picture.

Watching the video of Rivera falling to the ground brought to mind stories I read about a long-ago Hall of Fame shortstop by the name of Walter “Rabbit” Maranville, who played in the National League – mostly with the Boston Braves – between 1912 and 1935.

During a spring training game against the Yankees in 1934, when Maranville was 42, he tried to steal home and broke both of the major bones in his leg. Unlike Rivera, who surely can well afford to call an end to his great career, Maranville played in an era when ballplayers needed to keep working, even in the off-season. So after missing the entire 1934 season, Maranville tried to make a comeback the following year with the Braves. One of his teammates for the first part of that season was Babe Ruth, who left the Yankees when they would not offer him a job as manager.

Neither Ruth nor Maranville had much left that year. Ruth quit the team on June 1, a week after his final hurrah, a three-homer game in Pittsburgh. Maranville stuck with the team but appeared in only 23 games and batted .149. The Braves won 38 games, lost 115, and finished in last place, 61 1/2 games behind the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs.

You might say the beer truck hit the Braves that year.

Rivera was back in the Yankees clubhouse on Friday, talking about his forthcoming surgery and promising, “I’m coming back. Write it down in big letters.” If anyone could make a comeback from this sort of injury at his age, it probably would be Rivera – a great athlete who has kept himself in fine condition, and who has, by all accounts, an excellent work ethic and a strong sense of personal dignity and team loyalty. He surely does not want the last image of his career to be the sight of him lying on that outfield track in Kansas City. We can only wish him well.

Whether we see him pitch again or not, Rivera’s tumble is a useful reminder that for any of us, everything can change in an instant. We plan for the best, prepare for the worst, and accept that the beer truck eventually finds us all.