This Zell guy is a UofM alum and just flat out brilliant!

http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/sam-zell-unions-priv...

Excerpts:

Zell went on to describe the various forces he sees working against economic growth. Number one on his list of trouble spots was the continent of Europe. When a conference attendee asked whether Zell thought the educated workforce in Europe would aid a potential recovery, he laughed and said that the Europeans had “learned not to work.”

“If I look at all the options in the world, I can’t image a place that would be closer to the bottom than Europe,” he said.

If his outlook on Europe was bad, his views on the city of Detroit were not any better. After his speech, Zell said he would keep his money away from Detroit for the forseeable future.

“Detroit is a corrupt city, OK. It’s as bad as the state of Illinois,” he said.

“All of its CEOs keep ending up in jail. I don’t know how, just like I don’t know how in Illinois, you’re going to get from here to there until you clean up the system.”

...

His strongest words were saved for Proposal 2 on the November ballot in Michigan. The proposal, known as the “Protect Our Jobs” proposal is the union-backed initiative to put collective bargaining rights into the state constitution.

“[It’s] literally kamikaze. It’s literally like driving a truck into a canyon at 200 miles per hour,” he said.

“If that provision were passed, sell short on Michigan, get everything you can out of this state because it will be owned, lock, stock, and barrel, by people that can vote themselves raises.”

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I hsve not one iota of disagreement with him, even when it comes to privatizing UofM (also mentioned in the article).