Molson Hart

Time for a new addition to our list of 1,001 Private Company Financial Statements You Must Read Before You Die...: Kissinger Associates, which may be the most profitable consulting company on earth on a per-employee basis. Isaacson's biography places Kissinger's personal...

...income at $8 million in 1988 dollars, and that was just six years after he founded the company. We can only fantasy-tweet about what he must make now...Kissinger Associates also exemplifies one of the most important, yet intangible factors associated with successful...

...middlemen businesses: Their role as intermediaries of trust between two sides of a transaction who don't know/trust each other, often to the point of feeling they work for both sides even if they only get paid by one. More on middlemen here: http://www.privateinvestmentbrief.com/blog/the-mystery-of-the-middleman/ …

Nice piece on Mr. Karamazan. This is kind of a trivial point, because it's weirdly obvious, but it's also right: They exist because they provide value. If they didn't, they wouldn't exist. I say this as a middleman.

With respect, there is nothing obvious or trivial about your assertion. There is no shortage of examples of economic agents that provide no economic value whatever (or represent negative value-added, in fact).

With respect, can you give me 3 examples of agents that provide no (or negative) economic value?