Cezary Salad

It’s a little past midnight and voters in the snowy hamlet of Dixville Notch, NH - all 10 of them - have already cast their first-in-the-nation primary votes for President of the U.S.

It feels a little bit like the night before Christmas, doesn’t it?

It would, except if it weren’t for the fact that there’s little what-am-I-getting-tomorrow surprise here. The voters of Dixville have already chosen Obama and McCain as their standardbearers, and we don’t need polls or pundits to tell us that they’re likely going to win the top spots in the Granite State’s primary contests today, largely thanks to the nearly 45% of the electorate in this state of 1.3 million who register themselves as neither Democrat nor Republican. As Jeff Zeleny of The Times correctly notes, in this race, independents are the prize, and no other candidates in this race have a broader appeal to them than Obama and McCain.

2nd prize will most likely go to big-spender Mitt Romney on the Republican side who, thanks to Mike Huckabee, has found himself to be the Hillary Clinton of his party’s campaign. Huckabee may well ride his minimal (in this decisively non-Evangelical state) momentum to a third-place finish, but if he does it will likely be a razor-thin margin above Giuliani, who enjoys reasonably strong 2nd-tier support in this state thanks to his noun + verb + 9/11 record.

Meanwhile, the real Hillary Clinton will move a notch up from her 3rd place finish in Iowa, ahead of Edwards but still behind the high expectations she set for herself of being the inevitable winner in all the early states.

But if all this comes to pass, what does it mean for the rest of the race?

It means that, try as they might, the I-am-for-change-too (post-Iowa) candidates in either party will have a much harder time catching up to the first mover in this field, Obama, while those who represent anything anti-establishment and non-conventional in the voters’ minds will continue to still have a shot. Read: no third Clinton term, no first Mormon president.

Why no Mitt? In a way, the “Washington is Broken” message that all of a sudden has found its way to the Romney campaign is Mitt’s greatest, and most lethal flip-flop. As Chuck Todd, MSNBC Political Director, rightly points out, Mitt has spent his entire campaign positioning himself as the gold-standard Republican that can carry the flag (i.e., status quo). All of a sudden, he gets the message that - surprise - voters want change and that’s what he stands for and has stood for all his life and his entire campaign. A (rightfully so) skeptical press corps won’t buy it, and neither will voters.

All of which may well mean that as Dixville goes, so will the nation, since Obama and McCain probably stand the best chance of making it to the general elections right now.

And had you told me that last Christmas Day, I would have been surprised.

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(Quick note: yes, I owe you guys a piece on the elephant-in-the-room that is the economy; coming soon).

Looking to find out more about the candidates for President, I decided to check on the one information source that seems to have it all - from credit default swaps & energy futures to - apparently - bios on presidential hopefuls: Bloomberg.

Bloomberg has a standard stub of information on each of the candidates, whether Democrat or Republican, with info such as date of birth, salary, place of birth, affiliation, etc.

So nothing noteworthy here, except when you look at Sen. Hillary Clinton. Sen. Clinton’s profile contains an extra category for hobbies that I didn’t see on any of the other candidates’ pages. And it contains so many diverse, all-American hobbies that it spills over onto another line.

Among Clinton’s hobbies? “Golf, reading, dance, tennis, swimming, soccer, singing, cooking, football.”

Wow.

She must have been an extremely fit, extremely busy first lady if she actually pursued all these hobbies in earnest.

Sure, call me sceptical, but when you look at Hillary’s past performances when singing in front of crowds - as she did during her first visit to Iowa as a presidential candidate last year - you can’t help but question how some of these hobbies got up there.

At the risk of not reading too much into this, I think we all have at times listed as hobbies things that we either didn’t do too often or weren’t that good at. But in the context of a presidential race, I think this helps illuminate part of the discomfort that potential voters experience when they hear Sen. Clinton on the stump: trying to be all things to all voters, sometimes dancing delicately around difficult questions (such as her plan on Social Security, or what she thought of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants) so as to not alienate anyone or give ammunition to her opponents. And I think its this atificial veneer that she’ll have to change, more than anything, in order to get voters to finally warm-up to her and see her as a genuine person and a genuine candidate.

Next-up: it’s the economy, stupid!

Last week, Forbes magazine published a piece I submitted for their Polish edition on recent trends in the private banking industry in the U.S. It’s a two-pager in their special report on private banking, also available here. The title literally translates to “How it’s done in the States” - private banking, that is.

So how is it done? I focused on new trends in wealth management - specifically, the push to establish more internationally-diversified portfolios across all asset classes, not just equities. Alternative investments, for example, are no longer a U.S. playing field for America’s wealthiest; if you want to, you can invest in regionally-focused hedge funds and P.E. funds that will turn up your exposure to a given industry sector in a specific geography that you might be interested in. I also discussed the popularity of structured investments as a hedging tool that also allows investors to gain measured exposure to new markets, as well as ETFs. Both have become much more popular in wealth management, the key driver being diversification, esp. internationally.

On the services side, I discussed the trend toward a more holistic approach to customer service in private banking. America’s baby boomers are getting older and retiring, which means that they are less focused on growing their wealth and more focused on how to, for example, transfer it to the next generation and make the most of it before they die. This means that their private banker must know more than just how to multiply their wealth. Estate planning, retirement planning, philanthropy and multi-generational wealth management are increasingly becoming more important to a large clientele who want a one-stop shop for their wealth management needs (even if they currently have more than one private banker - which most do!).

It is amazing how much one can learn about an industry just by writing an article about it - especially for a publication like Forbes. It is a fascinating, and without a doubt a growing industry that is well worth following.