The card has a fancy name and gives me the ability ofcutting to the front of some airport lines and getting an upgrade to FirstClass, however only when the airline has empty seats there. That upgrade,when available, can be awfully refreshing as it is NewMarket policy toonly buy coach class tickets, and 14 hours in the middle seat in the backof an airplane on its way to Asia is, from my experience, not preferred.Regardless of the fancy name, the card’s only requirement is that thepassenger flies 100,000 miles during a year. That’s the equivalent offlying around the world four times.Last week, as I returned home from my most recent trip away, my wifehanded me an envelope that had arrived for me from American Airlines. Ihad apparently already received my fancy Executive Platinum card for nextyear. My wife was not smiling when she handed me the envelope.With NewMarket operations in China, South East Asia and South America, itshould be no surprise that a good deal of travel goes with my job.However, I have never traveled 100,000 miles in a three month periodbefore.

My wife and I have five children from the ages of 7 to 17, soperhaps you can imagine and appreciate her expression when she handed methe envelope from American Airlines.The reason for my increased travel this year is directly related to thehistoric economic conditions we are all currently facing. I have traveledmore recently both to manage issues arising from the economic crisis, aswell as to seize opportunities that the crisis has created. The increasednumber of hours confined to an airplane seat has allowed me theopportunity to read more than usual in recent years. During this historiceconomic crisis, one classic novel re-captured my attention: CharlesDickens’ “The Tale of Two Cities.” As you may recall, his book famouslybegins:”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age ofwisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it wasthe epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season ofDarkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we hadeverything before us, we had nothing before us…

“What he was writing about was a revolution, the French Revolution. TheFrench Revolution followed the American Revolution and was a similarlysuccessful fight for citizenship and inalienable rights. The pursuit oflife, liberty and happiness requires economic conditions that minimallyenable every citizen to earn a respectable living.Dickens’ quote sounds to me as if he could be writing about the presentday. Most of us in the United States and around the world today make ourliving working for a company with less than 500 employees. Full employmentin the United States is approximately 120 million jobs and 20 million ofthose jobs come from self-employment.Since the beginning of 2009 almost 200 companies have been kicked off theOTCBB by FINRA’s rule 6530 — the three strike rule for being late onfinancial filings three times in two years.