Moguls—relatively unmoderated by outside shareholders, capricious, dictatorial and long-tenured to the point of senility—do have one redeeming virtue. They're distinct individuals who can afford occasionally to tell the truth, while hired managers stick to mealy-mouthed platitudes.

A case in point: News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch, at the quarterly presentation of his media conglomerate's results, explained why he wouldn't be investing more in Putin's Russia. "This is purely me, I’m sorry: the more I read about investments in Russia, the less I like the feel of it. The more successful we’d be, the more vulnerable we’d be to have it stolen from us, so there we sell now." (Incidentally, that was a Superbowl championship ring that kleptocratic Russian president Vladimir Putin was trying on in this photo with Murdoch from last year—and not the ring that the media mogul lost this year in Sun Valley.)

Of course, the Australian media mogul was equally outspoken about China, suggesting that western-style media would undermine the supremacy of the country's Communist regime. And he's spent years eating his words.

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