Betty Who?

Sometimes I go to one of the BIG cities - you know what I mean: one of the big 'world' hubs. London, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Chicago... And Sydney.

 

I don't count places like Singapore because they are not really open to the world in the same way that New York or even Berlin is. Nor some of the sprawling places that are dimensionally huge but otherwise very narrow in their localized form of urbanized culture.

Breakout class act -

Betty Who

 

But Sydney is in the big league. You go out to a live performance in Sydney and you immediately sense everything is right on the beat and that you are where it's at.

 

Betty Who is a new 'breakout' talent that is currently taking the world by storm. She's another of these decent handful or so of modern era performers whose energy is electric and who can get all the subtleties out of a well-written song and hit all the notes note-perfect and with a verbal tempo that is high up there on the front edge of the beat, and yet still remain crystal clear.

 

I think she is also another of these song interpretors who are becoming guaranteed success channels for the hit-machine songwriter Bonnie McKee.

 

Well now we have someone that we can replace the ridiculous Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop with as soon as!! A little photoshop work here and there on the dimensions but there is something about the face, isn't there... It is of course a lot better, but, also similar...

 

A class act is never just window-dressing!

 

But a class act is obvious against the ordinary.

 

 

Holistic Materialism...

I don’t know whether you know about this, or have heard the story – well, it isn’t a story, it’s the truth.  Somewhere in the world – in fact in a fairly famous place, where there are very well-known clothing retailers – not so long ago some people came in from out of town, bought a bunch of industrial-scale, if small and old-fashioned , fabric manufacturing businesses and the machinery that came with the businesses... And busted up the machines, and of course closed the manufacturing plants too.

'Repeat' - a German cashmere boutique;

very high quality.

By standard economic theory, there is the view that this type of thing is always part of a larger chain of events, and that the vulnerability of the old manufacturers was due to their own failure to either manage their revenues or to make sufficient profits – and that furthermore, at some point product output and quality is eventually improved, not lessened just because in the erstwhile it seems that some China-made substitute has replaced the better quality but more expensive and unaffordable and usually fictionally ‘ideal’ standard item.

In the specific case to which I was referring in the first paragraph here, the brand names themselves continued on for a while albeit using China-made products of a similar kind to what they had previously been labelling and selling.

London Town is the actual place where the items were being sold and marketed from, and you shouldn’t jump to a quick conclusion about what the products were, or are.

Now I don’t personally believe that in the long run the highest quality of items in question will not return to the shopfronts from which they had been made famous in the first place. And it is the case that right now, the Chinese manufacturing standard at the high end has improved beyond recognition from the bad old days of say the Sixties and Seventies and even the Eighties too.

My own critical thoughts would lean more to the very great and very negative impact - basically around the whole world - of the leeringly too high costs of being a business established inside of any modern city... It is my suspicion that indeed cities themselves, as dynamic architectural and socio-economic/social-cultural entities, have been broken catastrophically by city councillors and various influential interests and city managers. I don’t believe you will see cities as they have been over the last hundred years. They are going to change in ways that will make them categorically quite different from what they were previously. I don’t mean superficial change; I mean categorical alteration of their very nature and meaning.

Cities are viewed by government, at every level of government, as tax centres and revenue sources; but they are not that any longer. They once were that, and the golden goose has been killed.

 

Under Christmas tree,
is staying under the Christmas tree.
No tolls for thee!

If you stuck all the toll road imposts, whether timed or so-called ‘congestion period’ levies, that you wanted, and increased parking fees, and increased rates and offered more and the most complex and ‘creative’ leases that you possibly could come up with, all that you’d end up doing is go broke yourself like Detroit did – as basic volume of economic activity dried up.

But then no politician or corrupt builder and developer ever sees this or cares that such things can or even will happen. We are long past Corbusier but they refuse to acknowledge it. There is no call for more tall buildings, more buildings, or complicated ‘developments.’ It is not in keeping with the era or the economics. But the standard practices go on.  All these developments will continue on until a literal Doomsday.

A friend asked me whether I thought that corrupt money and money made by cheating and/immoral and unethical ideologies still did not reward those people who do these things with a stack of immediate gratification and many material comforts.

But of course it certainly does reward people in such ways.

That is why Doomsday, when it approaches, is not ever accounted for beforehand.

The ‘whole person,’ must have both sides of the equation: the animal dynamic (or atavistic) materialist side, and the unbiased objective idea forms in their connected logic structures apprehensible to the intellect alone and to the inner visions. You must comprehend the meaning of the Italian designer, or else you are in possession of only the metals and the materials, but not the actual intended point of the construction. The best English brand cars are today made by Germans. And the great (of which there were originally four of...) ‘Lord of Cashmere’ – Berk – is today exclusively a net citizen.

Design - in counterpoint...

Not necessarily in the wrong place but

definitely in counterpoint. 

 

So be it. It is a good thing. Doomsday is only a game on the internet. But it is a real consequence in real cities.

So be it, though.

Simon, Tahiti Looks Nice

I think this was something  from out of an ad from the Seventies... I'll have to check.

 

Anyway this was the popular vision of the super-wealthy back around then.

 

Guy, with large format newspaper, wife, SON, private jet, spa on board.

 

 

I might have to explore the current 'visions' of what it 'might' be like being one of the adequately wealthy. I don't like the phrase 'super wealthy;' it just means someone with a certain kind of OCD.

 

The 'wife' in the advert says to the guy: "Tahiti looks good."

 

Guy picks up phone and says: "Simon, Tahiti."

 

Tahiti food today is a modern commercialised pop version of something 'seafood/Polynesian/rice/coconut/etc...'

 

Sad to say though, I like this kind of commercialisation. These sorts of things get to become commercial because lots of people also like them.

 

Yellow curry shrimp (or prawn, if you're not American.)

 

Some of the venues are not so commercial, but hey guess what? Thank god the food is! Nothing so bad as some swish joint where the food is opinionated and ah, rubbish.

 

So, "Simon - Tahiti looks good..."

 

I don't need my brain troubled by too many complicated thoughts right now. Does anybody?

 

Commercial is good. Christmas is just around the bend - commercial is very good.

 

I will be doing commercial, this Christmas. Jesus approves. Trust me. Jesus knows about money. He once turned a coin with Caesar's head on it over in his hands. Found it in a fish salad. Caesar Salad Tahiti, the dish was called. (There's a huge conference going on in Tahiti right now with some HUGE money movers by the way. ; ) Betcha not too many standard media clots know about THIS!) Lot of walking on water expected to be done next year...

 

 

International Resort Hotel Bora Bora.

 

Where The Light Shines Brightest

Every single day I’m tempted to turn around and suddenly make one of these posts a total tour de force for you. Not yet though, not quite just yet.

The great Gary Vaynerchuk says the most common belief about the age of the Internet is that ‘all content is free.’ And he goes on to say though that the belief is slightly mistaken; he believes we are living in the ‘Age of Thank You.’ An interesting thought. He means it’s important to thank the money that actually flows anywhere! He’s right of course.

I'm not saying where this is -

it is not Domaine Romanee-Conti

You won’t remember now but several years ago I suggested people buy Domaine de la Romanee-Conti bottles of wine – don’t know why they were so relatively inexpensive then, they certainly were the best of the Burgundies then and they still are now. If you were able to get them –and these were odd lots, incomplete cases – but the prices of some of them have gone up over hundredfold. $200 to $20,000+!

I think in investing it is most important to understand - or at least to try to comprehend the mindsets of the people in your market, the mentality of the people around you, even the mindsets of those who appear to be the erstwhile leaders of everything. I must confess I have never seen so much rubbish paraded around as political leadership, banking or economics and finance genius, producing and directing talent in Hollywood... All sorts of things where the identities entertain us with their fantasies – certainly journalism and editorial content in the flagship press carriers. What is going on? Is this the end? A kind of post-industrial, neo-Gothic terminal decadence.

Amazingly I noticed some fairly heavy-duty press machines start to repeat some folklore I had personally been spreading around about how many truly wealthy people there are in the world – they are all gravitating to this mythical figure of around ‘30,000.’ Western super-rich people. That isn’t right; that is tongue-in-cheek stuff about the numbers of clients of the biggest tax-dodgers in Switzerland and Luxembourg and so on. The true figure is more likely around 80,000. But it isn’t more than that.

The DRC Montrachet is produced at around 250 cases a year, the Conti about 450. If all the rich folk wanted to buy a case each – well they simply couldn’t. And there is a huge error buffer if the folklore about who has the wealth is incorrect in any event.

So can you ‘see’ the mindset of the people in your own market?

I mean right now, and also how the passage of a few months will alter their behaviour?

People are saying the wealthy are running out of things to buy.

I don’t care what you say though, the rich do NOT all own DRC; it isn’t mathematically possible. The fact is, you can be as rich as you like in cash, but unless you know what actually exists, you only THINK you own it all!

Here is something that exists – an Australian EDM singer with some Asiatic ancestry there somewhere.  And a really great singer at that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discounting 'Easy' Cash

As you know – and I’m sure that you do know it – Monaco is a tax-free sovereign state that is not an actual member of the European Union.

A Californian in Monaco!

Well, a Ferrari California anyway.

While Jean-Claude Juncker is being widely criticized by the media everywhere for his past history as an important  functionary in one of the most pro-tax dodging countries in the world, namely Luxembourg, no one gives a damn about tiny little Monaco with its mere 30-some odd thousand citizens, and its zero income tax regime.

Certainly, it does have a 30% social security contribution by employers within the total salary and wage package everyone participates in, but then, we are still really only talking about an in-put cost on outputs and there is no other tax on productive capital; I’m not certain that there isn’t some kind of arrangement about the sale of real estate, but this is not ever detailed to outsiders. And let’s face it - Monaco has the most expensive real estate on earth...

Monaco does use the euro and gets to stick its own motifs on the currency, and it is a co-operative full member of the Euro-Zone customs provisions, but it does not participate in any other specifically EU treaty or law or national contractual obligation.

Which brings me to my point:

Modern political systems and laws and policies are all motivated by the pre-commitment to volume as the most cheaply attained access to power, money, wealth, and human progress.

Goldman Sachs earlier this week issued a momentous pronouncement to the effect that high returns were not going to happen anywhere for a long time to come.

I’m glad they think so because in a world where every professional investor’s most hard-won insights become common knowledge overnight, I can’t worry about what everyone else does. They know everything already and haven’t got their minds open for anything new. Goldman Sachs knows it all. And the public listens.

For myself I cannot see anything but high returns.

Though not from volume.

Why do I restrict myself to high volume businesses in which a secular Depressive monetary velocity condition has been created by the same politicians and in-name-only ‘bankers who direct everyone to the volume option only?’

Gaudy Night -
Also a novel by Sayers

Here is the difference between a leader and an authority... You see, what we have around us to today, are authorities, not leaders. A leader eats last. Authorities have the first right to all the things that inspire greed and the greedy; as much is said in the Tao Te Ching too - about rulers and leaders.

 

“Let us have one other gaudy night: call to me, all my sad captains; let’s mock the midnight bell.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra.

It is midnight in the world.