There is an apocryphal football team speech that goes:
'My fellow - (fill in the blank). At last the hour has arrived. Today, we stand on the threshold of greatness. We have drawn the line that separates the winners from those who come second.
'It's okay to be afraid...'
The speech is paraphrased by Danny DeVito in 'Batman Returns.'
A younger person (I think they are younger at least) was conversing with me last night my time, and I indicated that I would post up something about 'How To Make Money' - I guess with the addition of 'In Today's World.'
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Money. Let's have some of that! |
Well I don't know how to make money in today's world as I have not made the sizes of it that I made a few decades ago.
And, it became clear to me as I thought the thing over, that it would be a challenge to me to just jump in and tell someone of a more current vintage (than myself, and most of the rest of us here), about concepts such as 'Money Supply' and real sources of Capital.
The reason for that being that not since Ben Bernanke (Head of the Fed from 2006 - 2014), have we been living under the traditional economic conception of 'sound money' and so-called 'sanitized' Money Supply (means honest and not favoring the biggest debt users - IE the Government).
There is no such thing really, any longer, as an 'independent' Federal Reserve (or, any Central Bank across the globe).
The younger generation is going to come back at me, if I said 'you cannot run a deficit without the underlying supporting real tax receipts from income taxes on real profits.' ...Not fraud taxes on 'sales' and 'value added' components. I mean, what makes a thing 'value added,' if it never really sold out at a profit over the term of its written down nominal capital number...?
The younger generation is just going to say 'well why not? Nothing's totally crashed out thus far by doing it.' (IE By issuing vast digital sums of 'money').
The problem is actually very complex because on the one hand I was undertaking in my mind, to tell the young person that they should 'focus on where money was flowing...'
But then, the definition of 'money' was not at all likely to be the same in my mind as in the minds of young kids these days. Sure they think - everybody thinks - that 'money' buys you stuff.
But does it?
'Power money' buys you real stuff.
I'll give an example and leave off the 'lecture' main 'meat and potatoes' until next time (but we will be delving into this properly):
In the US you can buy 'health drinks' from a company called Celsius Holdings Inc, which is listed on the NASDAQ Exchange for a total market capital of around 10+ billion US dollars.
And these particular 'no sugar' (they are not 'no sugar;' they have sucralose in them, which is slightly troublesome in regular intake amounts - you should have less than two cans a week and use pro-biotics like sauerkraut, and chew fennel seeds) 'health drinks' are pretty good for a 'buzz and if you have decent food along with them, they will really make you feel great for about an hour.
In Europe and most places all over the world, S.Pellegrino also makes very similar styles of 'no-sugar' cans of soda, which are incredibly diluted and would be great if they actually contained what they claim (like 'black raspberry') on the marketing outside, but they are just soda driven past a fruit orchard in a truck one time...
S. Pellegrino, however, is owned by the NESTLE Group, which has a market cap of over 220 billion dollars.
And so, if you are a young investor and entrepreneur, and imagine that people actually start new companies with 'new ideas' that they promote to an avid market of consumers - how about if I put it to you this way - your country (which I presume is the United States) is run by the (literal) Mafia and everyone of the little 'indies' that you have there, is under the control of its parents which are located in Rome and Palermo and Geneva and Brussels and so on.
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If you're a private client, you get to be taken inside the private Gucci Salon. Gucci is a prominent Mafia Fam. Y'all know that. |
Further, if you think you are going to make money out of the Mafia, by 'smartly' investing and analyzing stocks using high-tech AI programs or trading platforms on your smart-phone, well -, you are not. They will eat you up and cheat you seven ways from Sunday and they will get away with it.
We are at an historic time in the story of the human race.
You will need 'an advantage' before you set out to do anything in an implied 'frictional cost' way.
First you will need to prepare.
You will require some sensible, reasoned, rational basis for which to suppose - to calculate - that your win-loss ratios will be in your favor on average going forward.
If you knew all about the sources of 'Money Supply' and understood the Equation of Exchange and had some grasp of the Circulation Velocity of Domestic Currency ('citizen' debt plus mobilized personal savings) then it would be possible to go from there into the psychology of people and the impact of that on your market/s forays.
And then, we could also talk about how amazing is the present-day potential for you to acquire strong Vertical Integration just by having a cheap Chuwi mini laptop...
...How that effectively replaces seven office blocks in Downtown Manhattan if you were running the exact same business (IE business model) that someone might have done seventy years ago.
A person with seven office blocks in North Michigan Avenue or Uptown/Downtown Manhattan, seventy years ago, is entitled to think they are a billionaire, or should be in whatever business they were running and if not, maybe just get out of business!
If you're a young person you have the advantage of youth. But if you suddenly acquire a hundred million dollars - how many times (this is addressed to the rest of us here) have we heard that person say that 'if' that, then 'they' would buy this property and that property and that Real Estate and that car and those shares and this thing and that thing and so on and on.
And meanwhile I have been carrying on for half an hour about the nonsense of all of those valuations -.
When did you really actually drink a 'health drink?'
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The Shola mountains and forest, where Alexander the Great's guy was. |
You don't even know what that is.
And your money can't buy it. No, it actually can't.
The Government of South India will not sell you - for all your American dollars or all your Euros or all anything else - any extracts of the Neelakurinji flower plant, which blooms once only ever 12/14 years, and that was used once by the servant of Alexander the Great, who came back to camp looking forty years younger because he had discovered the 'Plant' or the 'Fountain' of
Youth. And you don't even know that story because your education is not that good.
Young man...
It ain't 'a story.'
Right now you are the 'forty years younger' person in the sense that you haven't yet wasted another forty more years of your life.
Draw the line now, today.
Step Number 1 (the lesson for today; the first lesson) - understand human psychology.
Best possible headphones, right: