BloggeRhythms 2/29/2012

I didn't find much of interest in the news today, but when perusing Drudge I found a reprinted article from The Hollywood Reporter titled What Ever Happened to Ted Turner? by Stephen Galloway.

I read it because it brought back a memory regarding a transaction I handled while in the equipment financing business, and the tale of that sales presentation is something I'll never, ever forget.

At that time, I think it was somewhere around 1980 or so, Turner owned the TV broadcast station TBS, and also the Atlanta Braves baseball team. The company I was with at the time arranged financing for businesses wishing to lease or finance equipment they were acquiring, so we primarily worked in conjunction with equipment suppliers who brought us in as needed by their clients.  

Shortly after a broadcasting equipment trade show in Las Vegas where one of the most prominent suppliers of mobile TV studio equipment displayed its wares, I got a call from them saying that TBS was interested in acquiring a full-sized tractor-trailer equipped with the finest state-of-the art technology available at the time. This production studio on wheels was not only capable of shooting, transmitting and taping any kind of remote event, it could also produce a finished reproducible recording. 

The TBS plan, as I recall, was to produce and air Atlanta Braves away games around the nation and also to broadcast, record, and preserve all kinds of other events in outdoor venues such as big-name performers concerts in stadiums and arenas.

Now, naturally, the equipment involved was very, very costly and thus I was invited to make a presentation of my financial offerings by visiting Turner's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

The morning I flew in from New York, I hopped in a cab outside Atlanta's airport and gave the cabbie the street address of my destination. Upon hearing the building number, the cabbie said something like, "Gonna see Ted, huh?" And then I quickly learned from him that almost all Atlantan's at the time tried to stay abreast of everything Ted did, whereas to them he was a hero far bigger than life. A few minutes later the cabbie said, if you get a chance, "You ought to ask them why they fired the Brave's manager, Joe Torre, this morning."

On my arrival in my prospective customer's headquarters, I was ushered into one of the largest offices I'd ever seen. The room was not only immense, but perfectly appointed and although not austere, considering whose business I was visiting, it was extremely intimidating. As was it's occupant, the CFO, a financial wizard and exactly the type you'd expect to be acceptable to one of the world's foremost business geniuses and successful entrepreneurs. This man had a financial calculator in his head.

Now, despite my own experience and considerable accomplishments to date, my host and his surroundings threw me off my pace to the extent that no dazzling opening statement came to mind. Consequently, being unable to display genius, I simply stuttered all I could remember at the moment, "H,h,h,how come the Braves let Joe Torre go this morning?"

Upon hearing that, my potential client whirled his chair around to face the largest custom phone console I'd ever seen. There must have been more than a hundred buttons on it.  And he started pushing them, one after another, speaking quickly and curtly to whoever answered each of them.

Then after what seemed an eternity, but was likely only five or ten minutes or so, he turned back around to me. He then said he'd called everyone he could think of in the baseball organization, from the GM, to the manager, to the coaches and even the bat boy and none of them was aware of the managerial firing. So, what he asked me to tell him was exactly where I'd gotten my information, because part of his responsibility was over-seeing employees contracts so he had to get started on handling this one immediately because he hated being the last one to find things like this out.

It was then that I fully understood the meaning of that old comparative, being between a rock and a hard place because I didn't have the nerve to tell him that a cabbie had mislead me just a short while ago. After a further little hemming and hawing, I finally told him I'd seen a news headline in the NY airport which obviously had been wrong. Within  a short time later, calm returning to the room, we finally got down to the purpose of my visit and discussed what alternatives I had to offer.

My own professional standards prevent me from telling you whether I finally made that sale or not. But, in retrospect, simply getting out of the hole I'd dug for myself and staying in contention long enough to present my suggestions to a consummate professional such as the one I faced taught me two things I've never forgotten. Don't ever give up no matter the situation -and always stay out of cabs.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/28/2012

Haven't seen Warren Buffett around for a while, but yesterday some comments from his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. annual letter were posted on Drudge via Bloomberg, such as: “Large numbers of people who have ‘lost’ their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost. In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender.”  

I thought his present position was interesting because he now controls the biggest shareholding of the largest U.S. mortgage lender, Wells Fargo & Co. which is owned by Bank of America Corp. in which he invested $5 billion last year. In 2010, which was before his BOA investment, he also publicly defended Goldman Sachs against accusations it mislead clients.

So I guess his belief is that if someone like him buys into a floundering bank, taking advantage of their weaknesses, that's perfectly alright because he's a good guy. But if borrowers profit from a market opportunity, they're not. And that seems odd to me because Buffet seems to me like a guy who'd kill anyone for a quarter and not even think about it.

I also can't help but remember that he apparently got a sweetheart deal on the B of A via an inside track provided by the White House, and then went out and said that the wealthy should willingly pay higher taxes because they can afford it.  

And what's more interesting than that is the fact that the mortgage industry's facing criticism from Democrats, including the president who said in his State of the Union address that bets by lenders prompted the 2008 credit freeze and “left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag.”

However, as I've mentioned many times in the past, it was the president himself and Project Acorn, along with guys like Dodd and Frank, who forced bankers to lend to credit-less wannabees and deadbeats in order to level the home ownership playing field. And after causing that debacle which he's completely walked away from, he now blames the very same banks he put into financial turmoil himself.

So, I guess when it comes to politics and money, it's always the same old, same old. It doesn't really matter to certain types of folks how they amass as much as they can for themselves, but nonetheless they really don't want that known by anybody else.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/27/2012

According to Chris Stirewalt of Fox News, in a speech yesterday in Florida, the president said that "while he favored increased domestic production of some fossil fuels, he believed that higher taxes on producers were imperative in order to finance federal subsidies for green energy initiatives."

I mention it because politics aside, maybe it's just me but I simply don't understand what he means. Because the last time I looked, this country ran on a free enterprise system where open competition reigned. And what that means is, people and providers vie for business and it's customers who decide where and what to buy without outside interference, so long as providers remain within the law.

But apparently, this president believes that successful operators have an obligation to fund their own future competition which to me is so far past ridiculous, it's almost beyond comprehension. Especially when the new ideas have yet to be proven and are odds-on unlikely to ever work. What's more, I truly believe that if today's energy providers thought any of these hare-brained future schemes had a chance of success, they'd fund the projects themselves.

Along the same lines, Tim Geithner remarked that successful people should gladly pay higher taxes because of the opportunities provided them in our nation, which I think also misses the mark by miles. Because its those successes that already fund the government at present, while those in the administration find ways to waste, mis-use and steal what they already take while doing nothing to help earn it. 

Therefore, as for me, I think both of these guys are so far out in left field (pun intended) they either keep pushing the same buttons to appeal to their biased base or are truly demented. But whatever the case, it seems neither of them understand nor care about the fundamental freedoms that made this nation great, but are only interested in how much they can rip off and don't even have a clue as to how to spend it.

 That's it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/26/2012

I saw a headline on Drudge that sent me to a short article I had to read a few times, to be certain I understood it. According to the author,  Alexander Burns of Politico, the United Auto Workers union is going to fly a banner at today's Daytona 500 auto race which says, "Mitt Romney: Let Detroit Go Bankrupt"

The purpose is to highlight Romney's belief that U.S. automakers shouldn't have been bailed out by taxpayers, but instead simply have filed for bankruptcy and reorganized on their own.

Now naturally, the unions despise Romney for his audacity in believing that businesses should succeed or fail on their own, which from a union's perspective is blasphemous. Because if you remove a parasites source of nourishment it's likely to soon expire. And that's what caught my eye about this article in the first place.

Because here we have a group (the union) which does nothing productive at all. However, by banding workers together, they mass enough influence and strength to hold labor for ransom, enabling them to continually increase demands. So much so, that in the particular case of manufacturing vehicles they almost single-handedly closed the whole U.S. industry down.

And what's most incredible to me about today's plan for the banner display is the level of audacity reached by a band of leeches who bled almost a whole industry dry and now turns around to point fingers at someone who had the gall to mention that fact. To me this is like a large gang of bank robbers carrying signs protesting the hiring of guards.

On the other hand, the good news for Romney is that it's likely that very few NASCAR fans know how to read.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/25/2012

Sometimes I have to wonder exactly who it is a guy like Mitt Romney listens to for advice. Because, at the moment, he's the only candidate who has the capabilities to repair the nation's major ills, and yet he reduces himself to argue about social issues that really have no place in the campaign in the first place.

For example, at the moment he's working hard to establish himself as a true Conservative because he apparently feels quite threatened by Rick Santorum. However, Conservatism isn't the issue that's on the minds of most of the voting public. What's of most concern to them is the slow employment rate, an educational system that's in reverse, rapidly declining health care, and the rising cost of fuel.

What's more, for every vote that's gained by appealing to strict Conservatives, two or three others are likely lost from moderates and independents without whom an election can't be won.

So, the best thing Romney can presently do for himself is to start looking presidential on the major issues, which he happens to be very good at, and let everyone he's running against keep scaring the majority of voters off by themselves.

That's it for today folks.

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/24/2012

The older I get and the more I see, hear and read, the less impressed I become with myself. And that's because for practically all my business life, and in many personal cases too, I was generally more successful than most others I encountered.

But, now I realize that whatever it was that I thought I'd accomplished handily due to my capability, actually had nothing at all to do with my prowess. It stemmed from the fact that most others are either intellectual vacant lots or card-carrying morons.

Proof of that comes every day as I look at the news and see that a huge section of the voting public are willing to watch their hard earned dollars go to foreign sultans and princes because a puppet in the White House continually sells them out without a hint of guilt or caring. And simultaneously he allows the medical profession to deteriorate because doctors can no longer afford to remain in business under his socialistic guidelines.

Couple that with unions killing our educational system and many manufacturing operations and you have economic disaster which really isn't news. 

So, in light of the fact that in spite of an uptick in employment the economic growth outlook still remains bleak, what do Republican and independent voters do? They worry about social issues that aren't really even a president's bailiwick. And consequently, by pushing a social agenda that really should be hammered out locally or perhaps even by individual states, they're killing themselves election-wise and taking everyone else with them. 

But as I said at the outset, I'm finding out that I'm really not very bright because I always the American dream included economic success and independence. But obviously that's not really the case. Because now I see that the goal really is to become the most socially conservative person in the poor house. 

That's it for today folks

Adios

BloggeRhythms 2/23/2012

I've never bothered to rank the various stages of stupidity when commenting on someone's behavior, because I generally just use the first word I think of when I make a comment about it. For instance, I might say something like, "Boy that guy is dumb." Or perhaps, "That guy's not bright enough to tie his own shoes" However, whatever the ratings are for gross moronics, there's a bozo judge in Delaware who's off the charts.

 According to the Associated Press, "A Delaware bankruptcy judge has approved close to $370,000 in bonuses for certain employees of Solyndra LLC, a solar panel manufacturer that received a half-billion dollar loan from the federal government before declaring bankruptcy." And let's all remember, this is taxpayer's dollars he's authorizing paying out.

Apparently, he approved the request after a hearing Wednesday because the company has failed to find a buyer to operate the company as a going concern and says it needs to retain key employees with the expertise needed for an orderly liquidation of its remaining assets.

Now, I don't think you need an MBA from Wharton School to realize that no one wants to buy the business because it's worthless and there's nobody imbecilic enough to purchase this dead horse. However, this isn't an uncommon occurrence and happens to many failed, hare-brained entrepreneurial schemes. But in most cases, when these situations occur there are all kinds of experts who expressly specialize in maximizing the values of whatever assets are left in closed concerns.

 Naturally, in this case I don't know precisely what kind of machinery, tools, equipment, furniture, fixtures and rolling stock and other such things this company has left. But I do know that quite often, existing employees are still there because they can't find other employment. And that means it might be tempting for them to work out asset sales having some kind of value to themselves. Consequently, even though there might be no reason at all of suspicion, the wisest and most prudent step is to take them out of the selling phase completely by bringing in outside liquidation experts.

And in this particular case there are already indications of management feathering it's own nest at the public's expense, so that in itself should be some kind of warning of a fox in the henhouse. Which brings me back to my original observation that I can't even think of a word that describes the level of idiocy this bankruptcy judge has reached, unless perhaps, he's in on the deal himself.

That's it for today folks.

Adios