Ten "Hot but Cool" Things To Do With Those Yen Carry Proceeds
10. Score some "X", some East-European Supermodels, and fly-private to a "Rave In The Cave" in Ibiza. Be certain to leave the laptop at home....
9. Earn mondo kharmic-credits by donating it to the "Sea Shepherds" in order to finance their fight against the ludicrous Japanese whaling.(Note for US Leveraged specs: This is tax-deductible!)
8. Buy some Croatian waterfront or Belgrade Officeblocks - there is still value there even though the German specs have already bit it up. For the trulym, slavically-adventuresome, Tirana & Kishniev remain virtually untouched by property specs.
7. Splurge on a Damien Hirst "Sapphire & Ruby Encrusted Blackberry" insuring that whatever the market brings, you'll always have at least one-up on your mates (and two thumbs on the art-market!)
6. Be a hero and take a flyer on some those heavily discounted equity tranches of the yet-to-combust CDO of your choice. "Binary Punting" rarely had so much upside....
5. Be a contrarian and buy a stately townhome in Berlin, still for less than 25 cents of that prevailing price in Russkieville-on-Thames;
4. Use it to seed a "Distressed Spanish Property Vulture Fund". Lord knows the Spaniards are in deep shit, having built more new homes in the last decade than France and Germany combined! Surely there is dosh to be made by picking up the the almost-finished and half-finished pieces from the soon-to-be-liquidating Spanish banks jettisoning their "collateral".
3. Buy an Ambassadorship! Managing money in the trenches, it must be said, can be downright boring. Why not splurge on some large Democratic Campaign Contributions that will insure you are on the shortlist for a choice posting come 2008!
2. Lunch with Buffet. Could there be a better investment? Not to go yourself (can you think of anything more tedious than lunch with a VALUE investor"?!?!), but to "buy and flip". Surely somelike like Dan Loeb's ego will cause him to pay double before the lunch date arrives.
1. Try your hand at funding a Hollywood Blockbuster! Yes, THIS is what its all about: mingle with the glitterati; be on a first name basis with Tom Cruise (real name Thomas Mapother IV, Height= 147cm) and The Parties...oh yes, The Parties (just don't drive yourself home!!). A word of caution however: Hollywood is perhaps the only place where people are more cagey and dishonest than Wall Street. The last batch of eastern film financiers were buggered by the fine-print and left hollding the bag on a portfolio of shite of the likes of "The Postman" and "The Adventures of Pluto Nash".
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11 comments:
Man, what did you have for dinner last night? You've outdone yourself today.
You forgot, however, the obvious candidate: Buy a Premiership Football team!
The Premiership has already embraced an oil kleptocrat (Abramovich), a 1980's corporate raider (Malcolm Glazer), and a private equity legend (Tom Hicks.) Surely a carry trader would be welcome at that particular table. I'd do it myself, but alas, my AUM, my paycheck, and my short yen position are all much, much too small to finance such a venture.
There's unrest at the Arsenal...so buy the Arse and become the hero of half the FX spot jockeys in the City!
Olive oil, being an anti-inflammatory, was clearly not on the menu.
Having driven along the coast from Algeciras (same root as Al-Jazeera) to Málaga on the weekend, I was attentive to the fact that there is less, but not no, construction. The promotors? The usual lot that are currently strangling the IBEX. A brief stop for caffeine (returning from the previous night's wedding) at the entirely anglified Playa de la Duquesa - an Aston-Martin conspicuously parked dockside - revealed a normal number of For Sale signs. There were empty carcasses on the roadside in Marbella, but they would be judicially paralyzed - and all pre-sold.
Gotta say, though, that junk that's perched on the barren rocks a mile and a half up from the beach is certainly looking less appealling - if that's even at all possible.
'State-changed price' was brilliant, BTW.
CB
Oh yeah, I forgot! And as for item number 2, I can think of one regular reader who might take umbrage at that characterization.
C
I have my own pet theory regarding BoJ and MoF policies. Let's briefly look at historical and geopolitical background.
*In Asia, nobody likes Japan Inc. for obvious historical and political reasons. eg comfort women, war shrine, heavily edited text books, etc
*China as a rising political and economic treat and long term rival to Japan.
*The need for Japan to hedge this treat and the need for America to project power across Pacific to maintain her imperial ambitions.
Conclusion: BoJ and MoF are puppets to Uncle Paulie at Treasury. As a proof, Uncle Paulie continues to defend BoJ and MoF policies against Democrats in Congress. Why fix the problem now? Let the next sucker worry about it.
Simplistic you say, well I'm a simple being, like Chance the Garener in the movie Being There . . .
-pi
I forgot to add another connection. And who does Uncle Paulie work for, why, of course, the hedge-funds and moneyed-interests in New York and Loundon. All these connections remind me of a BBC show by the same title long time ago which I immensely enjoyed . . .
-pi
Priceless, absolutely priceless as were your recent revision of the BOJ employment exam.
MM - Thanks! I'll take that as a scarcely-earned compliment! But really, the rpemiership is passe. The real vig - like the equity tranche of the CDO - is down in second or third division, and taking them up. Money can't buy love (said Paul), but it also can't buy your team, "heart".
Charles - Yes,. I put that in for you. I've done that drive from Algeciras to Malaga before (years ago) and no doubt I wouldn't recognize it. It was, even then, mangled and raped by low-rent developers.
The Spanish banks I reckon are like the pproverbial deer in the headlights. They should foreclose and kick this stuff out NOW. If they wait, they may end up like the Canadian banks in early 90's, selling fully-built, but empty, offfice blocks at 30% of construction costs. Indeed, if I have learned anythinng over the years it's "cut quickly, or not at all". And my dissin' value investors was tongue-in-cheek. But perriods of negative real i-rates favours mometnum and trend followers, and so those who are price-sensitive appear as fools....until they're not.
Pi - I do not see how the destruction of dollar-hegemony and possibly an open international monetary system will serve to keep China in a box. I DO see what you mean, but I lean more to the side of the Japanese retaining a sense of cultural superiority, nodding "yes" and so so so not meaning a nod-of-it, waiting waiting patiently for revenge after past humiliation at hands of americans but never pushing enough to wreak ire in DesMoines or Wash. Americans need Japan's strategic proximity to China and Russia and when push-comes to shove, will hardly bitch-slap Japan for overly self-serving economic policies. Americans are horrible at diplomatic "Go"....
They probably should, but they've all got their heads up each other's asses, and alot of moral suasion and the like comes into play - well, you understand all that. They'll do what all closed and 'culturally superior' societies do in a crunch.
Concerning what you say to 'Pi'... In general, people from new societies suffer from a certain naivete about the tectonically slow and relentless strength (if not of its very existence) that impels older places in their relations with outsiders, the future, etc. It's like congratulating yourself for having interrupted the path of a low frequency wave, but never failing to be suprised when, on turning around, you find out that it has re-formed, absolutely intact, behind you, as if you never were. The proper, though less satisfying, approach is to stand further back on the beach.
Numbers of national banks (POP, BTO, etc.), BTW, broke support this week.
CB
'They' refers to Spanish banks, of course, as I fail to respect that you're jockeying three conversations...
Does "pi" buy this conspiracy theory?
MoF is setting up the domestic shorts in order to massacre them. Why? Because with household savings trashed, households would have to rebuild their (yen) savings thereby guaranteeing a current account surplus for years to come.
Given the serious instability of the system, I don't see how BoJ and MoF can change course unilaterally. BoJ and MoF will act with implicit, if not explicit, approval from Treasury and FRB. And no, half point move in a year starting from ZIRP, is not a meaningful change of course. If such is the case, no government official, when too much money is at stake, can keep their mouth shut. The hedge funds in New York and London will hear about it before Mr and Mrs Kobayashi in Japan.
-pi
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