Get Rich Slick

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I’ve written about abandoning Ford as my auto manufacturer of choice after years of letting me down with recalls and lack of innovation but now Ford & GM are asking for a $50 billion dollar loan from tax payers to keep their crummy companies up and running.

I have a suggestion for Ford & GM, you don’t need $50 billion, what you need is to hire some strong leadership with strong vision. Since your executives and board of directors can’t seem to learn new tricks then I’d like to give you some freebie suggestions:

1. All your cars need 300,000 mile FULL WARRANTIES. I don’t care how many years it takes to drive 300k miles, whether 1 year or 20 years, your autos (like Toyota’s) should last forever!

2. Innovate! Innovate! Innovate!

a. All your vehicles should come with built in WiFi. Work out a deal with Sprint, AT&T or whoever to get WiFi standard in each car.

b. After you hook up the WiFi, make my car talk to a network somewhere so I can get useful real-time traffic maps and routing to/from my work/home; I want to get home to my family as quickly as possible after work, help me get closer to my family with these features.

c. Install a small printer on every auto. When I drive up to Wal-greens, have the Wifi locator print a coupon for Wal-greens so I can get some chips and soda at a discount. When I drive up to a movie theater, have it print my tickets to the movie. When I stop at a grocery store, have it print out some coupons to save me money. Instead of asking for $50 billion, do something for ME that saves ME money. Try to stop thinking about your pathetic self for five minutes and think about the lives you’re trying to make better in our society.

d. With WiFi on the car, there is no need for those outdated CD/DVD based GPS systems that are out dated as soon as you drive off the lot. With WiFi, have the latest maps downloaded to my car during my morning commute.

e. Speaking of commute, if I can get WiFi in my car, I’ll have access to stock quotes, company news, weather, e-mail, entertainment, integration with my home and a slew of other things. Oh yeah, I can blog in my car while my wife, friend or family member drives the car.

f. Accessories! Accessories! Accessories! Toyota sends me monthly updates on all the accessories I can get for my Toyota vehicles; what an innovative idea. In the 15 years I owned Fords, I never ONCE got an accessories catalog. Once again, your old geezers don’t understand the “coolness” factor.

3. Fuel efficiency should be priority 1. Were you guys asleep during the oil crunch? Do you think oil will be here forever? Oh wait, you’re too lazy to think about energy innovation which is why Toyota and Honda are eating your lunch and dinner.

4. Stop pretending to be environmentalists. You produce gas guzzling vehicles that burn carbon monoxide into the atmosphere and have done so for the last 100 years, don’t act like you’re saving the world - it’s fake and phony.

5. Get a Clue.

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August was a fairly good month as I raked in ~$3500 with about 8 trades or as I like to think of it,  8 clicks of the mouse across a couple of electronic accounts.  It’s really not that hard to make money once you have some good working capital.    There are many ways to rake in cash out there but the allure of a brokerage account has been that it can be done in minutes with a click of  a mouse.

The best part of the cash flow, however, is that it gets reinvested back into the “system” to earn more cash and hopefully, with time will grow enough to become a primary source of income to live on.    Unfortunately, it is becoming very time consuming to keep up with my blogs and I may soon have to make a choice about the future of continuing on with them.

Oddly enough, deep inside, I’ve always known that the time would come when I would have to choose between focusing on simply making money vs. making money+ blogging about it.    It does get fairly lonely at the “top” and there aren’t too many capitalist bloggers out there sharing knowledge.    It is impractical to get people like Warren Buffet or Donald Trump to blog daily about their activities and while I’m nowhere near their financial league,  it is easy to see why they don’t blog; their time is simply better spent earning the money and enjoying the fruits of their labor.

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If I could change one thing in the high school educational system it would be to require Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged to be required reading for any graduating senior.   Fortunately, at least one college is now going to make it required reading,

April 11 (Bloomberg) — Ayn Rand’s novels of headstrong entrepreneurs’ battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic, schools have agreed to teach her works in exchange for a donation.

The charitable arm of BB&T Corp., a banking company, pledged $1 million to the University of North Carolina Charlotte in 2005 and obtained an agreement that Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students. Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, say they also took grants and agreed to teach Rand.

I’ve written at least a half dozen posts relating to Ayn Rand’s books and philosophy here, here, and here and with four airlines going bankrupt and others struggling to maintain their planes, the events are simply snapshots right out of the book.

I’m glad to see this happening as it certainly is needed with today’s myopic generation Y and beyond.

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Chaps, this is just incredulous! This government needs to sort out its priorities pronto because what I’m reading about this so called “stimulus package” is disconcerting in that I won’t be getting a single dime back! According to the Associated Press,

The rebates would phase out gradually for individuals whose income exceeds $75,000 and couples with incomes above $150,000, aides said. Individuals with incomes up to $87,000 and couples up to $174,000 would get partial rebates. The caps are higher for those with children.

Well, if the bloody politicians want to play it like that then I, ala John Galt, will REFUSE to buy and goods or services with my vast disposable income from now until January 1st, 2009. I shall not buy a new 52″ LCD TV nor shall I buy a 24″ iMac nor shall I buy Mac-mini’s, iPods, nor any other gizmo for the rest of the year!

As a matter of fact, I will now DEFINITELY take my next vacation outside the US and I will definitely fly on British Airways or Air France or some other non-US based carrier and make sure it is an AirBus plane while I’m at it.

After busting my arse for the last year, my reward for all my hard work is to subsidize the sea of mediocrity in America. What a cruel joke!

Brothers in arms, I ask that you join me in shunting these inept politicians by refusing to buy any consumer goods over the next 12 months! Viva la liberta!

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It’s very tragic that a bridge in Minneapolis collapsed yesterday. Oddly enough, I wrote this post almost exactly a year ago concerned about the sad deteriorating state of infrastructure in America in my “John Galt” series of posts.

I even went so far as to specifically state that bridges were in sad shape based on a 20/20 news program about the poor maintenance of the bridging system throughout the US. The problem doesn’t stop there though, Alaska Oil Pipeline is aging, power outages (energy shortages) black outs and rolling brown outs, etc. The estimated cost of repairing all of these infrastructure issues falls into the $1.6 trillion dollar range. Factor in 80 million boomers on the dole (social security, medicaid, medicare) and throw another $2 trillion into that fiasco along with the 500 billion (and climbing) “spent” in Iraq and you really have to wonder what kind of America your kids will grow up in.

The only thing you can do about it is to get rich as quickly as possible so you can buy yourself some options, perhaps options in a foreign country……by the way, Who is John Galt?

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This is my fourth post pulling recent headlines and comparing them to the scenario Ayn Rand paints in her book Atlas Shrugged. The first, second and third posts illustrated American Infrastructure calamities but today I will talk about Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez recently announced that he is going to nationalize the Telecomm and Power Industries in his country.

“We’re moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution,” Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his Cabinet. “We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We’re heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it.”

Hugo Chavez was a freely elected leader of Venezuela and the people there elected him to office so I can only surmise that they agree with his philosophy and ideology. We can already see, however, the immediate effect of his announcement. The exchanges stopped trading some of Venezuela’s key stocks and capital will start fleeing the country. Chavez has made similar statements with regards to the oil industry and capital may flee those industries as well. What will be left in its place is desolation and poverty similar to what you see in Cuba.

I can only hope that a Juan Galt lives somewhere in Venezuela. Quien es Juan Galt?

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