Financial Mines

We’ve run two pretty disturbing stories about Greenwich business in the past week. First, the unemployment rate is now 6 percent in town, well above the norm when every investment banker and bond trader has a job.

And the office vacancy rate has nearly doubled from 9.75 percent to 18.92 percent, the likely culprit being disappearing and downsizing financial firms.

Even Best & Co., the kids’ clothing store on Greenwich Avenue has gone bankrupt and closed.

Is this recession a sea change for Greenwich? Will further changes in the financial industry — sure to come with a federal government that is planning more regulation — cause more job losses and empty offices in town? What institutions will be next to fall?

It’s a little hard to believe that some people, including supposedly skeptical journalists, took seriously the purchase of WWE’s Monday Night Raw by Donald Trump. Several news outlets reported it as fact without the simplest of fact-checking, which would have revealed it was all for show. Fox Business News even devoted a segment to the announcement and whether it violated SEC regulations.

Come on. Anybody with half a brain and a TV set know that the Donald and Vince McMahon were once again playing out a story line. If you must dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, the press release came not from publicly traded WWE but from the USA Network, which carries RAW. The press release in addition did not come through the news service that carries all of the WWE’s financial information. And Finally, the WWE did not file an 8K with the SEC, as it surely would do in the case of the material sale of an asset.

And today come the news that Mr. McMahon fired the Donald after Trump refunded the price of everyone’s ticket to last night’s RAW, obviously abrogating his fiduciary responsiblity … but to what, since he supposedly owned RAW. The WWE said, however, the he doubled his money selling RAW back to McMahon after a week of ownership. It sure was fun while it lasted.

Trumping the WWE

The latest update on Donald Trump buying RAW from the WWE has Trump landing his fancy helicopter atop the company’s headquarters on East Main Street in Stamford.

Those from outside the city may not know it, but it is against Stamford ordinance to land a helicopter here. I personally can’t believe that Mr. Trump or Mr. McMahon would flout the law so blatantly, as this photo from a WWE blog seems to show.  Could it be something more sinister? Could this photo be a fake? Would the WWE go so far as to portray anything that isn’t 100 percent for real? Nah, I can’t believe that either.

The last time that Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment got involved with Donald Trump, dollar bills floated down on the audience from the ceiling of the arena, heated rhetoric was exchanged publicly by Vince McMahon and The Donald over who first made gold of the phrase “you’re fired!” and a matched between proxy wrestlers for both principals ended up with Vince getting his head shaved in the Wrestlemania 23 ring.

Yesterday’s announcement that Trump has purchased WWE’s popular RAW program heralds a likely new match between the impresarios, who were once Greenwich neighbors. We’ll see where the drama takes us over the next few RAW episodes.

For anyone inclined to believe the announcement, suffice it to say that it came outside of regular WWE channels — the ones used to report earnings, executive hires and the like. Also, it was not accompanied by an 8K filing reporting a material event by the publicly traded WWE to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and thus to its shareholders.

So lighten up, everybody. All the world’s a stage when you’re Donald Trump and Vince McMahon. Who knows, maybe Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California fired last week by The Donald, will turn up in the RAW ring for some appropriate mayhem.

So some kids over at Greenwich High took first place in Connecticut for the fall 2008 in the Stock Market Game, a national simulation that gives a team $100,000 play dollars to make-believe buy and sell equities.

With their $100,000, these enterprising teens ended up with $267,553.64 in the course of three months last fall. The DJIA was hanging in at around 11,000 back in September. By the end of December it had crashed to the 8,600 range.

Now in the land of hedge funds and investment bank presidents, financial advice is pretty easy to come by. This is a town were some folks make a billion dollars a year after all. But these kids beat the returns of some of the craftiest investors in the world — folks who happen to live right down the street from them.

I don’t know if they shorted the whole market, or if their strategy was long-short, event-driven or whatever, but if they’d like to start their own hedge fund, I think Alexander Scheetz, Alexandra Scott, Sean Broderick and Thomas Murphy would have no problem finding some qualified investors.

Congratulations, kids, and teacher Jan Reid. And do you have any hot tips?

News is the federal government, in its continued spree of printing money, is considering new incentives for car buyers of up to $4,500. The “cash for clunkers” plan would grant tax credits for purchasers of vehicles substantially more fuel-efficient than their current cars or light trucks.

Essentially, it’s putting money once again into the Toyota (or Honda, Mini-cooper, Kia – you name it) treasury and will do little to help the American car makers that you and I are bailing out of bankruptcy.

As a taxpayer/owner of General Motors, I’d like to see the incentives skewed at getting it and Chrysler back on their feet, rather than subsidizing the sales of cars that are built offshore. Not that I have a problem with foreign brands as such, I’d just like not to throw another roadblock in the way of the American industry’s recovery.

I first got a little angry seeing that my Connecticut tax dollars were being spent on Toyota Priuses for the state government’s motor pool. The state could have bought Ford Focuses or Chevy Cobalts and gotten sufficiently green mileage numbers — lower list prices too, which might have negated any fuel savings from the offshore hybrids.

The government is tossing around billions, a lot of which have gone overseas to pay the bad bets of AIG, etc. Using the incentives to boost Focus and Cobalt (and Malibu Hybrid, Saturn Vue hybrid and other good domestic vehicles) sales would be a good way to make me feel my tax dollars are being spent somewhat wisely.

The apple sometimes falls farther from the tree than you might expect.

 Take the case of Bruce Marks, profiled a few Wednesdays ago on the cover of the Wall Street Journal and beaten up many times since in its letters to the editor. This activist financier who grew up in backcountry Greenwich runs NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, which advocates for affordable housing for lower-income people.  NACA has been very forward in the current financial crisis helping clients win mortgage refinancings and loan modifications so they can keep their homes.

Marks, admittedly a bit of a terrorist, puts the blame squarely on the leaders of big banks and mortgage companies for the subprime crisis and economic meltdown. He recently led a bus tour of executive homes in Greenwich and Westchester County to show off the residences of those he holds responsible.  Some of these were probably within bullhorn distance of where he grew up.  At the home of one executive, he and demonstrators that NACA bused into town filled the lawn with furniture to show the exec what an eviction looked like. 

I’m sure that Dick Fuld and Sandy Weill and Brady Dougan and the other bankers of Greenwich feel somewhat betrayed by Marks, who grew up in their midst.  But I met his lovely mom at a backcountry association meeting a year ago, and I know that at least one person in Greenwich read that day’s Wall Street Journal with pride. 

Hollywood is taking note of your plight, albeit in a comic, fictionalized fashion:
The movie to be released on the day Bernie Madoff will be
sentenced on June 29th.

Click here for a link to a preview of the movie: www.GetRichQuickFlick.com

New Mockumentary Lampoons Ponzi Scheme Rip-Offs Like Madoff’s

Change Your Life! To Be Released The Same Day
Scammer Bernie Madoff Faces Sentencing

www.GetRichQuickFlick.com

(Los Angeles, California) – We’ve all heard the phrase, “get rich or die
trying” right? Now a soon-to-be-released mockumentary movie is altering that
mantra to say “get rich or die laughing” about it. Change Your Life! is an
independent comedy about get-rich-quick schemes directed & co-written by
comedian Adam Christing.  Christing, who once got burnt himself by a network
marketing Ponzi scheme, says many Americans are now broke or in debt because
of get-rich-quick syndrome and he created the faux-film to show just how
ridiculous these scams and scammers can be.

The funny-money movie spoof has been two years in the making and will be
released on DVD on June 29th — the same day that Bernie Madoff faces up to
150 years in prison.  Madoff pleaded guilty to running the biggest Ponzi
scheme in history after cheating investors out of approximately 65 billion
dollars. “It’s not just Madoff,” says Christing.  “People have been ripped
off by multi-level marketing scams, the Nigerian e-mail hoax, even greedy
ministers.”  Christing’s film makes fun of all of the above and also pokes
fun at the best-selling instant-riches book The Secret.

The Ponzi scheme perpetrator in Change Your Life! is “Simon Martinez” played
by veteran actor Tony Plana.  Plana has played the villain in shows like 24,
but is currently cast as the loving Dad in Ugly Betty on NBC.  Christing
says that Plana’s money-grabbing character is a funny cross between Bernie
Madoff and motivational speaker Tony Robbins. In one scene, a character
playing a potential investor says, “I think this is a pyramid scheme.” The
greedy salesman character replies, “Oh, definitely not. Here have a business
card” — a business card that looks exactly like a pyramid.

And because he says the government isn’t bailing out most Americans,
Christing wants to help – or at least joke about it.  Christing is giving
away funny-money Trillion Dollar Bills with the first 10,000 copies of
Change Your Life! which will be available via Amazon.com and on the film’s
website:  www.GetRichQuickFlick.com

Copies of the movie can be purchased on the site for $14.95:
www.GetRichQuickFlick.com

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