Keep in mind that the Setai San Diego has NO relation to the dope Setai Miami Beach. They only share the name (who knows for how long).
In fact, the Setai Miami Beach people have gone as far as dissing the Setai San Diego saying it “cheapens the Setai Brand” and dissing San Diego saying that “they had no interest in entering the San Diego market, and the only reason they did is that the developer promised them Larry Flynt’s building in Beverly Hills”. (I am paraphrasing).
I have been following the Setai San Diego and so far it seems like a debacle and they are miss-timing the market to say the least.
The Setai San Diego is “a striking essay in aluminium, zinc and stainless mesh. You might want to rob a bank for the Grand Penthouse, which will open in February: at 5,000 sq ft, with a 4,000 sq ft terrace, it’ll be the largest on the West Coast – hence the £13,400 a night tag. “That doesn’t include tax [£1,675],” we’re told, “but it does include breakfast.” Pray it’s all-you-can-eat. ”
It might seem like there is no down side to the Down Economy. But there is: Girl Backlog.
It is so easy to swoop fly girls these days (primarily from lack of competition and rivals falling by the wayside) and “lead generation” and Number Crunching nights are so effective, that it simply is impossible to swoop all the girls you meet in a seven day week. (And lets face it, not to be cocky but I will state the obvious with pockets thick: My style is so mean and my swagger is vicious on girls delicious.)
I still haven’t launched calls to girls I met back at The Del Mar Racetrack back in mid July.
But this is, as they say, a good problem to have, Oh my Brothers.
Maybe we can get Obama install a 10 day week.
He is a smoker isn’t he?
He should understand.
Might help the Down Economy too. Somehow.
Even though I love it.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
Squat, bull-necked and sullen-looking, Enrique Portocarrero hardly seems a dashing character out of a Jules Verne science fiction novel.
But law enforcement officers here have dubbed him “Captain Nemo,” after the dark genius of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” They say the 45-year-old has designed and built as many as 20 fiberglass submarines, strange vessels with the look of sea creatures, for drug traffickers to haul cocaine from this area of southern Colombia to Central America and Mexico.
Capping a three-year investigation that involved U.S. and British counter-narcotics agents, Colombia’s FBI equivalent, the Department of Administrative Security, arrested Portocarrero last month in the violent port city of Buenaventura, where he allegedly led a double life as a shrimp fisherman.
A day later, they descended on Portocarrero’s hidden “shipyard” in a mangrove swamp 20 miles south of here and destroyed two of the vessels, which police say were each capable of carrying 8 tons of cargo.
“He had a marvelous criminal vision,” Colombian navy Capt. Luis German Borrero said. “He introduced innovations such as a bow that produced very little wake, a conning tower that rises only a foot above the water and a valve system that enables the crew to scuttle the sub in 10 minutes. He is very ingenious.”
Authorities say they know little about Portocarrero except that he was arrested in 2003 on drug charges and soon released, a fact he relayed with a smirk when he was nabbed last month. Most important, he once worked at a dry dock in Buenaventura, where he apparently learned his craft.
Portocarrero was living well. Police, who reported finding $200,000 hidden in the spare tire of his car, say he had invested his reputed $1-million-per-vessel fees in the purchase of five shrimp boats.
Sometimes the creativity that blistering hot weather breeds is truly mind-boggling: Pallazo Versace Hotel has decided to create a temperature controlled beach extending out and around its new hotel in Dubai, so that the “top people” (ugh) don’t burn their feet.
“We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” says Soheil Abedian, president of Palazzo Versace. Of course, it’s “pure luxury” that the super rich want. REALLY!?
Climate change, eco-tourism, environment, throw them all out the window and you get Dubai, money, and ludicrous.
They’re going to put heat-absorbing pipes under the sand, refrigerate the hotel swimming pool, and have giant air coolers to keep the guests cool in Dubai’s scorching 104F-122F summer heat. The thermostats used in the system will be computer controlled. The hotel is planned to be ready by 2010.
Call it competition, call it thrill, call it whack-job, call it destructive tourism for the filthy rich; do these “top people” for whom this barbarity is being created, care? What is the point? Oh tourism $$$ of course!
Well, environmentalists are more than shrugging: “Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” says Rachael Noble of Tourism Concern. I share the disgust in that statement.
I was a little slow on this one. I have been spending time going to charity events, donating toys for kids, and seeing nightclubs with no one stepping to Bottle Service. And swooping a fly Chilanga Mexican girl. All of which makes me happy.
Anyway, here it is:
“I still can’t quite get my head around the enormity of the numbers in the Madoff case. For one thing,
Madoff’s investment advisory business served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management.
Now that’s what I call high net worth individuals! And then you read the indictment, and you think you know what to expect, until:
On Dec. 10, 2008, Madoff informed the Senior Employees, in substance, that his investment advisory business was a fraud. Madoff stated that he was “finished,” that he had “absolutely nothing,” that “it’s all just one big lie,” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme. Madoff stated that the business was insolvent, and that it had been for years. Madoff also stated that he estimated the losses from this fraud to be at least approximately $50 billion.
Yep, $50 billion. In other words, that $17.1 billion is only the beginning: presumably Madoff’s clients had invested much more than that, and Madoff was sending statements to them, on the one hand, while reporting different numbers to the SEC, on the other — none of which were true.
If the total losses are really $50 billion, that means that the average loss to Madoff’s clients is a minimum of $2 billion, and perhaps as much as $4.5 billion. After all, in a Ponzi scheme, everybody comes out fine, except the last people out: the 11 to 25 clients still with Madoff to this day.
The one thing this does do is get me a little bit more comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein’s business plan of managing billionaires’ money. Clearly there are actually quite a lot of people with a few billion dollars to invest and who feel perfectly comfortable entrusting it to individuals like Madoff and Epstein. Who knew?
Right now, there are a handful people whose world has suddenly been turned upside-down: who have, overnight, suddenly lost billions of dollars of dynastic wealth to a Wall Street con man. I’m sure that their names will appear sooner or later. But there really is no precedent that I can think of: when has one man ever managed to steal $50 billion dollars? If the $100 million Harry Winston heist in Paris was the “steal of the century”, what’s this?”
I have said it before, that G’s and heistmen don’t make the long coin these days. It’s the “tech crims”. It’s the Bankers. It’s the Politicians. It’s the Lawyers. They are the real crooks.
Sometimes I feel like I am being hustled only knowing half the Game.
But my crew hanging with the Wu-Tang Clan, sitting ringside watching Manny Pacquiao destroy Oscar De La Hoya , and swooping the above mentioned Chilanga has softened the blow.
So to speak.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
