“The more you conform, the less likely you are to be truly interesting.” – MPM
Most people focus on role models, but it’s far more effective to do just the opposite. Find anti-models—people you don’t want to resemble. Now, who’s the ideal anti-model? The average guy. Think about it:
They go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called “work” in a cubicle box: they drive to the grocery store to buy food in a box; they go to the gym in a box; they talk about thinking “outside the box”, and when they die they are put in a box.
The collective status quo (school, jobs, a.k.a. the system) wants to box you in. They want you to blend in with the crowd. They want to strip you of your strength, masculinity, and individuality. It’s gotten so bad in recent years that “fitting into the mold” now means physical, mental, and emotional castration. Do everything you can to avoid this. Don’t cave in to the mediocre and the uninspired.
Instead, make a commitment to excellence. Make yourself a standout and command attention. This has its obvious benefits. First and foremost, it signals that you are a person of exceptional ability and high quality. Second, it shows you to be a tastemaker of resolute individuality. Third, it increases your social standing. People want to be near other people who give off positive vibes; a buzzing, effervescent state of mind can work wonders.
“You have approach girls with snap, swagger and energy. You need to have a purpose and pitch something that is exciting, fresh and unique.” – MPM (The Six Elements of Picking Up Girls)
When you make a commitment to excellence, though, you’ll inevitably run into some resistance. But when you’re facing your “competition”, remember this: What fools call a waste of time is most often the best investment. Most “regular” guys don’t have a clue about things like custom suits, swooping model girls, intercontinental travel, speaking multiple languages, gourmet foods, big bankrolls, boutique hotels, swigging Barolo, and smoking Davidoffs—it’s all a little bit beyond their comprehension because it’s fine living in another dimension. Sure, these things aren’t “regular”, but who cares? A preoccupation with fitting in is the main obstacle to a noble, elegant, and heroic life.
“The finest moments in my life have consisted of a Custom Italian suit, a full-bodied red, a key to a penthouse suite in my pocket, a thick bankroll, a booth in a Michelin starred restaurant, a beautiful girl looking at me, hypnotized, and a lit cigarette dangling from my mouth. Moments like these are what Life is all about (and of course what happens succeeding). The rest is just bullshit.” – MPM (Smoking and Liberty for All: Pro-Smoking Quotes)
Trends for 2010: The next decade will be won with custom suits, urban adaptability and international mobility.
“You might not always be the smartest, richest, or best looking person in a room—but you can be the Sharpest Dressed. Work on the things you can control. Believe me, if you know my Tailor you can be the best dressed in any room you step into.” – MPM
The custom suit can play many different roles and, chameleon-like, can mean different things in different situations. Retro or futuristic, subtle or outrageous, the suit is the ultimate in adaptability. Movie stars and rock stars, heroes and villains, philanthropists and gangsters – all these men and many, many more have dressed to impress.
Going suited down is the best way to avoid blending in with the “casual crowd”. Wearing a hand-rolled Borrelli tie or a flashy, flagrant and far from low-key pocket square by Etro will always separate you from the status quo. They say you never judge a book by its cover, but you do take someone more seriously when they are suitably attired. “If you are wearing a suit and tie, doors open for you. If you show up casual, you aren’t going to get into certain places.”
This trend is ripe for 2010. Adam King, co-owner of the bespoke suit company King & Allen in London, says he has seen a twenty per cent increase in first-time customers: “People who wouldn’t previously have worn a bespoke suit, or even a suit at all, are coming to us because they want to sharpen their image.” Custom shirts by Charvet and Tmoro Benson Leather shoes by Tod’s never hurt anyone, either.
Economic growth depends on productivity, and the most productive people are often the most mobile. Every country, region and city is engaged in a global battle for talent. The most creative people can live more or less where they want. They therefore tend to pick places that offer not only material comfort but an upbeat atmosphere as well. This makes life more fun. It also fosters progress. When clever people cluster, they can bounce ideas off each other. This is why rents are so high in Manhattan (it is also why there has been a population surge in Singapore). Robert Lucas, a Nobel economics laureate, argues that the clustering of talent is the primary driver of economic growth By almost any measure, the larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth creation per person. This is unlike small town America, where low-density sprawl and unsophisticated employees suffocate the postindustrial economy. Place still matters in the modern day—and the competitive advantage of the world’s most successful cities is growing, not shrinking. This is a trend that’s on the rise.
A crucial contributory factor to the development of global cities is the arrival of new talent to replenish their energy (never underestimate the need to replenish: Always Drink Fresh Blood). In short, cities’ diverse economic and social structures are the true engines of growth.
The jostling of many different professions and different types of people, all in a dense environment, is an essential spur to innovation—to the creation of things that are truly new. And innovation, in the long run, is what keeps cities vital and relevant. Remember, if you don’t adapt you become extinct.
“You want to be “Worldly”. Know about current events. Get “inside information” Everyone, and I mean everyone, finds Travel and Foreign lands interesting. At least anyone you want to get to know.” – MPM
While there are no hard numbers, more Americans seem to be trying to qualify for additional passports. They want to make sure they have two passports based on nationality because there are numerous benefits. Among those is the ability to work without restriction in various countries, particularly with passports from countries in the E.U. Dual nationals are doing better than ever, especially now that the E.U. has grown in size and scope. Multiple passports are also a way of hiding where one has been, which has obvious advantages.
Anyone considering dual passports should think first of the tax consequences, though–you can get certain exemptions because you’re a U.S. citizen. However, given the high tax rates in the U.S., a full-blown conversion to another nationality wouldn’t be such a bad idea. International mobility goes hand in hand with capitalizing on urban environments, making travel a priority.
This leads to the Five Flags Theory (think of it as the original “4-Hour Workweek“). Perpetual travelers are those who live in such a way that they are not considered a legal resident of any of the countries in which they spend time. By lacking a legal permanent residence status, they seek to avoid the legal obligations that accompany residency, such as taxes on income. Macao is an innovative move, and Buenos Aires is an opportunity waiting to unfold.
Hope all is well. I dropped a guest manifesto in Q3 2009, but would cherish the opportunity to provide your readership with some additional insight into my lifestyle. For example, the itinerary below represents a typical night in the life of a certified, card-carrying G, and for that matter, a typical night for me.
8pm: Break bread at Don Peppe in Ozone Park. Table for one. Sleeves rolled up. Wearing my napkin like a bib. The linguini manichiatta can shut down Rao’s. Lead walls make the cell reception tough. Fed bugs in the walls make my cell phone unnecessary.
9:30pm: Push the Vantage into Manhattan. I’m driving 40 in the fast lane. They can wait. Bumping Built Only 4 Cuban Linx. I’m in no rush.
10:30pm: Throw down chips at Cips downtown. Upstairs getting dap from select clientele (sheiks, shoguns, heads of state, high-ranking NATO officials, others). Don’t think I’ve ever even been downstairs.
10:35pm: Pour out a little Screaming Eagle for my lost soldiers. We miss you, Giuseppe. Come home soon.
12am: Catch mad texts from club-going elite. Avenue is apparently the spot tonight. But Real G’s don’t do champagne sparklers. Flickering lights make me think of squad cars.
12:20pm: Ultra-luxury subterranean poker room/gentleman’s club/cigar lounge located at [UNDISCLOSED] with Russian oligarchs and other high net worth bauces. Negotiating/bartering with Chris and Nick Candy for their spot in the Monaco. I want to close before Grand Prix.
12:45am: Play some poker. Catch the homie Oleg (Deripaska) on the river. I have some shorting to do on Monday.
1:30am: Dip to a lower east side (authentic) hipster nightspot and efficiently scoop a fly Asian bartender that I have been casually twisting for a few days.
2:30am: Black car into Brooklyn. Catch dome on the way. Driver doesn’t mind. Park and wait outside the park at PS 117 at Franklin and Willoughby. Have the driver fetch a quarter water, while a Sotheby’s night watchman delivers blueprints and briefs me on various security measures.
4:30am: Black car back to my Tribeca trap. T-bone steak, cheese, eggs, and Welcher’s grape. Actually, more like something from Eric Ripert. Or that pistachio and rosemary shrimp from Shun Li. And no Slugger, you’re not gonna find that one on the menu.
5am: Burn Swisher Sweets with the oriental in the rooftop jacuzzi. She looks like Chun Li from Street Fighter.
6am: I be digging her out
6:15am: I be kickin her out
7am: Count both blessings and ten crack commandments before laying head on trillion count Egyptian cotton. Burner under the pillow. Sleep with one eye open.
Last night I took a trip down to Miami to visit with Jim Rogers at a book signing for his most recent book entitled: “A Gift to My Children: A Father’s Lessons for Life and Investing.” After speaking briefly about his 3 year tour around the globe he spoke a little about the aforementioned book and took questions from the audience.
These are the general themes I took away in no particular order:
Jim said numerous times he is a terrible market timer, he went as far to say he’s not the worst in the room but the worst in the world…very humble.
While Jim’s primary residence is in Singapore he also has a dwelling here in Florida, what I found interesting is that he rents and does not own his home here in Florida. The fact that he sold a lavish residence in New York before the real estate crash and rents here in Florida may be that his timing is better in real estate.
Though he waited later than most, he stated one of his proudest accomplishments was having children. For one of the most successful investors in our time that speaks volumes about the father he most likely is.
Not only did he move his family to Singapore but his two daughters will be fluent in Mandarin and Spanish.
He did not go into specifics about his bank accounts but his two daughters have Swiss bank accounts, not accounts denominated in US dollars. What does that say about his feeling on the US dollar?
He has no short exposure in US Treasuries, currently he thinks the multi-decade long bull market in this complex is over and he believed he would be taking a hefty short position at some time in the future.
Jim Rogers: Audit the Fed, Then Abolish It
One of the questions from the audience pertained to getting an MBA. Jim’s response in so many words was that it would be a complete waste of money and time. He suggested traveling around the world would be a more valuable experience. He went as far to say that sitting in a hot tub in Boston one could learn more than going to some of the prestigious universities there.
Jim had little good to say about the current choices Central banks are making and implied serious inflation is all but inevitable. He expects rates to be much higher but gave little time frame. He said jokingly we may run out of trees if the printing presses continue to run at their current pace.
The only real estate advice I recall him saying is buying a farm in the Mid-west to take advantage of the boom he expects in Commodity prices.
Bull cycles in commodities in the past have lasted between 18 and 20 years. In his view we have another decade or so in the current cycle.
As a commodity trader, what I found most interesting was that in his jacket pocket he had a gold and silver coin and a sugar packet. This was probably to prove a point but it really hit home with me and other audience members.
Globe “Overdue For a Currency Crisis”; Why Jim Rogers Is Buying Dollars
Perhaps one of the most staggering things to me was how little of the general population was in that room, the US and around the globe that are investing in commodities. It will change and I believe those that exercise discipline in the next 5-10 years stand to deeply benefit.
Find attached some historical pricing on several commodities to put things in perspective on how low and how high prices have been in the past and where we sit today. These figures are not adjusted for inflation. Being Rogers is a terrible market timer he suggested looking at buying when prices are depressed and selling when prices are elevated.
Risk Disclosure: The risk of loss in trading commodity futures and options can be substantial. Past performance is no guarantee of future trading results.
What Recovery? America’s Problems “Getting Worse, Not Better,” Jim Rogers Says
September 2008, the credit markets freeze up and the world economy enters a tailspin. Here in the states we are stricken with the sharpest economic decline since the great depression. Job creation dries up as companies simultaneously engage in vigorous cost cutting (read headcount reduction). A year later the Fed speaks of green shoots and a jobless recovery (is this an oxymoron or what?). Our present official unemployment rate hovers around 10% but this figure excludes those who no longer qualify for unemployment benefits, those who have given up the job search, and those who never broke into the job market in the first place. Enter Generation G, the Lost Generation. This article shows how youth are disproportionately suffering the effects of the decline in the job market and highlights the lasting effects this can have on their professional lives.
Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.
Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts, to college grads, to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18%, from 13% a year ago.
For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.
Equally important, employers are likely to suffer from the scarring of a generation. The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow’s would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation. In Japan, which has been down this road since the early 1990s, workers who started their careers a decade or more ago and are now in their 30s account for 6 in 10 reported cases of depression, stress, and work-related mental disabilities, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.
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Only 46% of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest since the government began counting in 1948. The crisis is even hitting recent college graduates.
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Most analyses of youth employment focus on people aged 16 to 24, which includes everyone from high school dropouts to wet-behind-the-ears college grads. But in this era of rising educational requirements, some people don’t start their careers until their mid or late 20s—and these young college grads are taking it on the chin as well.
According to a BusinessWeek analysis, college graduates aged 22 to 27 have fared worse than their older educated peers during the downturn. Two years ago, 84.4% of young grads had jobs, only somewhat lower than the 86.8% figure for college graduates aged 28 to 50. Since then, the employment gap between the two groups has almost doubled.
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It seems strange at first blush that young people are the biggest victims of the current economic slump. One could easily imagine that companies in a recession would prefer to hire young people, who are cheap, and slough off older workers, who are expensive. But both employers and older workers are sitting tight, taking as few risks as possible in an uncertain environment. With no openings, employers are refusing even to look at the résumés of those on the outside looking in.
The sense of stasis in many Western countries is reminiscent of Japan, where talk of a lost generation has been around since as long ago as 1995. Some 3.1 million Japanese aged 25 to 34 work as temps or contract employees—up from 2 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Many Japanese blame the young people themselves, saying they are spoiled, alienated “freeters”—a term meaning job-hopping part-timers. But economist Souichi Ohta of Nagoya University argues that a big part of the problem is Japanese employers, who value long experience at their companies—which newcomers by definition don’t have.
Europe offers different lessons about what to avoid. In Spain, employers generally put older workers on long-term contracts that are hard to break. When demand slumps, they get rid of the younger workers, notes Alfredo Pastor, an economist at Spain’s IESE Business School and former Spanish Secretary of State for the Economy. That’s one reason Spain’s unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is a sky-high 39%. The rate is 24% in France and 19% in Britain.
Economists in several countries have studied the damage such high unemployment can cause. Kahn of Yale found that graduating from college in a bad economy has a long-lasting negative effect on wages. For each percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate, those who graduated during the recession earned 6% to 7% less in their first year of employment than their more fortunate counterparts. Even 15 years out of school, the recession graduates earned 2.5% less than those who began working in more prosperous times.
As we see here the negative effects of unemployment on youth entering the ostensible job market are both damaging and long-lasting. Their elders may scoff that they have no responsibilities or dependents, they aren’t approaching retirement, they don’t have seniority and should just suck it up. What they are saying in effect, is that they don’t matter, but they fail to realize they are creating a monster: disaffected youth. Youth are impressionable and their experiences at this phase of life can set them upon a path they will follow even when the job market improves. If there’s one thing we should recognize about humanity it’s that empathy is fostered only by reciprocity. Turn your back on this subset of the population and they will return the favor in kind. The fresh faced youth who enters the job market today might get a job and become a productive member of society. Theymight on the other hand experience months or years of rejection and poverty and hunger. Their optimism crushed and their sense of opportunities to come abolished, they will turn to crime to meet their needs. After all, it is well known that incidence of crime, particularly crime with financial motives is related to poverty and unemployment:
From 1979 to 1997, federal statistics show the inflation-adjusted wages of men without a college education fell by 20 percent. Despite declines after 1993, the property and violent crime rates (adjusted for changes in the country’s demographics) increased by 21 percent and 35 percent respectively during that period.
Weinberg said the strongest finding in this new study is a link between falling wages and property crimes such as burglary. However, the study also found a link between wages and some violent crimes – such as assault and robbery – in which money is often a motive.
The weakest relationship occurred with murder and rape – two crimes in which monetary gain is not usually a motive.
“The fact that murder and rape didn’t have much of a connection with wages and unemployment provides good evidence that many criminals are motivated by poor economic conditions to turn to crime,” Weinberg said.
The theory behind why crime increases in the wake of falling wages is simple, he said. “A decline in wages increases the relative payoff of criminal activity. It seems obvious that economic conditions should have an impact on crime, but few studies have systematically studied the issue.”
National crime rates rose from 1979 to 1992, when wages for less skilled men were falling. Crime declined from 1993 to 1997. This decline in crime corresponded to a leveling off and slight increase in the wages of unskilled workers across the nation in that period, Weinberg said.
Even for the gainfully employed the payoff is plummeting and the relative economic benefit of the thug life is increasing. We work harder and are more productive but compensation is flat to negative. These forces too will push more youth over to Generation G. (Click on Image below).
Add to this the widespread assimilation of thug culture, unprecedented access to guns and drugs, and it’s little stretch to see this time as the crucible forging a whole new generation of G’s. Our legion brethren are out there now, getting their knocks and exploring their alternative sources of income. Many of us already are leading double lives, chameleons by day if we are gainfully employed, but donning our G colors when dusk falls and hitting the streets in search of a better life and a little fun in the process. What’s not to love after all? The ladies love a G. Who wouldn’t love the easy money, the finer things in life and the unshakable respect that comes with being a cold-blooded G? It all adds up to a winning proposition compared with hunger and a life on the government dole begging for a shitty job at McDonald’s no?
People have always feared youth. They act differently, they don’t have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and the accepted social order. They are faster, more technologically adept, better educated and stronger. Now they are being actively denied entry into this domain. Now there is good reason to be afraid of turning a generation of youth into a lost generation, Generation G. Be afraid, be very afraid: The G is gonna get you. Our ranks are growing by the day. Watch for Generation G coming soon to a block near you.
