To our friends and clients –
- Ted Nugent is a great American success story, some would say he is a bit obsessed with the second amendment to the constitution, but one thing this guy does not lack is Passion. If you don’t have this type of Passion for what you are doing – well ok – how about half his Passion, you really should think about why. We love this interview. If you don’t get Goosebumps when he says, “Don’t tread on me…” we will give you your money back. [watch now]
- By the way, we heard Evan Smith speak here lately about his new venture the Texas Tribune, fairly easy to see the Passion he has brought to the table and why they have been already exceeded expectations. Check out [their website] to get informed about all things that matter to Texas politics.
- Did you notice that Google earned over $2Billion last quarter? This company did not even exist a few years back, creative destruction is alive and well. Notice the smartest people in the world still come here to start their companies?
- Next month is Presidents day. It suddenly occurred to us that George Washington was the only President that didn’t have someone to blame. Go figure!
- Our relationship mantra resulted in our best month of closings was December 2009. We find that clients want more than just money; they need solutions that require customizationfor their specific challenges. In most instances, banks cannot or will not structure something that is specifically designed. The mood in most banks is very conservative and will not loosen up for a long while, especially given the recent regulatory scrutiny.
- Our experience has been that banks are renewing lines of credit with caution. Our advice: don’t wait until the last minute to call your bank about your line like in years past. It’s a new world, be proactive and prepare for more questions and scrutiny or just call Far West Capital.
- Do you know who Butch Ford is? He is the head football coach of the Celina Bobcats in Celina, Texas and the former coach of one Adam James, son of ESPN’s Craig James. Here is a quote from Butch, “When Adam went to high school here, there were two coaches, me and Craig James, Craig James coached Adam and I coached the rest of the team. I was NEVER so happy to see one boy graduate!” Sounds like if he had a shed, he may have locked him in there.
There are a couple of Red Raiders that work for Far West Capital and here is our take on the whole situation (this was written pre-Tuberville, so our wounds have healed a bit with that great hire). [read blog]
Here is a list of CEOs that make $1 per year.
- Steve Jobs, Apple
- Jerry Yang, Yahoo
- Vikram Pandit, Citigroup
- Ed Liddy, AIG
- Richard Fairbank, Capital One
- Richard Kinder, Kinder Morgan
- Eric Schmidt, Google
- Larry Ellison, Oracle
- Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Google
- Jen Hsun-Huang, NVIDIA
All of these guys are incredibly wealthy and most have made
their bones at the companies they now work for, do these “gestures” really mean anything to investors or employees? Vikram Pandit took $1 as salary but purchased a private plane to cruise around in, how is that for austerity? Window dressing crap if you ask us.
What this chart says for your business, is that with the electorate firmly focused on jobs and the economy and 61% saying drop Health Care (Rasmussen) gridlock could actually be a good thing.
- Remember when Ronald Reagan said, “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.” We were glad to see Massachusetts figure that out.
- One of the drivers of the current Recovery is our Real Net Exports, the last 20 years we have had massive trade imbalance buying much more than we sold and one of the consequences of that is we raised the standard of living for those countries that we bought from. Now we have little mini US consumers all over the world buying our stuff, driving fancier cars, eating better foods, trying like hell to live the dream of suburbia like we do, looks like that was a stimulus plan that is now working for us at the right time. Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, et.al would be proud.
The 2010 Winter Olympics start next month. The Olympics make us think of one of our all time favorite movies, “Cool Runnings”, about the true story of the first Jamaican Bobsled team to make it to the Olympics. The movie is has something for everyone…dreaming big, goal setting, adversity, work ethic, teamwork, going against the odds and believing when everyone else laughs at your dream.
- We will be watching our favorite Olympic winter sport…Curling! The Scots founded Curling in the 1540’s and played on ice by two four men teams. Interesting fact is that there are no judges in the Curling competition.
- The number of U.S. businesses with Hispanic owners grew at three times the national average from 1997 to 2002 to 1.6 million businesses in 2002, a 31 percent increase from five years earlier. We will say it again; don’t ignore this segment when looking for more business.
- Haiti is an unbelievable tragedy and the outpouring of support from the USA shows that we know how to give, we prefer organizations like Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group. They have many years of experience in Haiti with many Haitian staffers and know where the needs still are. [website]
- We went and listened to the Angelou Economics forecast for 2010 – 2012, overall very encouraging stuff, however the keynote speaker did remind us that we should never confuse Enthusiasm with Accuracy. We have linked you to his presentation which contains some great nuggets. It was well worth the price of admission to go hear these positive thoughts. [download pdf here]
- With all the talk about “Going Green and Social Investing”, we thought we would give you another perspective. Look up the fund VICE – symbol VICEX. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in equity securities of companies that derive a significant portion of their revenues from alcohol, tobacco, gaming and defense/aerospace. Obviously, we are not recommending or giving investment advice but, drinking, gambling, smoking, and killing people deserve a look as well.