When I went for a couple of sweatshirts I bought American --
James Perse, a new, chic, LA clothing company successfully competing with
delocalized corporate behemoths. It's quite a shock to see that label Made in
USA instead of -- well, it's inevitable -- Made in China.
LA, of course, is as much in Asia as in America. My dry cleaner is Cantonese; my local bakery in Brentwood is Korean; my Thai curry fix is still there in Thai town. But I was particularly keen on meeting Asia's 1/10th of the 1%, for whom California remains The Promised Land, essentially thanks to Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
And then I found him, Mr 1% China, on Rodeo Drive, gleefully photographing a spectacular black-and-yellow Bugatti Veyron 16.4 along with his quite extended family.
He was a successful businessman from Xiamen, sporting a Hollywood baseball cap and carrying a black crocodile Chanel bag worth the entire GDP of northern Syria (which, by the way, is sending prospective political refugees to California in increasing numbers).
I
asked Mr 1% China about Mitt's announced currency/trade war against the Middle
Kingdom. His laughter boomed all the way to the canyons and way deep into the
Pacific.
Rodeo, Beverly and Canon Drive are living demonstrations of the top 1/10th of 1% rolling in dough. They are back to 25% of the US's total income; that includes a sizeable lot of Tehrangeles -- the Iranian-American diaspora.
Tax rates for the 1/10th of the 1% are lower than ever; so let's party like it's ... 2007. At least in California, the overwhelming majority -- following Hollywood's dictate -- votes Obama. Translation, Thai-style: same same but different.
It's pivoting time
Crisscrossing Southern California, one suspects Mitt Romney may have employed a secret Hollywood hustler as ghost adviser; after all he's essentially paying his nearly $5 trillion-in-tax-cuts plan with a platinum card. Sounds like those Hollywood projects which are forever "in development."
A Tax Policy Center (TPC) nonpartisan study has revealed that Romney's way to make his 20% below George W Bush-era levels tax cut plan "revenue neutral" -- which would be to cap deductions at $17,000 -- would raise just $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
The TPC had to apologize for Mitt's trademark lack of specifics on just about everything regarding his plan, stressing that makes the analysis imperfect.
After Asia Times Online reported it last Thursday (see Mitt the Binder, Asia Times Online, October 19, 2012) the New York Times and other US websites are also waking up to Mitt's economic hit man, Glenn Hubbard.
It's never enough to remember that professor Hubbard was key in justifying the humongous mortgage derivatives bubble at the heart of the Dubya-sanctioned Great Recession; call him the Toxic Derivative King. Palpable consequences include an astronomic $7 trillion -- and counting -- depreciation of home values, the over $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and perennial high unemployment, which the Romney campaign describes, with a straight face, as an Obama concoction.
And yes; Hubbard was the ultimate architect of the Bush tax cuts. In terms of getting a cut himself, he is no slouch; only in 2011 he pocketed a cool $785,000 for sitting on three different corporate boards and as a consultant to Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
Now imagine Hubbard as Mitt's Secretary of the Treasury. Couple his financial weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) with Iran's non-existent WMDs as the pretext for the next US Middle East war, plus this three-month-old Los Angeles Times bombshell about Romney financing Bain Capital with shady foreign funds and boasting returns worthy of a major crime syndicate, and we got the perfect plot advancement for our LA noir screenplay.
To counter so much darkness, the Roving Eyemobile extended its trail -- with a glance at Camp Pendleton where Marines get ready for that "pivoting" towards Asia-Pacific -- all the way to the quintessential industrial-military complex town, San Diego, for a long, uplifting conversation with a blessed soul; Tom Feeley, the founder and editor of Information Clearing House -- one of a select few, absolutely indispensable websites to learn about assorted Empire business.
Tom's newsletter is now reaching 79,000 global daily readers -- and counting, a great deal of them US expats quite familiar with Empire shenanigans. It doesn't take a James Joyce to truly appreciate an Irishman's conversation; ours, in a word, was priceless. We agreed that the whole geopolitical groove as it's moving increasingly resembles a Beckett play, minus the hieratic elegance.
LA, of course, is as much in Asia as in America. My dry cleaner is Cantonese; my local bakery in Brentwood is Korean; my Thai curry fix is still there in Thai town. But I was particularly keen on meeting Asia's 1/10th of the 1%, for whom California remains The Promised Land, essentially thanks to Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
And then I found him, Mr 1% China, on Rodeo Drive, gleefully photographing a spectacular black-and-yellow Bugatti Veyron 16.4 along with his quite extended family.
He was a successful businessman from Xiamen, sporting a Hollywood baseball cap and carrying a black crocodile Chanel bag worth the entire GDP of northern Syria (which, by the way, is sending prospective political refugees to California in increasing numbers).
Rodeo, Beverly and Canon Drive are living demonstrations of the top 1/10th of 1% rolling in dough. They are back to 25% of the US's total income; that includes a sizeable lot of Tehrangeles -- the Iranian-American diaspora.
Tax rates for the 1/10th of the 1% are lower than ever; so let's party like it's ... 2007. At least in California, the overwhelming majority -- following Hollywood's dictate -- votes Obama. Translation, Thai-style: same same but different.
It's pivoting time
Crisscrossing Southern California, one suspects Mitt Romney may have employed a secret Hollywood hustler as ghost adviser; after all he's essentially paying his nearly $5 trillion-in-tax-cuts plan with a platinum card. Sounds like those Hollywood projects which are forever "in development."
A Tax Policy Center (TPC) nonpartisan study has revealed that Romney's way to make his 20% below George W Bush-era levels tax cut plan "revenue neutral" -- which would be to cap deductions at $17,000 -- would raise just $1.7 trillion over 10 years.
The TPC had to apologize for Mitt's trademark lack of specifics on just about everything regarding his plan, stressing that makes the analysis imperfect.
After Asia Times Online reported it last Thursday (see Mitt the Binder, Asia Times Online, October 19, 2012) the New York Times and other US websites are also waking up to Mitt's economic hit man, Glenn Hubbard.
It's never enough to remember that professor Hubbard was key in justifying the humongous mortgage derivatives bubble at the heart of the Dubya-sanctioned Great Recession; call him the Toxic Derivative King. Palpable consequences include an astronomic $7 trillion -- and counting -- depreciation of home values, the over $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and perennial high unemployment, which the Romney campaign describes, with a straight face, as an Obama concoction.
And yes; Hubbard was the ultimate architect of the Bush tax cuts. In terms of getting a cut himself, he is no slouch; only in 2011 he pocketed a cool $785,000 for sitting on three different corporate boards and as a consultant to Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.
Now imagine Hubbard as Mitt's Secretary of the Treasury. Couple his financial weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) with Iran's non-existent WMDs as the pretext for the next US Middle East war, plus this three-month-old Los Angeles Times bombshell about Romney financing Bain Capital with shady foreign funds and boasting returns worthy of a major crime syndicate, and we got the perfect plot advancement for our LA noir screenplay.
To counter so much darkness, the Roving Eyemobile extended its trail -- with a glance at Camp Pendleton where Marines get ready for that "pivoting" towards Asia-Pacific -- all the way to the quintessential industrial-military complex town, San Diego, for a long, uplifting conversation with a blessed soul; Tom Feeley, the founder and editor of Information Clearing House -- one of a select few, absolutely indispensable websites to learn about assorted Empire business.
Tom's newsletter is now reaching 79,000 global daily readers -- and counting, a great deal of them US expats quite familiar with Empire shenanigans. It doesn't take a James Joyce to truly appreciate an Irishman's conversation; ours, in a word, was priceless. We agreed that the whole geopolitical groove as it's moving increasingly resembles a Beckett play, minus the hieratic elegance.
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