Hi Pezz, <<Today's report; Bought OPTK average @ 2.68>>
Today’s report: I have done absolutely nothing.
Hyperbolically, I am in heaven. More accurately, I am chilling out at the Shanghai Peace Hotel, a/k/a Sassoon Hotel (not Cathay as previously noted), circa 1929, situated on the waterfront known worldwide as the Shanghai Bund. More precisely, I am comfortably ensconced in an overstuffed armchair inside the mezzanine floor coffee shop overlooking the lobby of the hotel. The detailed woodwork throughout the hotel is elegant and grillwork lighting fixtures are stunning. They are cleaned up and refurbished, and are original. The bathroom in the guest rooms is the size of the whole room in some modern hotels. No, they do not make them in this way any more.
I am sitting here on my own, checked out of my room, waiting to proceed to airport, going to Changsha, a city up the river, deeper into the innards of the woken giant. I got a plate of ham and egg sandwich, sliced veggies, and a cup of hot chocolate next to my PC under the ancient coffee table lamp.
Just down the road from the Sassoon is AIG’s China HQ, reoccupied by the original owner after a 50-year absence, since the deep cleansing in 1949, not far away from the Shell House, the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation building, and the old stock exchange building, all circa early 1900s. The neighborhood is fine, but bustling with activities, and full of ghosts. I sense another revolution in the making, once more, that I do not fully understand.
[Edit: sip of hot cocoa]
I had traveled often to the Philippines during the waning days of Marcos reign, and holed up once in the Manila Peninsula Hotel during one of the frequent coup attempts during Aquino’s rule. I had ordered lobster for dinner during the Philippine styled night of long knives, just to be defiant and contrary and only so that I could say I had lobster during the revolution, at the Peninsula. There was no revolution, and all is as it was, rent-seeking cronies, corrupt political dynasties, greedy commercial empires, sycophantic professional legacies, insider deals that hurt outsiders, outside deals that reward insiders, fictional accounting, fanciful disclosures, ‘atruth’, ‘nontruth’, fibs, lies, told by privileged few, to fool the disadvantaged multitudes, and to comfort the cleaned out plenty, Brazillian style. Yes, the world still runs this way, in a rising, grand but not last crescendo. People in the Philippines do not get too hurt because they expect nothing less from the system.
[Edit: bite of ham and egg]
I now imagine myself traveling back in time, to 1949, as the communist-led peasant troops converge on metropolis Shanghai, and the German trained KMT generals prepare to decamp, and Harvard educated politicians ready to scatter for their island abode in Taiwan.
[Edit: more cocoa]
I see the wonder and amazement in the eyes of the ignorant invading troops, the agitation, despair, fear, and chaos of the population, the rumors and confusion of the media, and the thievery, frenzy, and depravity of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. I see the newspaper headlines. Soon, the city will be ready for the deep cleansing.
I stand at the lobby of the Sassoon with no luggage and less care, watching others busying with rearranging their worldly possessions and making last minute travel arrangements on transportations that no longer move, paralyzed by cold terror.
I see Pezz, in spats and top hat, shouting into the brass candlestick phone, commanding his broker to buy shares of Nanyang Textile and Brother Cigarettes, on market open, on the dip, and before market close, when blood is flowing on the pavement and market needs supporting.
I must go now, because my car is ready to slosh through the crimson flood and my plane will be on time.
[Edit: polished off the ham and egg]
While on the way out, before stepping into the car with its door held open by the garishly costumed coachman, AC Flyer shouts down from his penthouse suite above, cigarette holder technology in place, impeccably groomed, ‘the market always goes up after the fall’. He would have been right, of course, but only after the cleansing from which many will not survive.
I step into the car, thinking I just heard Maurice calmly pronounces, ‘Jay, they will just print their way out of this mess, the peasants have to eat too, the sun will rise again, and your Aztec artifacts will not, paradoxically, help you’. Maurice always liked to have his cake to eat.
The car pulls away powerfully and confidently, and proceeds to the airdrome. The all-girl crew, long silken hair flowing in the propeller stream, dressed in side slit and tight fitting traditional gowns complemented by stilettos, showing just enough and nearly too much, readying the dependable machine for the long journey. Yes, they still make them that way, the gowns and those who wear them, fit and dependable.
They must not forget to load the lobsters.
OK, Pezz, my imagination was fanciful, especially the bit about long flowing hair on tradition gown attired girl crew supported on high heels, next to propellers yet, but you get the big picture and the overall scheme.
I tempered myself so that Maurice does not again lecture me, on Aztec gold-shunning monkeys with Fourier transformed CDMA billion pixel bits bought with printed colour paper, before nightcap, and Mike does not feel a burning need to post more good news, comprised of entirely of three syllable or less words, in time for breakfast.
In any case, the crowds is questioning the accounting fiction, then querying the valuation nonsense, followed by frenzied and spirited efforts to escape the 1812 Overture accompanied judgment day.
Pezz, get out of the city while there is still time, away from the equity cult agitated crowds:0)
Chugs, Jay |
