In Search of the Perfect Investment

Clear as mud.

Are you confused by what is going on in the Middle East? Let me explain. We support the Iraqi government  in its fight against the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL. We don’t like ISIS; but ISIS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like. We don’t like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not ISIS  — which is fighting against him.

We don’t like Iran, but the Iranian government supports the Iraqi government against ISIS. So, some of our friends support our enemies, and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting our other enemies, whom we don’t want to lose; but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less.

All this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there until we went in to drive them out.

Do you understand now?

This may have been originally written by Richard Allen Jones. I made some edits. It’s been in the Daily Telegraph. You can see a video of it (with the same words). Click here.

I don’t make this stuff up. From Gatestone Institute:

A Spanish woman married to a Moroccan jihadist has given birth to the first Spanish citizen born in the Islamic State.

The child’s father, 28-year-old Mohamed Hamdouch, is notorious for his exceptional brutality and cruelty both on and off the battlefield. He is known in Spain as the “Beheader of Castillejas,” in recognition of his penchant for posting photographs of himself smiling while holding the decapitated heads of Syrian soldiers.

The child’s mother is Asia Ahmed Mohamed, a native of the North African Spanish exclave of Ceuta. She married Hamdouch after he gave her a suicide vest as a dowry.

Read that again: He gave her a suicide vest as her dowry!

What you get for $82 million.

It’s the 52nd floor penthouse at One Beacon Court, just on the east side of the bottom of Central Park. Work the numbers:

$82 million divided by 9,000 square feet equals $9,111 a square foot, which is seriously pricey. To check out the apartment on Sotheby’s web site, click here.

God forbid you’d own a book or two… where would you put them? In the basement?

If $82 million doesn’t fit your pocketbook, try $72 million — the asking price for Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, which is now on the market (and for which he paid $57 million about a year ago).

You can see other photos of the apartment. Click here.

Apartment prices in New York are driven by two forces:

1. The incredible rewards paid to top hedge fund managers and businesspeople. The top half of one percent.

2. The urgency to get money out of Russia, Europe, Africa, China, etc.

Contemporary art has the same impetus. You can’t stuff $100 million into one suitcase and carry it on the plane. But you can carry two $50 million paintings.

It’s a good time to visit New York. Spring has sprung big-time.

Yahoo missed. But Henny Youngman said it before:

Everybody’s on strike nowadays. We saw a guy carrying a sign with nothing  on it.

“Who are you picketing against?” I asked.

He says, “Nobody. I’m looking for a sponsor.”

Yahoo is, too.

Harry Newton who eyes the crazy takeover bids in pharma and biotech. XLV is the easiest way to play this: