In Search of the Perfect Investment

That was this morning’s headline. Translate “simple life” into assets you can sell fast. And you have my formula for a happy life. Stocks. Bonds. Yes. Private equity funds. Leveraged buyout funds. Real estate funds. Anything long-term. No.

As I wrote this, I got word one of my private equity funds was paying me a nice dividend. So my recommendations are spoken with forked tongue.

Meantime, I continue to love dividends. They pay for living, theater and tennis.

Janet’s new Florida apartment. It’s gorgeous. Three bedrooms and a balcony. Right on the Intercoastal waterway with views of the ocean in West Palm Beach.  Only $280,000 with only $700 a month maintenance, which includes assessments. A bargain.

Three years ago, it sold for $450,000.

Only problem: no furniture. No problem. Janet will buy what she needs at estate sales. Florida is “God’s Waiting Room.”

No such luck. Says a miffed Janet, “Only people with bad taste die.”

But, Janet says “My apartment has gone up $50,000 since we bought it several months ago.”

I have an invitation to visit. I’ll bring my own sleeping bag.

The reserve auction Internet scam. Be wary. The site announces it’s selling something ultra-cheap. Say a 1500 TV for $50. But to buy it, you need to bid.  If you bid the highest price by the time the auction ends, you get the product for $50. There are two catches. Every time you bid, it costs you 50 cents. Second, you (and no one else) may ever win the TV. For more on this brilliant scam, click here.

Broadway’s best play. It’s called La Bête. It comes out of England features the best of English actors (including Mark Rylance, the best) and the best of English writing.

Critical you get good seats and the free earphones (for theatergoers between 85 and death). The words fly fast and furious. You’ll miss many unless you’re close or amplified, or preferably both. Get your tickets early. It’s packed. $121+ a ticket. Funny recession. Packed theaters. Packed restaurants. Packed stores. Rising apartment prices. And construction on again. After eons as an empty lot, this thing just went up on 57th Street.

It’s a $2 million+ climbing crane. The cement trucks arrive every few minutes. It looks like a week a floor. Amazing.

You are your own worst enemy. I used to use those words to counsel people to look in their own backyards to solve their business problems — rather than blaming their competition. Last night I wrote my quarterly update on my classmates. It’s been 41 years since we graduated. Everyone is getting old. Everyone is discovering they don’t teach aging at business school. What they also don’t teach is:

+ You can get horribly sick from one moment to the next.

+ Where you go and which doctor you see will determine if you live or die.

+ Figuring what ails you may be far more difficult than you ever imagined.

And most importantly, you need to be 1000% involved in what ails you. Those classmates who have done best with new ailments have been those who researched their ailments and their doctors to death (bad pun).  Those classmates who are healthiest are those who follow all the obvious “rules” — exercise every day, eat little and right (no red meat, lots of vegetables and fruit), plenty of rest and limited stress.

The seminar business is also booming.I used to talk to business audiences — from 100 to 5,000 — twice a week. It was fun. I talked about “telecommunications.” I really talked about telecom as a path to success. My most popular speeches combined inspiration, success, motivation, entertainment and a little technology. I was telecom’s most popular speaker. I’d forgotten those halcyon days until I read this piece in yesterday’s New York Times. It’s hysterical. With our “new” economy, these seminars are booming, once again. Maybe I should go back? It’s huge fun entertaining people.

Onward Christian Moguls By MAUREEN DOWD

The second time the beach ball hit me on the head, I started feeling motivated.

Not to become an instant millionaire with the help of Jesus and some cheesy business evangelists. Rather, I felt motivated to flee the 9-hour, $9.95 Get Motivated! seminar at the Verizon Center, which had devolved into a faux beach party with DJs playing ’80s music and audience members tossing around plastic beach balls and dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Van Halen’s “Jump.”

But I stayed in the church of capitalism, determined to hear what wisdom headliners Colin Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Dan Rather, Steve Forbes and Terry Bradshaw would dispense.

Aren’t these guys affluent enough without whatever exorbitant fees they were collecting for their bromides to the beaten down?

Nearby, Fortune was hosting a gathering celebrating the nation’s most powerful women, drawing speakers such as President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.

But the sports arena featured some weird counterprogramming: famous men who once were considered prospects for president, now buck-raking and giving a patina of legitimacy to carnival barkers pushing quick-cash schemes bathed in Biblical inspiration and patriotism.

Thousands of people mired in the new Age of Anxiety turned hopeful eyes to the parade of Professor Harold Hills, waiting for that one elusive diamond of advice that could change their lives.

Never mind that it was all a variation on “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” or the scene in “The Wizard of Oz,” when Glinda the Good Witch reveals to Dorothy that she has had the power to get home all along.

Except at Get Motivated!, the seminar organizers entice audience members to sign up for more seminars that, for a fee, will teach them the secrets of cashing in on stocks, real estate and the Internet.

I arrived at 8:30 a.m. as Steve Forbes was talking. Naturally, it was still about the flat tax, with the same lines he used when he ran a geek-chic campaign for the G.O.P. nomination in 1996.

Rick Belluzzo, the former chief operating officer for Microsoft, told us we need to “own our own development” and that “perseverance can pay off.”

Then football analyst Terry Bradshaw lumbered on, momentarily alarmed when the shooting fireworks on stage nearly singed his backside.

“I need a woman with money,” Bradshaw cackled, noting that he was a 62-year-old mama’s boy with three ex-wives. He seemed more like a man who could use some advice rather than one paid for giving it.

“I’ve never really motivated anybody,” he announced cheerfully.

The former Steelers quarterback grumbled that quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb get paid millions more than he did to follow plays dictated by coaches.

After noting that “Jesus is my savior,” he shared this life lesson with the would-be entrepreneurs: When your receiver is about to be tackled, “Keep it simple. Chuck it to him anyway.”

After the audience was wooed to sign up for more sure-fire money-making classes and DVDs, Colin Powell came out to a rain of red and blue streamers.

He was the most charming speaker, confessing that he coped with being out of the limelight by driving a Corvette, at 73, around suburban Washington. His advice? Be nice to the little people, the ones who clean your office and park your car. Write thank you notes on 4-by-6-inch cards. “I write with a fountain pen,” he said. “Never a Sharpie. Never a ballpoint pen.”

Then came another sales pitch from a guy who said he went from being a homeless drug dealer to the “world’s No. 1 Internet wealth entrepreneur” with a $2.4 million estate in Texas. He offered a course at an airport Marriott valued at $11,226.90 for a bargain $29.

When it was his turn, Rudy Giuliani began with a few choice words about Al Gore and global warming, before moving on to his pearls of wisdom.

The first one was: “You have got to have a computer.” As he explained to the diminished crowd that remained: “That other world that used to exist doesn’t exist anymore.”

Having advised the audience to get computers, he went on to counsel on ways to “protect yourself against the information revolution.” The first was: “Read books.”

He even got a little touchy-feely. “The government has to have a safety net. I’m not disputing that. But it’s not important. The one that’s really important is the one you create for yourself.” He concluded, “You know how you do that? You love people.”

I came away with one important new insight about getting rich quick: An easy way to do it is to dole out fortune-cookie maxims at get-rich-quick seminars.

Harry Newton who’s feeling increasingly positive.  But I remain cautious. I am not buying high-flying tech stocks. In fact, Cramer had to eat crow after recommending Salesforce, F5 and other cloud companies that just did a swan dive. The moral: Be wary what you hear on TV.  Cramer has to push stocks. If he doesn’t, no one will watch, his ratings will and no one will advertise.

How difficult is to make a few shekels these day. A broker put in for 250,000 shares of an IPO at $16.25.  He got 2,000. It’s trading pre-market at $16.40.  The big institutions got the rest. They made their 15 cents. and presumably will dump their good fortune stock this morning. That’s the “new normal.”