thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
11 Must Have Holiday Gifts For The 0.1% Login With Facebook | Login With Twitter | Login | Register The Life Contributors Home Tech Entertainment Wall Street Markets Strategy Sports Lifestyle Politics EuropeData Misc. Your Money Video Latest Your News The Life Home Destinations Toys Real Estate Culture Travel The Life 50 HiveTapePRContributors DocumentsJobs Follow us on Facebook and get updates from The Life Contributors posted directly to your news feed 11 Must Have Holiday Gifts For The 0.1% 1/12 Tags: 24/7 Wall St., Holiday Shopping, Holidays, Shopping, Features | Get Alerts for these topics Short URL Share: Twitter Facebook Buzz Digg StumbleUpon Reddit LinkedIn Email More about embedding posts Embed More about Alerts Alerts Newsletter See Also: All These Famous Fashion Houses Have Designed Bottles For BoozeThese Celebrities Did An Awesome Job Renovating Their New York City Apartments6 Hot Trends That Will Spice Up Thanksgiving Tables This Year Advertisement Enter you email address and zip code to set up customized email alerts. Email Zip From To Email Sent!You have successfully emailed the post.11 Must Have Holiday Gifts For The 0.1%24/7 Wall St. | Nov. 21, 2011, 2:01 PM | 4,169 | A A A 24/7 Wall St. URL 24/7 Wall St. provides insightful analysis and commentary for U.S. and global equity investors. Recent PostsUS Sales Have Plunged In Recent Years For These Major SodasThe 10 States That Are Doing Most To Spread The Wealth11 Foods Making Thanksgiving Cost More This Year Probing for Value in Big Pharmaceutical Stocks (JNJ, PFE, AZN, BMY, MRK) Full 360-Degree H-P Earnings Preview (HPQ, DELL, CSCO, AAPL, IBM) Tech Wholesalers Growth Plans Could be Stymied (TECD, IM, SNX, ARW, AVT) Americas rich like to spend money. In fact, the top 10% are responsible for half of all consumer spending in the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal. And this holiday season, they are projected to spend even more than usual. Of course, the wealthy do not spend their money at Walmart but buy the luxury items through specialized channels. 24/7 Wall St. looked at some of the most expensive holiday gifts the wealthy buy one another.According to the American Affluence Research Center, the rich will increase their spending this holiday season even more than they usually do. They will spend $23.5 billion on holiday gifts, an increase of 2.3% compared to last year. Spending among the average consumer, on the other hand, is expected to decrease.The rich do not spend their money at the same places as the average consumers. Luxury gifts do not come from Target. They are purchased directly from top tier companies and are often available only in select cities. A Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega Grande Complications watch, for instance, is available only by special-order and only in New York or Geneva. Similarly, many high-end collections from designers such as Stefano Ricci are only available in a small number of stores in major cities, such as New York and Beverly Hills. This is doubly the case for airplanes, yachts and luxury automobiles.One reason luxurious goods are so expensive is because they are
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Those of you who have seen the film Fargo have the wood chipper scene indelibly seared into your memory. (If you have not seen Fargo please remedy this deficiency promptly.) I return to the scene at the end of this piece. Walter Russell Mead, a recovering liberal, has crafted a crude ode to purported German national character and insult to purported French national character. The defective purported national character of the French is leavened with equally crude stereotypes of the purported superior religious character of Huguenots and Jews. It is all set within a broader, cruder attack on purported ethnic Latin character. Meads piece ran in opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, which embraces these prejudices and considers them the height of intellect. Meads cultural thesis is that Germans are good. They exemplify superior northern values. The French are a Club Med people with minimal northern features. The northern features are attributable to Frances Huguenots and Jews out of which communities many of its most successful business leaders have come. Frances business leaders are successful because they are not Catholics. But wait, Mead has forgotten that two paragraphs earlier he dissed these French business leaders: Worse, the French corporate elite decided in its sleek official way that this was the right time to go long on Italy, buying banks, companies, stocks and bonds .... So, the French Huguenots and the Jews, who exemplify northern values are actually the problem? Mead cannot go two sentences without launching a snide stereotype at the French. He cant pass up the chance even when it contradicts his analytics. Mead knows that there are few easier ways to make the WSJs opinion pages than bashing the French. The virtuous Germans are beset with bad news from Spain and Portugal, where despite the most-solemn promises to undertake the most-sweeping reforms, and the blessings of Brussels, the economies are somehow failing to grow. Add disappointing news on Italian bond yields, and Europe has resumed its grim slide. Somehow? Understanding why Spain and Portugal are failing to grow is hardly a mystery. The ECB and IMF (paragons of northern values) have forced austerity and labor reforms designed to make it far easier to fire workers on Spain and Portugal. The goal of the reforms is to drive down their working class wages. The ECB and IMF are demanding similar actions in Greece and Ireland and the Irish governments plan for responding to the crisis is to cut working class wages to make Ireland more competitive with Portugal. At UMKC, we call this race to the bottom dynamic the Road to Bangladesh strategy. Reducing wages and public spending during a serious recession are pro-cyclical policies that make the recession more severe. Private sector demand is severely deficient in nations suffering from the Great Recession. Reducing wages reduces income, which further reduces private sector demand. Reducing public sector spending makes total demand even more inadequate and increases unemployment (further reducing private sector demand). Modern nations have known for roughly 70 years that fiscal policies should be structured so that they function
as automatic stabilizers. Austerity and aggressive efforts to cut wages function as self-inflicted destabilizers. These northern policies are so self-destructive that only economists who are total ideologues fail to oppose them.But return to Meads ode to German values, and examine the content of those values and Meads multiple fictions about the causes of the euro crisis. Mead claims the French crisis was caused by:Clueless European regulators ... pushed many banks to invest in soon-to-be-worthless sovereign debt from soft euro countries like Spain, Italy and Greece. So French banks in particular are loaded to the gunwales with bonds that won't float.Worse, the French corporate elite decided in its sleek official way that this was the right time to go long on Italy, buying banks, companies, stocks and bonds....I have already discussed one of the logical inconsistencies in Meads argument that arises from the juxtaposition of this passage and his ode to Frances most successful business leaders (because they are disproportionately Huguenots and Jews). The second logical inconsistency arises from two consecutive sentences. French banks are loaded to the gunwales with underwater bonds from Italy because French regulators pushed many banks to invest in Italian bonds. The French bankers were the unwilling victims of this regulatory push[ing]. In the next sentence, however, Mead tells us that the French corporate elite decided that this was the right time to go long on Italy, buying ... bonds.... Are French bankers not part of the French corporate elite? How exactly did Frances regulators (who had the most northern of anti-regulatory values) (a) decide to actually start regulating by pushing French banks to purchase Italys bonds, (b) how exactly did they push French banks to buy Italys bonds, and (c) and why, if they thought it was unwise, did French banks accede to such a push? Mead made it up. The officers that control French banks make their own bad investment decisions for the same reason other banks make bad investments the officers love what the extra (nominal) yield does to their income in the near term. Assume for purposes of discussion that Mead is correct about the condition of French banks: The French bottom line is that Germany must help raise the carcass of the French banking system from the dead. If that is true, then Frances banking regulators retain their northern anti-regulatory ideologies for they are failing to act against the failed banks. It also means that the euro is dead and that France and the EU desperately need aggressive monetary and fiscal policies. Im quite willing to believe that French banks are carcass[es], but what about German banks? German banks took the lead in making most of the foreign bank loans to the EU periphery (I call it German banks gone wild). It is Germany that is demanding a ten year phase-in to the increased bank capital requirements proposed in Basel III because it believes its banks are so grossly deficient in capital that it will take a decade of subsidies, bailouts, and accounting gimmicks to bring them into nominal compliance with the new rules.
German banks are among the largest beneficiaries of the Irish and Greek bailouts. It was northern banks values that drove the global financial crisis. Banks with northern values (U.S., German, Irish, and Icelandic) were the most notoriously fraudulent and imprudent lenders in the Western world. What all these failed banking systems mean is that there is an urgent need to remove the (northern) theoclassical policies that create the criminogenic environments that produce our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. Northern values and policies are the problem, not the solution in finance in the U.S. and the EU. Mead ignores Germanys banking crisis, but he is also blind to the fact that it is Germanys policies that have turned an EU financial crisis into a combined economic and political crisis that has exposed the sham of European unity and revealed the euro and ECBs fatal design flaws. Indeed, Mead celebrates those design flaws and Germanys perverse EU policies that are spreading ruin throughout much of Europe. [T]he Germans are supposed to capitulate, authorize the European Central Bank (ECB) either directly or indirectly to print masses of money, and the proceeds will go to save the French banking system and national elitewithout anything so humiliating as a bailout ever being mentioned.Means accurately reflects the manner in which Prime Minister Merkel frames the policy choices. What Means fails to consider is that the Germans could be wrong. Germany controlled the design of the euro, the ECB, and the Stability and Growth Pact. Germany insisted that the ECB have no mission to ensure full employment and no lender of last resort function. Germany insisted that the Stability and Growth Pact be designed as a double oxymoron that produces instability and destroys growth when there is a severe recession. It is Germany that has demanded that the ECB follow a generally restrictive monetary policy. Because Germany insisted on defective designs of institutions related to the euro, the EU periphery nations have been left with no effective means of escaping the Great Recession. They cannot devalue their currency or adopt appropriately expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. They are left with one option, a hydra-headed monster slash social services, slash working class wages, and suffer severe unemployment. The national elite of the periphery are not the issue in this context. German policies devastate EU working class citizens. The national elite of Greece and Italy still largely evade their taxes and have exceptional wealth despite the EU bailout reforms. Merkel has not taken any effective steps against any foreign or domestic national elite and has never made doing so a priority. Germanys austerity demands are aimed at the Latin working class and poor and they are the victims of the German demands. View the original article here
Image: VRPhotoThe idea of "hustling" plays a central role in hip-hop culture: if you want to make it, you need to work, and work hard.A big part of the hustle is touring, which can take an artist thousands of miles away from his or her home for weeks or months at a time.Ever wonder what that's like?Hip-hop recording artist PremRock, birth name Mark Debuque, just returned from a 12-city European tour behind his second studio album "PremRock & Willie Green," which he made with producer Willie Green and released on San Jose's Isolated Wax Records. (You can purchase it on iTunes, Amazon and other digital outlets.)Originally from Pennsylvania, PremRock's now based out of New York City. His intelligent, agile lyrics are delivered with a flow reminiscent of former Def Jux MC Aesop Rock.You can follow him on Twitter here, and an earlier album, "The Build," is available for free at his bandcamp page.Please follow The Wire on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Kevin Lincoln on Twitter. x To embed this post, copy the code below and paste into your website or blog.View the original article here In the Sunday Times, Edward L. Glasser, a Harvard professor, slays the sacred cow that is early retirement.Can't afford to kick back? Pensions and portfolios gone up in smoke? Diminishing retirement: No problem! These issues might help the economy, Glasser says. Just as the influx of women entering the workforce didn't push millions of men out of jobs, America will find ways to adapt to the new economic order and "create new lines of enterprise," many of which would be driven by entrepreneurship. Writes Glasser:"While I feel sorry for every American who ... wants to retire but cant ... Longer work lives mean more tax dollars, and that helps with Americas fiscal problems. Older workers also bring a diversity of perspectives and experience to the work force. America desperately needs more entrepreneurship, and by at least one measure, the elderly are often the most entrepreneurial Americans."Even millennials who can barely afford to support themselves might have something to gain from the delayed retirement trend. They can learn from older mentors and perhaps even go to work for them.What do you thinkis retirement a boon or a burden for the economy?Please follow Your Money on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Jill Krasny on Twitter. Ask Jill A Question > x To embed this post, copy the code below and paste into your website or blog.View the original article here BREAKING NEWS: Looking For Better Search Engine Rankings And More FREE Organic Search Engine Traffic? Download My New 204 Page Book The Ultimate Link Building Dossier. Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Adding THOUSANDS of Incoming Links To Your Website To Drive It To The Top Of The Search Engines CLICK HERE NOW.Hi Duncan. Pretty much any time I am asked to submit a question about how to generate traffic, the person asking me has some preconceived ideas about what to do. Or, more often, he/she has a huge list so the question of where they get traffic from
is academic. But for someone like me who has been trying to succeed (but not doing so) on the Internet for a few years now because I still have no list, the question is not so academic.So, rather than asking a question, I am going to propose a scenario. I would like you to be the character in the scenario and then tell me what you would do to generate lots of traffic AND build a list. Because I definitely know that building a list is paramount. Ive tried most things. The systems that gurus say cant fail (they can and do fail, I know to my cost). I even tried buying so called guaranteed visitors but soon realized that the scammer who was selling the so called leads had a bot that visited my site.Anyway, here is the scenario. It may seem a little strange. But it isnt really. Because we are all like our hero here when we first start trying to build our list.Robinson Crusoe (thats you, in this scenario) is sitting all alone on the beach of his little island (he hasnt met Friday yet) when, just imagine. A laptop computer washes up on the shore. And the laptop is still working. As is its Internet connection. Robinson fires up the computer and, again just imagine, there is a product he finds on (say) Clickbank) that will pay him 75% commission if he makes some sales of the product.BTW, I cant say what Robinson will do with his affiliate earnings. Establish a bigger store of coconuts maybe? I really do hope you can provide a logical response to my question / scenario. ~ JohnNow here you are, Robinson. You have been on your island for years. You have not spoken to anyone in that time. You dont have a list of potential buyers for the product you want to promote. Yet, surprise, surprise, you do know how to use a computer and you do know that the Internet exists and can be used for e-commerce. But the Internet was in its infancy when you arrived on your island. You have no experience in Internet based affiliate marketing. So you are a beginner marketer. You dont have a website of any kind. But you also find a program on the laptop that shows you how to build your own website. So you build yourself a pretty simple website. Not much SEO on it because you dont know too much about that at all.What you do not have, is any idea of how to get lots of people to visit your website (landing page) and, from there, go to the site where they can actually buy the product that you want to promote. What you do have is a burning desire to succeed as an Internet affiliate marketer.So! What would you do to locate real, human being type, people who might be prepared to go to your landing page? And then get them to actually visit your landing page?BTW, I cant say what Robinson will do with his affiliate earnings.
Establish a bigger store of coconuts maybe? I really do hope you can provide a logical response to my question / scenario. ~ JohnHi John,I really like this question because it comes down to the absolute basics that, for various reasons, can elude most people, sometimes for many years.First things first, I admire your determination to succeed.I also want to point out that Im not going to sugar coat any of my answer. I like to be a straight up guy. If I use any specific examples or make statements that might resonate with you (or any other reader) in a negative way dont please dont take it personally.Ive got no additional information about what youve tried or havent (might be doing right now, or not doing right now) other than the information in the question youve presented above.So with that being said lets get stuck in.Before I even found the product/s I wanted to recommend I would sit down and work out exactly what I was passionate about and would be happy spending (potentially) 8+ hours per day focusing my entire attention on for the next year.I would need to be as passionate about the subject material (or at least have a reasonable interest in it) as I was about potentially making money from recommending products or services related to it. I would need to honestly feel it would benefit the person Ive recommended associated products to. I would need to know I could sleep easy at night and feel good for being able to earn an income from really helping people.For me (and most people I would think) if I were to have to get up and write content for a website every morning about colon cleansing or mesothelioma suffers I would loose interest pretty fast. I would find it hard to produce good, interesting, and most importantly valuable content not only because I dont have any real interest here, but because I dont have any real knowledge or passion about these things.This lack of enthusiasm WILL show through in any relationships youre trying to develop with people that are actually interested in such areas.Youre going to develop that relationship by providing high quality unique content with value. On your own website, by distributing it out to third party sources where your target audience is, and by sending it regularly to that mailing list youre going to build.SIDENOTE: As an example we have a website about keeping backyard chickens. I live in an apartment, and I cant honestly say that Im really passionate about keeping chickens right now. I do have a slight interest however and it might be a possibility if I were to move somewhere with some grass ;-0.So we outsource the content production for this project to someone passionate about the topic that actually keeps chickens and runs a small farm. You can feel the passion come through in every article this person writes. Not only do we get that passion, but so do the newsletter readers and thats whats important.Once Ive got a list of things