The World's Funniest Joke:
Q: What did the Roman Senator say to the lion that ate his wife?
A: Gladiator
To the West of China is Kazakhstan, an independent, oil-rich country that used to be part of the USSR. Bordering Kazakhstan to the East is Xianjing, an autonomous region ruled by a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party named Ma. Ma has always been loyal to Xi Jinping
To those of you who have been skeptical of my reports that Xi Jinping has fallen from power, know now that Xi tried to escape to Kazakhstan. More precisely, Xi's wife, a beautiful former singer, tried to arrange with Ma to cross into Kazakhstan with her husband. Unfortunately for Xi, General Zhang - the guy who now controls the PLA - found out and just sacked Ma. It sucks to be Xi right now.
I saw a video of some kind people saving
this little guy. Bad day, for sure, but he lived.
"There is a new term in global politics, the concept of voluntarily un-aliving someone. The term means to commit suicide against your will. Wait, isn't that just murder masquerading as suicide? As they say in Minnesota, "You betcha."
Putin's secret police like to voluntarily unalive people by throwing them off of buildings. There has been an epidemic of Putin critics voluntarily unaliving themselves in the past few years.
The Chinese do the same thing. A Chinese medical student was recently voluntarily unalived because he refused to meet his quota of harvested organs from Uyghur children. He tried to go to the authorities with this horrific organized murder scheme, but the authorities made big money from the sale of harvested organs. The unfortunate medical student decided to fly out of a window.
My bride and I saw two movies recently. The first, Jurassic World Rebirth, was very exciting, and the special effects were superb. I sat in a seat that actually shook every time a huge dinosaur took a step. Scarlett Johansson was perfect as the mercenary security chief. You should definitely see this blockbuster on the big screen. It "only" cost about $190 million to make, and it is projected to bring in over $750,000 worldwide.
Then we saw Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Tom Cruise does all of his own stunts, and he must have stones the size of basketballs. The final scene had him hanging upside down from a biplane as he dragged the pilot out of his seat. Tom Cruise actually did that! Like I said - basketballs. Go see it!
The early Roman Republic, a democratic institution that had lasted for 400 years, fell because of lawfare. (After Caesar, Rome became an empire.) The enemies of Julius Caesar tried to strip Caesar of his legal protections as the governor of a province (Gaul). Once stripped, they would have prosecuted Caesar in the incredibly corrupt Roman legal system and executed him. Caesar had no choice but to lead his army across the Rubicon.
Trump is now President. How many of his political enemies has President Trump prosecuted using lawfare? None. Not a single one.
You may absolutely hate Donald Trump and dream of shooting him twelve times in the groin (chuckle), but he has demonstrated that a President can still govern without resorting to lawfare. You can absolutely hate him for a lot of other things, but not for this.
I saw a similar aerial view over North Korea
When the next great recession hits, only those
mortgage companies with servicing income will survive.
Do you remember me telling you never to invest in a hard money mortgage fund? I pointed out every hard money fund in existence before each of the three great recessions - the S&L Crisis, the Dot-Com Meltdown, and the Great Recession - failed during the subsequent great recession.
The problem with these funds is that they rely on continuing to earn their three-point loan fees on new loans. When a great recession hits, everyone withdraws from the fund, and they have no new money with which to make loans. Since invariably their management fee is tiny (they need 3% to 4% to survive), the sponsor fails. The irony is that the underlying loans themselves usually recover in three to four years.
Well, the first hard money fund has now failed. My sons got a call this week from a former investor who started off, "I should have listened to your father." He had stopped getting interest checks. No one at the fund was responding to his calls and emails. When he finally went to their office, it was closed. The poor guy's investment is toast.
We here at Blackburne & Sons do not use a fund. Instead, we fractionalize our loans into $5,000 to $25,000 pieces. If you invest with us, your ownership of that $300,000 commercial first mortgage is vested in your own name, as to your percentage of ownership - not in the name of some closed down fund beyond your control. "Bob and Mary Smith, husband and wife, as to an undivided 2.37% ownership." You even get title insurance.
Suppose Little Rocket Man hits Sacramento with a nuclear ballistic missile. Poof. My office and my beloved first born son are gone. You, as an investor, would merely contact the other owners of the mortgage (we give you a list) and together you would hire a local bookkeeper to collect the mortgage payments.
Blackburne & Sons, founded in 1980, has survived all three of the above great recessions. We boast of charging the largest loan servicing fee in the industry. Wait, what? The largest? Yup. When all of our hard money competitors are failing in droves, like they did in 2008, we will just keep plugging along. Some horse are mudders. They beat faster horses in the rain and mud. We're mudders. Picture me and Boys are covered in mud. Haha!
Some of you guys think I am nuts because of my terror of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Folks, their economy is collapsing. Many of their banks are rationing withdrawals. It was the government's job to make life a little better for the Chinese people every year. Things are getting worse there, and the people are getting angry.
We do NOT want the Chinese Communist Party ("CCP") to feel threatened by their own people. They will start a war before the CCP would allow themselves to be overthrown. The Chinese have some incredible weapons. Last week a Chinese starship refueled one of their satellites in orbit. That same starship can snatch enemy satellites out of orbit.
But there is some good news on the war possibility front. The Chinese have stopped work on new warship construction, including their latest aircraft carrier. In Mongolia, they have stopped test firing new missiles. Why? They are out of dough.
Just wait until you get screwed out of a huge fee.
I went to law school so I didn't punch anyone.
Won't you please forward this to some investor buddies -
especially if they are invested in a hard money fund?
