Thoughts from the World of “Bidness and Munny”

 

When I started my little company four years ago, I invested in a website. When the site went live, I was inundated with phone calls from media companies. In addition to local media, TV, cable, a few radio stations and the papers the most insistent companies were the on-line sales organizations. One was a local company, ValueClick based in Westlake Village. The sales people were terrible, they were scripted, they were young and couldn’t deal with or answer questions, but they pounded the phones. One would call me every other day for a couple of weeks, if I didn’t buy one of their “packages” I’d be assigned another rep and the process would repeat. About a year into the process ValueClick changed their name to Conversant. Nothing else changed. I read this morning in the business section of the LA Times, Conversant was purchased by a Dallas based marketing company, Alliance Data, for 2.3 billion dollars.

AT&T recently distributed their new local phone books. No residential listings in the book, just business and professional listings. AT&T still charges for “unpublished numbers” and they charge if you would like a published listing.

BTW,The government has a free service that keeps your number out of the hands of telemarketing companies. You can list your cell and land line numbers…FREE.

A developer (handbag magnate, Bruce Makowsky, 9 West and endless appearances on QVC) has a spec house on the market in Beverley Hills for 85 million dollars. Think about that for a minute 85 million, built on spec, built and furnished without a buyer. 23,000 square feet, it has a banked 18 seat theater, a 2500 bottle wine room, a candy bar (?) and a vodka bar. The house has a 54’ foot curved glass door overlooking the infinity pool. Housing experts say his timing couldn’t be better. Apparently today’s Global Billionaires want new, ready to go homes all over the world. Here’s another thought, in the same neighborhood a house was recently purchased for 36 million and torn down.

On Sunday there was an ad touting a special lease for a new Bentley sedan, 27 hundred and change a month plus applicable taxes, 8 thousand miles a year for three years with a $12,000 down payment.

The Wall Street Journal did a long story last week on how hard it is for a family of 4 to live on $400,000 a year.

In other news this morning…

Do you have any idea how much money those greedy school teachers pull down a year? How about the pension plans for public employees like cops and firemen. Let’s move the retirement age up to 70…blah, blah, blah…