Comments on Cars as Status Symbols, Stock Brokers, Gilmore Girls and Lebron James

-Once upon a time Mercedes-Benz was an exclusive car. If you owned a Benz it meant - to a certain point - you were wealthy. There was a close correlation between the car and assessing a person's fortune in life. Here's an example. My father bought a BMW 733i in 1984 when BMW came back into the North American market. The car was still an obscurity back then but it was not lost on some knowledgeable car fans. It was my first experience with a big car and how society reacted to it. By the time my father bought his second car - an Alfa-Romeo 164 - times had changed.

With the arrival of credit and the greed of the 80s reaching maximum zenith in the 90s, everyone could suddenly afford a luxury car. Everywhere you turned kids, individuals who earned 35k and other assortments of people from all walks of life could get their hands on one of those babies. Audi? No problem. Bimmer? It's yours. There's no prestige attached anymore to certain luxury items. These cars are for white trash too now.

Tsk, tsk I'm disappointed with the Germans. They should never have given into the temptation to pander to the lower classes. Their image is taking a hit. Screw the masses. Go straight to the top. Porsche should never have come out with an affordable line. It lost its aura and they essentially let Ferrari - which are still hand made - maintain supremacy in the sports car culture.

I'll leave it with this. At the end of a rough day, my former partner and I sat in his office looking outside a 5th story window. We were trying to figure out the madness that was swirling around us - it was the height of the tech bubble. Coming from an earlier time, he said pretty much echoed the same thing mentioned earlier. If you wanted a big car you worked towards it, saved the coin and earned it. Looking down below it made no sense to him to see so many fancy cars on the road. "The markets are telling me wealth is on the rise. I don't buy it for one minute. It's a paper tiger." I agreed. We were right. It came tumbling down.

-Speaking of stock brokers. Caught between managed products and the rise of the on-line trader and discount brokerage firms, the broker found himself needing to reinvent his role. A complete make-over if you will. While the rules of the markets stay the same (that is universal axioms proven over time) the job isn't. Long gone are the days of the quick tongued broker chomping down on a cheap Honduran cigar. You can literally get away with not following stocks on a daily basis now. You just need to be informed or 'briefed' - like a politician. The investment landscape (which includes investor needs) has changed and many brokers are no longer agents of the markets like they used to be. They have been forced to seek a niche or convert their businesses to an investment management process or style. Service comes first. The nitty gritty of investing is outsourced.

- My wife watches the Gilmore Girls. I can't digest it. Really, who talks that way? That town has to be a CIA scientific project. Everyone is so articulate. Even guys with caps on backwards speak with an elevated penchant for the vernacular. And that mother daughter tag team is completely diabolical. It's ok to be 'friends' but you're the fricken mother. Act like one. Any other daughter would have ended up selling body parts under such loose house rules if you get my drift. There are no values in that show. Worse, it has no point. It's opulent drama at its best. The show gropes itself with the Gilmore gals.