Today is Bastille Day ...

... one of those moments in history that has touched all our lives!

Liberté, égalité, fraternité! I drink to that!

I am surfing the internet for a cheap flight ...

... for my next holiday but I don't think it'll be AIR NEW ZEALAND. They've become so strict with excess baggage in order to save on weight and thus on expensive aviation fuel that even the flight crews had to shed their uniforms and make do with bodypaint.

Chicken tonight!

Chicken wings for dinner tonight! And with Padma still away, I can indulge my imagination with the (un)dressing!

Too cool for school and running around buying things with no cash to pay for them.

Listed infrastructure funds were Australia's biggest contribution to the Wild West of the global financial crisis. Investment bankers made billions in fees, slicing and dicing infrastructure assets all over the world. Eventually, fed-up investors, sick of the fees, conflicts, poison pills, stacked boards, tax havens and excessive gearing, and having lost billions through the likes of Babcock & Brown and Allco and many others, had had enough.

And so they also gave the thumbs-down to BrisConnections, the
developers of Brisbane's $4.8 billion Airport Link tunnel, which had been floated in 2008 at $3 each, with $1 payable upfront and two further $1 payments due nine months and 18 months after the allotment date. When the shares 'tanked' and at one stage sold for as low as one-tenth of one cent, bottom-feeding retail investors bought up hundreds of thousands and millions of units in the hope of a quick buck. Many of them now face bankruptcy, with the first $1-instalment having been due in April, and claim they did not know BrisConnections was a 'stapled share', obligating them to make additional payments. The total liability owed by these unitholders is $780 million.

With punters fearing bankruptcy from the outstanding payments, in comes the "white knight" Nicholas Bolton, a 27-year-old university drop-out who once worked on the special effects for Scooby-Doo. He offered to take the units off the distressed holders - for a $1305 administration fee! In this manner, he became BrisConnections’ largest unitholder through his company 'Australian Style Investments' (ASI), albeit with a whooping $154 million liability attached - although that seems of little concern to him as 'Australian Style Investments' appears to be one of those proverbial $2-companies (or, thanks to inflation, a $100-company) and is of no substance. He then got the remaining unitholders on side to amass the required 75% voting-block with which to call for a meeting to have BrisConnections' board changed and the company wound up so that all unitholders' liabilities would be extinguished.

However, it would appear that Bolton’s real aim was little more than that of a green-mailer (the term “greenmail” became ubiquitous in the go-go 1980s, where corporate raiders like Sir James Goldsmith or T Boone Pickens would acquire a stake in a takeover target and demand a premium from the company for their minority shareholding) as, unbeknown to the other unitholders, on the 8th of April he switched sides and cut a secret deal to sell his proxies (voting rights), although not his units, for $4.5 million to the main construction contractors who then used them to defeat the winding-up motion of the other retail unitholders in order to keep their profitable construction project alive.

There's more, much more, to this story but these are the nuts and bolts. In the eyes of those he turned on, it's the story of Australia's foremost prat! Scooby Doo indeed! Meanwhile, as the ASX investigates, Bolton has apparently disposed of his BrisCon units and set his sights on yet another fund, the Multiplex Prime Property Fund.

A recession-proof Chinese business model

China, through its own laws and regulations, has created possibly one of the best, sure-fire business models ever. And it’s probably not one you’ve considered. But you’d better act quickly, as others are seeing the light.

China, in order to slow population growth, instituted their one-child policy around 1980, which required anyone having a second child to pay a very heavy tax. This policy has not been lifted or lightened. In fact the Chinese government has reiterated this policy in the last year.

Chinese want their only-child to be a son who can support the parents and carry on the family name. Due to the deliberate sex-selection of the parents, and by the law of unintended consequences, the Chinese government reports that they have 32 million more boys than girls between 5 and 20 years old. 32 million! Think about that. In a few short years, the Chinese will have over 30 million young men for whom no wife is available. There simply is no corresponding woman in the system, much less a woman in their area, or a woman they like, or a woman who likes them.

So what do you do about that? Well, the Chinese, always business-minded, have come up with the answer: “Open gay bars!”

The New York Times recently reported on the first Gay Pride week in Shanghai in an area known as the Gay Triangle. With 32 million more men than women in just a few short years, I’d imagine the celebrations in this area of town will only get bigger. I’d bet a few more bars are opening across the country right now.