Peter
Canadian tycoon Paul Desmarai of Power Corporation of Canada died on October 8, 2013
Paul Desmarai (January 4, 1927 – October 8, 2013) was a high profile tycoon and empire-builder in Canada for many decades. According to Forbes, he was the 4th wealthiest person in Canada and the 235th wealthiest in the world with an estimated net worth of $4.4 billion. Demarai was born into a family with business interests in the Sudbury, Quebec region. This was a tough blue-collar nickle mining area similar to the Apalachian coal mining region in the USA back in the 1950s.
Here’s a chilling summary of the past 30 years from the NY Times. While a few of us have been tracking this trend for a long time, many people seem oblivious to what’s going on.
America’s Sinking Middle Class
On Tuesday, however, the Census Bureau reminded me how for most Americans 1988 still looks a lot like yesterday: last year, the typical household made $51,017, roughly the same as the typical household made a quarter of a century ago.
The statistic is staggering — hardly what one would expect from one of the richest and most technologically advanced nations on the planet.
and
Frontier Capitalism on Discovery Channel
I recently came across a television series on the Discovery Channel called Jungle Gold. In a nutshell, it’s about these two mid-thirtyish Utah real estate speculators who lost all of their money and then decided to go to Ghana to dig for gold. If you are looking for gold these days Ghana is still one of the best places on earth to do it in. It’s the Saudi Arabia of the metal, from what I hear.
Being broke, the two protagonists, Scott Lomu and George Wright, raise some seed capital from investors back home to fund their expedition and the excavators and other heavy equipment they will need. In the very first episode upon arriving at the acreage they’ve leased to mine, they discover that the Chinese are already mining it. Not only that but the Chinese have grim-looking armed guards staring the duo down. So they high-tail it back to town to appeal to the tribal chiefs for help. The old guys are surprisingly sympathetic to their plight but explain that since the Chinese have far more fire power than they do, there’s nothing to be done about it but go dig elsewhere.
Meshulam Riklis on the Use of Debt and Other Insights into Success
Meshulam Riklis is one of the modern era’s pioneers in the use of creative financing to acquire companies. He is also famous for coining such lines as “The effective nonuse of cash” and “Money is to look at, not to use.” They summed up his philosophy of hoarding cash to flaunt in front of bankers and other lenders while at the same time doing most of his empire building with debt financing. As the old joke goes, bankers are the most receptive to giving you money when you can show that you don’t need any.
Top Business Lessons from The Profit’s Marcus Lemonis
Marcus Lemonis may just be the best thing that’s happened to American entrepreneurship in a decade or more. I say this not only because he’s an inspirational rags-to-riches success story, but because he is showing us all how to put the fun back into business after almost two decades of Internet mania.
Indeed one could make the case that the Internet is guilty of two transgressions against business. First, it’s made building a business seem boring, relatively speaking, with its emphasis on coding and SEO maneuvering around Google. If your business career started before the World Wide Web arrived, you’ll know what I mean. Second, the Internet has sucked a substantial portion of America’s best and brightest talent away from producing things that people actually need or want into building bullshit “online platforms” whose sole purpose is to strip-mine your personal information and sell it to advertisers.
If it’s free, you’re the product, Poindexter.
Call me old school, but I will take an Elon Musk or Marcus Lemonis who build real businesses any day over a Mark Zuckerberg and clones who merely build glorified phpBB boards for the purpose of serving you up to advertisers.
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