Beer and other safe investments

 

These you can trust

By Nury Vittachi

*

Someone tried to sell me some investments the other day. "A downturn is the best time to buy," he said.

I reminded him that a year ago he had told me that an upturn was the best time to buy.

"I used to think that, but I have wised up," he replied.

"I wised up too," I said, escorting him to the door with the sole of my size seven Doc Martens.
*

Learning from your mistakes is important.

Consider this. The financial authorities had to put US$170 billion of public money into American International Group, better known as AIG, which fell 97 per cent in value.

                However, had the same sum been spent on cans of Carlsberg, the buyer would have received 180 billion 440 ml cans of beer. Each beer can contains 15 grams of aluminum. This makes 2.7 billion kilos of aluminum. Assuming a price of US$2 a kilo, that's US$5.2 billion profit. And they would STILL have the beer—which itself has gone up in price eight per cent this year.
*

  A similarly smart investment is chocolate. If you spent US$170 billion on chocolate, you would have 140 billion bars, each of which is wrapped in similarly valuable aluminum foil.

                You get a profit AND consuming 140 billion bars of chocolate makes you incredibly happy. I know this for a fact, as my wife has actually done it.

*
What about art? This is a question I hear all the time, especially from my neighbor, whose son is called Art, short for Arthur.

                Modern "art "is tricky to value. There are a number of reasons for this, but the main reason is that it is rubbish.  

                Readers often write in to ask me to explain why a dead animal in a box, if autographed by Damien Hirst, is worth millions of dollars.

                Well, what can I say? It is all a matter of presentation. I’ll give you a real-life example.

                Some kind of buffalo-type beast died near the home of a friend of mine, who lives in a rural village. It was smelly. His neighbours demanded he move it. The local mafia tried to charge him a large sum of money to move it for him. He called the government and found that there was a municipal department dedicated solely to remove decomposing beasts (with the exception of those serving on government committees).

                After days of misery for all concerned, the foul-smelling pile of rotten meat was carted off to a landfill, whose managers were delighted I'm sure.

                Now had Damien Hirst found a dead water buffalo outside his apartment in Chelsea or wherever he lives, the story would have been very different.

                He would have dragged it back to his studio and put it in a box.  He would then have phoned Christie's or Sotheby's and said, "Hey, lads, I got this dead cow-thingy."

                There would have been a televised global auction and he would have received US$100 million.
*

So what do you do if you have a dead cow and want loads of money for it but you are not Damien Hirst? Simple. Bribe some pliable, corrupt, greedy reporter to write an article about you as "THE ASIAN Damien Hirst". Then sell it for US$50 million.

                I await your email.

Comments

[Interested]

I would like to be known as the next Damien Hirst, or the Asian one, or whatever. The only problem is that i have no talent whatsover. is this a problem?

[Jan]

Is it a problem for Damien Hirst?

[Nury]

ooh, touche, Jan!

[shawn]

hehehehehehehehehe , after reading this i can still only think ----- size 7 doc martens?????????? i hope at least the steel toes