Kooky Money Talk

Pretty exciting start of the week. Got a little something-something in the works, which got me thinking about priorities all of a sudden. But the future seems so... "blooming," so to speak. The leg up Teppers gave today was just what I needed. You the best, Teppie!

Flashbacking to the present, work's got me walking around the dizzying confines of the office like I was auditioning for a part in the sequel to 28 Days Later. On the brighter side of things, we had an informal lunchtime learning session with some folks from Philam Life (an AIG company) today. They showed us some pretty neat slides that I would have requested a copy for, if only the main speaker wasn't an actual client of mine. Basically, the major takeaway there was, I had better get my @ss off the computer chair and cook me up a plan to get my hands on a couple thousand big ones. Seriously.

And nuh-uh, I ain't talking about them pesoseses here. I'm talking about the real ka-ching, baby. The greenback. Mucho dinero from the land that produced the top two richest men in the world, on top of other filthy rich dude-nerds. The capital U-S-D. But then you interrupt, "What you talking about? The Euro--it's king right now, or is gonna be anyway. Compared to the once-mighty Joe Americano, it's the one to beat. It's gonna be everywhere, P. Diddy and posse even wrote a song about it. Too bad about the whole subprime debacle, which got the ball rolling on the downgrading of the dollar. Now they have to contend with the current energy crisis, just coz they rely so much on oil and everything. And by the way, shouldn't this rant-post be penned instead by an American, not some greenback-hungry Filipino blogger who probably doesn't even know what the value of the Euro is....?"

(Okay, here's where I go schizo on y'all.)

I then respond, "Actually, it's 1.58 to the dollar, and 70.98 to the peso.. I mental-telepathed just now with Benny Bernanke, you know, the Fed guy."
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Daymmm, don't you just hate it when you realize that you got even poorer. Last time I checked, the Php was around 67 to the Euro...

So anyway. Before my MPD whisks me away to la-la land once again, allow me to get back to what I meant to say before I lost it--the point of my need to get my hands on two thousand buckaroos. The point of my semi-tirade refracted off from an imagined split personality (that's a double split already--haha, pleonasm!). The point being--well, relative poverty, really. At which point you ask, "What does the current phenomenon of energy disenfranchisement in the US have to do with your poverty?"

Elementary, dear imaginary reader who I will, for the purpose of this exercise in virtual inanity, christen in my mind Watson... Everything. The answer is everything.

Okay, maybe not every-little-thing kind of everything. But being the biggest gas guzzler in town with a consumption rate of 25% of the world's total oil, while just "merely" producing about 10% of the whole lot, is almost exactly the point. I'm sorry to hear about the state of economic unrest that's going on over there, but the rest of the world is suffering, too. As a citizen of the rest of the world, I'm suffering, too. From inertia, from opportunity wastage. (And yeah, sometimes from hunger and oppression and all those other things, too.) Now is the time to grab the bull by the horns, people. Hurry, while it's still in siesta mode. Now's the best time to get in on the action. By that I mean buy stuff. By stuff I mean stocks, mutual funds, bonds, you know, stuff. Not shoes, not handbags, not iPhones, not whatever. With the US market being down in the dumps, so to speak (no offense to my dear American readers), it's the best time to buy up since prices are so low.

Skeptical? Look, what do I know. I'm just a fan of the process, I'm not even amateur-level. We all only have to take our cue from Warren Buffett, who now heads the ranks of the ultra-exclusive Forbes ultimate hitlist. (Former Number 1 Bill G. is retired now and just a couple or so billions poorer than WB.) The Oracle of Omaha is on a jurassic roll, gobbling up companies left and right. You now see it makes perfect sense. The Tao of Warren Buffett is in overdrive.

To be specific, what I really have dollar signs in my eyes for (inspired by thoughts of endless dalliances in snow-capped settings, a la Tim Ferriss in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek) is the dollar bond fund (PDBF) that's one of the investment products being offered by Philam. For a minimum initial investment of two grand, you get to engage in high-stakes (as high as you wanna go) gambling, sans the Judeo-Christian guilt. To quote the investment objective:

To provide investors with a hedging mechanism against the peso exchange rate value with returns (ka-ching, baby!) and inflows derived out of diversified investments in dollar-dominated fixed-income instruments.

Okay, so I forget the thing is actually a bond, which means there's less risk involved than if you play to win in the equity ball game. Well anyhow, we gotta start bouncing off with baby steps. We can't just expect to go play with the big boys in the courts without training and practice.

Now I have yet to seriously digest the figures that are swimming en masse before my eyes, but I will get to that at a time when I'm more lucid. Notwithstanding the value proposition of the company versus what we can expect from others in the market, I think what's important here is that we recognize that for those of us who dare, the future is actually staring at us in the face, poking at the side of our nose even. I've had this thought germinating in my head for some time now and it's reassuring to me to hear a professional validate the plausibility of an idea that almost a year ago was alien to me.

Of course, at the risk of looking like an @ss for not walking the talk, I have to share that all this money talk doesn't mean I can readily take the plunge as I'm advocating we all should. I would if I could. And quite obviously, "should" is spelled differently from "could." See the difference? It's a whole world of it that you see. But of course, I can only speak for myself. If you have two grand (loosely translated to about Php90K), then you're in business.

My memory's pretty fuzzy right now, but I was actually supposed to blog about Mom, how she's coming over and cooling her heels in Manila for a couple of days and stuff. I was even searching the PC for a nifty picture of her to post in here. Alas, the greenback monster reared its ugly head and I just had to blog all the way up to here to convince y'all, basically anyone who should feel so inclined, to contribute in the alleviation of poverty. Help ease the burden of mankind. Donate US$2,000 to this overly excitable blogger. C'mon now, it's all for a worthy cause..... =P

Peace, mah peoples!