Farmer Diaries

The story; I'm at the gate counter for the airline (code-sharing partner of the airline from which I bought the ticket), I am looking to purchase an upgrade to business class if available! This is the answer I got:  This ticket was sold by our code-sharing partner and cannot be upgraded!  Now I can understand if they wanted to keep their upgrade for their direct customers.  But the aircraft left with four business class seats empty; forgone free revenues. The airline gave up a few hundred dollars of revenues because its system is too inflexible to allow the gate agent to generate more profit for the airline. In fact, the gate agent could have said, at this time I don't have any space, but if you wait a bit, and before boarding, I may be able to accommodate you!  Even if the answer, in the end, had been no, it would have been better. We had no choice to buy the ticket from their code-sharing partner -- because the code-sharing partner was the "international segm...

UPDATE:  last week, suddenly with no rhyme or reason the price of bitcoin suddenly jumped to $9,800.00 (thereabouts).  Again, no reason or logic, just a massive 30% increase in the price of Bitcoin.  Proof that Bitcoin is neither a store of value or a currency -- a currency (or a store of value cannot vary, for no apparent reason, by 30% in a day...) So the crypto took a major soak yesterday, Bitcoin that was hovering around $8,000 and has been around that figure for some months fell to $7,400. What's interesting about me being right about the fall of crypto...I have zero ideas why they dumped 14% of the value in a trading session So once again I prove that I know nothing (like Sargent Klinger!)

Turns out the CEO of WeWork got $1,2 billion so not $1.7, but at the same time 4,000 WeWork employees lost their job with 2 weeks severance.... Well what's really funny is WeWork is worth what Softbank says it's worth -- well at least until its auditors ask some hard questions.  The strangest thing is that apparently, Neumann (the Ex-CEO) got $1.7 billion... First off, no one knows if this is true or BS (my guess the latter)  but nevertheless its hard to see how WeWork can be worth $ 7 billion since it is near bankruptcy bleeding cash and its reputation is in tatters. Whatever!  The reality is that this is a crazy world.  Lets not forget the Grill Cheese Company (yep that was for real) that had a market valuation of nearly $ 100 million operating 11 food trucks with no (and I mean NO) barriers to entry, tons of copy cats and "how many grill cheese would you eat a week?" oh and operating losses greater than its total revenues... So Yeah, we work at $7 billio...

On October 19, 1987, I had been working in my first ever job for a total of 2 weeks in the London (UK) credit department of what is now BoNY Mellon.  I had let a basement flat in Nothing Hill from a family friend for a few months until I found the perfect place to set up!  That morning, I made my way to the office via the central line (to Bank station...).  All was well, I had heard during the night that there had been heavy wind, but really saw little impact on Kensington Park Road, the subway train was on time (as usual) but surprisingly empty -- but I didn't really focus on this because I'd only been on the job for 10 days -- half of which were in a training center in West London.  I arrive in the office and few people are about -- that was getting surprising, and few people around  (all recently hired newbies) are congregating around the Reuter's machine (a green screen about the size of an Ipad).  Everyone is looking at the UK markets and French mark...

The WeWork valuation was always based on the greater fool. That these VC investors  would find a sucker (eg the IPO market) to make them whole!  Because there is simply no logic to the WeWork valuation. It was already the single largest tenant in NYC and a substantial player in many other capitals, and yet it was very far from showing profits.  The operating losses for WeWork appear to have been almost greater than its total revenues So the likes of SoftBank decided that the best option was to treat WeWork as if it were a tech company and not just a real estate play (and a not very interesting one). Leasing office space and then subleasing it to small companies... it’s hardly groundbreaking. So what’s the fall out?  First it would appear that WeWork is on its way to bankruptcy since I doubt that the VC will pony up more cash. I suspect that the shares of IWG (holding company for Regus, WeWorks main competitor) will take a hit. They got a nice boost from the WeWor...