Vanities – Page 9 – Abnormal Capitalist

Trump Solo

Remembering my early years as a Trump appreciator :

A securities analyst who has studied Trump’s peregrinations for many years believes, “Deep down, he wants to be Madonna.” In other words, to ask how the gods could have permitted Trump’s resurrection is to mistake profound superficiality for profundity, performance art for serious drama. A prime example of superficiality at its most rewarding: the Trump International Hotel & Tower, a fifty-two-story hotel-condominium conversion of the former Gulf & Western Building, on Columbus Circle, which opened last January. The Trump name on the skyscraper belies the fact that his ownership is limited to his penthouse apartment and a stake in the hotel’s restaurant and garage, which he received as part of his development fee. During the grand-opening ceremonies, however, such details seemed not to matter as he gave this assessment: “One of the great buildings anywhere in New York, anywhere in the world.”

→ The New Yorker

American Woman : The Life Of Kim Kardashian

And as much as her thoughts and actions on this Earth may be quotidian, the way she looks is out of this world. As she strides into the meeting precisely on time and in an outfit made up of colors found exclusively in nature — dark-green ankle-length dress, sand-colored lace-up sandals and tree-bark Céline purse — the effect is like a photorealistic painting, meaning that the Kardashian on the TV screen feels more real than the Kardashian in the room. She’s a jungle Aphrodite escaped from a forest of big-booty nymphs, with a mane as thick as a horse’s and as black as volcanic rock. Her eyelashes flutter like teeny-tiny go-go dancers’ fans. Her nails are small, elegant talons, painted a color that manages to be both onyx and the bloodiest red. But it is Kardashian’s body that is the thing, of course, and today, as always, her clothing is so tight it feels transgressive, clinging in particular to that strange, glorious butt, a formerly taboo body part that is now not only an inescapable part of the American erotic but also our best and most welcome distraction from climate change, income inequality and ISIS.

→ Rolling Stone

Stop Making Fun Of 50 Cent’s Bankruptcy

Rappers, like kings, like to brag about their money because it shows influence and status. Versailles, the vomitously elaborate gilded palace outside Paris, was nothing if not Louis XIV’s attempt to overcome doubters about his throne with an intimidating show of power and wealth. Meanwhile, he was driving himself and his aristocrats to near-bankruptcy — not to mention France itself, which suffered lost wars and financial hardship. This is why there are so many parallels between Renaissance bling and the rappers of today: Gold always speaks loudly, and frequently moreso than the truth.

From Fitty himself :

Could you love me in a Bentley?
Could you love me on a bus?
I’ll ask 21 questions and they all about us

→ Mashable

The Bloomberg Terminal : Inside The Esoteric Ecosystem That Keeps Finance Hooked

Even high culture has acknowledged its status. Last week the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History started displaying the old Bloomberg keyboard of bond market legend Bill Gross as part of its “American Enterprise” exhibition.

For bankers, traders and money managers, these examples of the terminal’s ubiquity are entirely unsurprising, with many admitting a near-addiction. “I genuinely don’t know how I’d manage without the terminal,” says Matt Russell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London. “It’s quite sad, really.”

→ Financial Times

Bill Gross Gets Personal: ‘I Just Wanted to Run Money and Be Famous’

But make no mistake: This Bill Gross, the one eying the French crullers, isn’t that Bill Gross, the one who bent markets to his will at Pacific Investment Management Co., who built one of the most enduring track records in bond management history, who moved markets with his pronouncements. That old Gross wanted fame more than power and riches, and he wanted it with a hot eagerness that made enemies. By the time Pimco cast him out, he was considered by colleagues—there’s no way to sugarcoat this—to be a world-class jerk who’d lost his touch.

→ Bloomberg