Falling Economy: Recession Profit Stategies - #1

Okay, you don't need me to tell you things are tough. Hell, in Vietnam when stockbrokers jump from the roofs of bamboo huts they just get up and do it again. This can go on for days. But the boys in this video have figured out how to make a buck even when the banks are going up in flames. Make sure to scroll down and "pause" the lite-green podcast button in the right sidebar to stop the background music while you play the video.

Give it a look and see if you can't apply a similar strategy to your recession profit woes. For more ideas go here, and teach your employees how to market their way out for your firm.

For more Recession Profit Strategies, click below.

#4 Rubber Stamp Post-It Note Business Cards
#3 The Recruitment Process
#2 Saving On Employee Costs

A big thanks to Wayne Borg, one of the good old SIU boys from Chicago, for this one.

For more in Political Satire and Satire see:

White House Party Crashers Board Plane Loaded!

Pope Prays For Embattled Putter's Promiscuous Pecker: Tiger Woods Pardoned

Obama Sends 30,000 Troops to Tiger Woods' House!

Obama's Puppy in Rehab After Just a Week

Recession Profit Stategies II

Recession Profit Strategies I

Bush Surveys Presidential Disaster Area

MENSA Endorses McCain/Palin

Putin Hot As Hell Over Palin

SNL Palin/Hillary Open

Cheney Delivers 1 Billion in Aid to Georgia

Obama Splits Ticket - Boots Biden

Belgian Prime Minister Quits Over Budweiser Purchase

Obama Brandishes a Bud for the Bubbas

American Foreign Policy Since WWII

America Overseas - Citizen Mekong to the Rescue

Bentleys ain't squat in Vietnam nomore!

Move over boyz. Da Rolls Phantoms iz here in Vietnam and they're taking over from the Bentleys .

No longer a centrally planned government with it's feet in Stalinism, Vietnam has now embraced the worst of western society - making its countrymen look like total peons while the chosen drive around in the economic equivalent of the Space Shuttle. I'm absolutely sure that Ho Chi Minh, the President and holistic leader of his people, who refused to live in the Presidential mansion and had a far more simple home built on the grounds, would approve. Bollocks. Just take a look at the photos of Rolls Royce Phantoms, all shot right here in Vietnam, and notice particularly, the spare environs that surround them. Bollocks is right. I saw this same phenomena in Mongolia years ago when I went there to produce a TV show about the 2004 Olympics. In Mongolia, one of the poorest and most sparsely populated countries on the planet, there was no shortage of jet-black Hummers trolling the Gur infested countryside (pictured on the right), courtesy of the local gold and silver mining companies -- the only people in Mongolia who were making any money at all. And here in Vietnam, things seem to be catching up with America, Europe, Japan and Korea. I started counting Bentleys just this year. Looks like in no time the Commies will be pitching themselves off high-rise buildings and getting their government to bailout their bad business deals once the Rolls needs an oil change. And who pays? The people always pay. And hasn't it always been that way? The current fact that 10% of the world's population holds 80% of the wealth doesn't seem at all shocking once you remember that Louis XIV had the entire, largely unpaid, French court living in the Palace of Versailles, in what amounted to impeccably decorated dormitories, while the common people starved. (Cue: Beatles, "Revolution") Vietnam can certainly thank France for that legacy. But as George Washington never lived in the White House and Ho Chi Minh never owned more than a Pugeot 440, (pictured on the left) maybe it's time for our leaders to set an example for their people again. George W. Bush has certainly assured that as history advances, his photo will hold no match for that of Che Guavera adorning t-shirts of yet another generation to grow and challenge the status quo. In Vietnam we can also rest assured that no Bentley or Rolls owner will ever have to compete with Ho Chi Minh for those same t-shirt honours.

My thanks to DJGJ for the Rolls info and make sure to give them some grief about having a blog with nothing in it!

Bentleys Invade Vietnam: Perspective III

Recently, seeing a BMW in Vietnam has become like seeing a Bentley in the States in about the same way that seeing a Bentley in the States used to be like seeing the Space Shuttle in Lichtenstein. But since last year’s WTO accession, Vietnam has changed that matrix dramatically.

This week I saw three Bentleys in Ho Chi Minh City alone. Who knows how many ships are waiting off-shore with a cargo-hold full of Bentleys – and who knows who’s driving them. The first I saw, I was convinced was a hotel car, until the driver let the passengers off at the Park Hyatt and then waited in the public lot across the street instead of the hotel’s secure underground lot. You save a little money that way. The second was driving through the distinctly un-Bentley-esque back-packer tourist district and the third in a dealership, waiting for its new owner.

To own a Bentley in the US would mean that you have spent roughly 3.8 times the national per-capita GDP of $44,000 on a vehicle that retails at the least for $170,000 for the Continental Flying Spur model. But to own that same car in Vietnam would require that you shell out 111 times (scuze me, that's one hundred and eleven times!) the national per-capita GDP of $2600 once you tack on the 70% excise tax for that big (Volkswagen) engine inside for a total tag of $289,000.

To put it into complete perspective, that’s like paying, $4,884,000 for a vehicle in the States, relative to the average income of the country’s citizens – or seeing the Space Shuttle in Lichtenstein.