Readers Write: 

“Love the way you write. Thanks for imparting a bit of your knowledge to me.” – KDW

Postscript: Symbols & Secrets That the Coen Brothers Keep Slipping Into Their Movies 

I recently watched a short film by Ariel Avissar compiling circular imagery in Coen Brothers movies from 1987 to 2018. It revealed something important about how great creators think. As you will see, Avissar illustrates how the Coens use circles frequently in their films. Bowling balls. Steering wheels. Plates. Camera movements. Even framing devices. I never noticed that. I presume it was intentional. In any case, I’m going to be looking for it when I watch their post-2018 movies.

This cold snap on the eastern seaboard of the US is not a snap, it’s practically a season. It’s been going on for a month. It is also not just on the eastern seaboard. It starts higher than that and ends lower. It’s also wider.

I’ve just returned from a work trip to Nicaragua, where, for the entire three weeks I was there, the “snap” brought average temperatures down by at least 10 degrees. But at this time of the year, temperatures usually fluctuate in the 80s and 90s – which meant the weather was still near-perfect at Rancho Santana throughout my entire stay.

I was, however, worried about the effect the near-freezing nights in South Florida would have on the thousands of plants and trees in Paradise Palms, our botanical garden. I’ve put so much time and money into the garden over the years that its value, at least to me, is greater than the value of my beachfront home.

It’s amusing to realize that I’ve spent most of my life never giving a second thought to the weather. As a child, I yearned for it to snow enough to close my school. As an adult, I occasionally wondered about how the lack of snow would affect my skiing. And there was always the occasional hurricane to be faced in Florida. But those were rare events and could be insured against. You can’t insure yourself against damage to very rare and valuable trees that could be chilled to death.

Since returning, I’ve been wearing a jacket every day and even a jacket and sweater while walking the dog at night. Today, I’m wearing a tee shirt. It’s a bit cold for a tee shirt, but I’m doing what I can to signal to Mother Nature that enough is enough.

Speaking of cold (cough, cough), I was following all the craziness surrounding the ICE protests in Minnesota. And although I think the deaths of the two protesters were not murders, I do think that they might have been avoided if Trump and his team had listened to my advice… which is the main subject of today’s issue.

Readers Write:

From PP: “I’ve read and reread several of your books. I have digital notes from all of them. I regularly find myself going back to one of your concepts or ideas…. I don’t think I’ve gotten as much value from any other business thinker as I have from you (Alex Hormozi coming in a close second lately). So I just wanted to say thank you for all the knowledge you shared over the years.”

About the Wedding at Rancho Santana in the Feb. 5 issue 

From AS: “Rancho Santana is an unbelievable place just to vacation, but what an amazing destination wedding venue it is! Your article certainly was blatant advertising, but unlike most advertising, it was somewhere between truth and underselling.”

From KM: “The wedding at Rancho Santana sounded incredible! It also gave me a clearer sense of the gap between my image and the reality of South American countries.”

I found this in Letters of Note. I love it. Shaun Usher presents us with a number of clips from letters that Charles Darwin wrote when he was on his various tours around the world. It turns out he wasn’t just a science and nature lover, he was also a hater… of science and nature and nearly everything else!

Just watching this scares me.

I’m writing this from my little palapas-roofed pavilion next to my pool overlooking a great expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

I’m here by myself because I told K that I was going to spend at least half of January in Rancho Santana whether she came with me or not. It’s 48 hours into my solo sojourn, and I haven’t admitted that I’m lonely and I wish she were here.

I haven’t left my property since I got here, working non-stop responding to emails and writing my blogs and book chapters. It’s just me and my laptop and all the thoughts I’ve been wanting to send out into the universe. So, don’t cry for me. You could only wish you were so lucky as to be here, working on something you think is worth working on, lifting your head and seeing this…

Get Ready for a $6 Trillion Transfer of Wealth 

In the next 10 years, according to a new report from brokerage Coldwell Banker Global Luxury reviewed in the WSJ, 1.2 million people from around the world whose net worth is at least $5 million will pass down their wealth – a total of at least $38 trillion – to their children.

That’s a lot of money.

A good chunk of it – about $4.6 trillion – will be in the form of real estate. Half of those properties are in the US, and some of them are already changing hands because many Baby Boomer parents would rather see the transfers happen while they are still alive.

This is a serious opportunity for brokers, contractors, home decorators, and other service providers. As the lucky youngsters begin to gain ownership over their pieces of this multitrillion-dollar giveaway, they will be buying and selling homes and hiring professionals to make them fit their inexperienced style.

I couldn’t even guess at what they will be buying and selling, nor what sorts of changes they will likely make. But if I were in my 30s or 40s, I’d be working on figuring out how these Gen Xers and Millennials will be directing their newfound wealth.

 
G7 Shocks the World and Makes a Sensible Decision 

This year’s G7 summit has been delayed because the date conflicted with Trump’s White House birthday party, which will showcase, among other Trumpian amusements, an MMA (mixed martial arts) fight in or around the Oval Office.

I’ve never had a high opinion of the annual get-together of the seven so-called world leaders, because they rarely arrive at a course of action that makes economic sense. And when they do, they don’t follow up on it.

But now, after 52 years of loony thinking and wasteful spending, they’ve done something that makes perfect sense. Going forward with the meeting without Trump while half the world is watching a cage fight would have been an embarrassing mistake.

Trump Says He’ll Impose a Credit Card Interest Rate Cap 
Is That a Good Thing? 

President Trump has announced that he plans to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year.

It was the first time in more than 10 years when nobody – neither Democrats nor Republicans – was outraged by an executive order he issued.

In fact, it felt like everyone liked the idea.

But as with the capturing of Maduro, it’s likely that the nice people with TDS will find a problem with it. And I’m pretty sure I know what that is. If a 10% limit were imposed, it would force credit card issuers to get tougher on their credit rating standards, which would prevent millions of deadbeats from acquiring cards and buying things they can’t afford.

Good News on the US Economy 

New orders for key US-manufactured capital goods increased more than expected ​in November, suggesting business spending on equipment ‌maintained a steady growth pace in the fourth quarter.

Non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for business spending, rose ‌0.7% after a downwardly revised 0.3% ​gain in October, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said last week.

Economists polled by Reuters had ‍forecast these so-called core capital goods orders increasing 0.3% after a previously reported 0.5% advance in October. Shipments ⁠of core capital goods rose 0.4% after gaining ‍0.8% in October.

I didn’t know she had died, so when I saw this, it took me aback. Here, in a theater in Dublin, Ireland, a 1,000-member choir sings Nothing Compares 2 Uin memory of Sinead O’Connor.

Since I didn’t know much about her – other than she had a nice voice and wrote some fetching songs, including Nothing Compares 2 U (which went platinum) – I googled her biography. She had quite the fucked-up life. A blend of Joan Baez, Mary Black, and Amy Winehouse.

Here’s a video obituary of her career.