The Dr. Doug Ramsey Show - 20240810

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The opinions and information expressed and discussed on The Doctor
Doug Ramsey Show or for informational and educational purposes only.
It is not intended to provide, and should not be
relied upon for accounting, legal, tax or investment advice. Please
consult with a professional specializing in these areas regarding the
applicability of this information to your situation.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
All things financing business leading you to success at work,
at home, and in live. It's the Doctor Doug Ramsey Show.
And now here's your host, Doctor Doug Ramsey Book.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
The Doctor Doug Ramsey Show. Your host, Doctor Doug Ramsey
broadcasting on the Moja Favo Radio Network. All right, getting
towards the end of the Olympics, some great track and
field events in the USA. Running teams or for the
most part, are just smoking everybody, So really exciting to

(01:00):
see that kind of little taekwondo going on in the
background right now. And this first story I pulled up,
I thought we'd get into the Olympic spirit here and
it's about the medals themselves. And this is just from

(01:22):
August ninth, from Friday KLL. The Olympics medals awarded to
athletes at Paris twenty twenty four have come under scrutiny
after a Team USA skateboarder claimed the bronzie won had
deteriorated after just a week. Nija Houston, who came third

(01:46):
in the Man's Skateboard Street Saturday, I don't even know
what the event is when it's a skateboard streep, and
I missed all the skateboard events, he said in a
video posted on the Instagram that his bronze is already
chipped and losing its colored. Days after winning, he said

(02:07):
the medal was looking like it went to war and back,
and added that it was not as high quality as
you think, as the bronze appeared to be rubbed off.
The Olympic medals handed out in pairs feature a piece
of recycled scrap metal from the Eiffel Tower. That's pretty
cool getting a little chunk of the Eiffel Tower in there.

(02:29):
And more than five thousand of them have been produced
by France's Mint for the Games. All right, So these
Olympic medals look great when they're brand new, he said
in the post to his five million followers. But after
letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for

(02:49):
a little bit letting my friends wear it over the weekend,
he continued, before zooming in on the metal to show
its condition. The repair not as high quality as you'd think.
It's looking rough, but I don't know. Olympic medals, we
got to step up the quality a little bit. Oz.
Bronze at Paris was his first medal in the Olympics.

(03:12):
The twenty nine year old has won skateboarding gold twelve
times at the X Games and six times at the
World Championships. He sounds pretty darn good. American has also
won several silver and bronze medals across both competitions. All right,
so there you go, Paris. Step up your medal game. Lululemon.

(03:39):
I don't think I did this article on the last show.
It's about Lululemon in their new leggings line. It's given
customers long but and this comes from CNN Business back

(03:59):
on your thirtieth I think I pulled this one up
and set it aside. Lululemon thought it had developed its
next hit, but after its new leggings became the butt
of endless jokes, the company will have to leave them behind.
Lululemon pulled its newly released ninety eight dollars Breeze Through

(04:21):
leggings line from its website and app after negative reviews
and customer complaints about its V shaped backseam, which rises
up from the seat of the pants all the way
up to the lower back. The products NAFU is Lululemon's
latest recent setback the company, famous for its ath leisure clothing,

(04:45):
as seen at stock fall fifty percent so far this year,
following sixteen percent just this past month. I was hoping
the V shape in the back would be flattering, but
it was too aggressive for me. All I could see
was a will Tell slash giant arrow pointing to my
butt crack. One person on Reddit said, what's really weird

(05:08):
actually with these ones is the backseam. A reviewer on
TikTok said, do you see that. I'm not sure what's
going on over there, but that's not very cute. The
customer said she is returning the leggings. Also, I'm not
a huge fan of the butt seam. I just think
it's a little bit extra. Don't love it. Another reviewer

(05:32):
on TikTok said company launched the line on July ninth
and marketed as an innovative product. With lightweight fabric and
quick drying material, but it seemed to have missed why
so many across the spectrum Van Lulu Lemon's products attracted
to begin with. JP Morgan analyst Matthew Boss said in

(05:54):
a research note that the leggings received three point one
stars out of five on one hundred and twelve views,
and the vaccine was frequently mentioned as a top complaint.
Customer feedback was indeed the main impetus for the company
pulling the leggings from the market, Boss said, writing the
customer's first concern was a vaccine in the shape of

(06:16):
v which customers cited as unflattering, giving them a long
But so I wonder if Lululemin, and if you've ever
taken a principles of marketing course, if you were a
business major in college, they talk about focus groups before

(06:37):
you roll a product out. You develop the product, you
put it in front of a focus group, and you
get their feedback, and you can actually get paid for
being a focus group member and reviewing things and giving
your honest input on them. But I wonder if they

(06:58):
even did that here. You know, it's just to do
a big roll out like Lululemon, I'm sure did on
this particular product. They've got all the development time, they've
got the any type of protection they put on the product,

(07:20):
you know, if they've got any type of patents on it.
So a lot of work, a lot of effort, and
then they have to figure out where they're gonna make it,
if they're going to outsource that, where they're gonna support
source the raw materials, and then work on the whole

(07:41):
marketing and rollout plan and do their forecast and hope
their forecasts are right, because the last thing you want
to do is make too many and overshoot, because then
you've got just dead stock on you know, in the
warehouses and even probably sitting on the store shelves. Idiot,

(08:05):
don't want to undershoot because you don't want to have
out of stocks on the shelves where you got empty
facings and everybody's trying to get the product and they
can't just because you run out too soon. So before
you've got restocked. But a lot of effort, a lot
of money. I'm really curious how much they are going

(08:26):
to have to write off because of this thing. In
a statement to CNN, a Lululemon spokesperson said it takes
customer feedback seriously and we'll incorporated into future designs. We
have made the decision to pause on sales for now
to make any adjustments necessary to deliver the best possible

(08:48):
product experience. A spokesperson said. The miss comes at a
challenging moment for a brand that has dominated the pricey
athletes your market for years. Earlier this year, Lululemon said
it missed out on some sales because it did not
stock as many different colors of leggings as customers want it.

(09:08):
There you go, exactly what I'm talking about. It also
comes as Lululemon face a stiff competition from Alo Brewery.
I don't know if I'm pronunthet right near he'd seeing
that name before, and other brands for pricey athletic clothing.

(09:32):
All right, one more Olympics article, and this headline says
it's a scandal. It's from Metro about four days ago.
Former Olympian David Doulay has slammed the decision by the
French government to tax the bonuses awarded the medal winning

(09:52):
athletes in Paris this summer. So, how would you like that?
You earned a bonus. You've worked all your life and
practiced and practiced and practice and competed, and you win

(10:13):
an Olympic medal and your government says, well, one for winning.
You know, they haven't sentives, so you're getting paid a
bonus for bringing home a medal. But then your own
French government says, well, that's taxable income, so we're gonna
tax your bonus. That is a slap in the face.

(10:37):
The host France have enjoyed a hugely successful Olympics so
far and currently sit third in the table behind China
and the USA. That's when this thing was written. With
forty eight medals, including thirteen golds, superstar swimmer ly owned
Marshan won four gold medals on his own, while the

(10:59):
country also claim the whopping ten medals in judo alone.
Any French athlete who secured a place in the podium
will be given a cash prize by the government, ranging
for eighty thousand euros for gold, forty thousand euros for silver,
and twenty thousand euros for bronze. However, athletes will be

(11:23):
required to pay back some of that money to the
state in taxes. The decision described as scandalous by former
French judoka Dula Judoka being a judo guide. For some athletes,
it's pocket money. For others in small sports, it's huge

(11:46):
taxing that I think it's a shame. Delay, who won
judo gold at the nineteen ninety six and two thousand Olympics,
told French outlet RMC kind of with him. That's that
ough'll be something that's subsidize or tax free. It's true
that it may seem like a lot of money, but
you have to be aware of one thing. When an

(12:07):
athlete gets eighty thousand euros, do you know how long
it takes him to get his charm between ten and
fifteen years old, and it's most like fifteen. If you
spread eighty thousand euros over fifteen years, you'll see what

(12:29):
it is. And on top of that, you have to
pay taxes on it. It's scandalous. Taxes on bonuses were
reintroduced by the French government at the last Summer Olympics
in Tokyo, although the budget to reward athletes has been
more than doubled for the Paris Games. Eithery're the host country,
you'd think France has already smashed the previous record haul

(12:54):
for medals at an Olympics Olympic Games, surpassing the forty
three medals they claim at the Beijing Olympics in two
thousand and eight. And there will be more medals to
come for the host nation, including the men's football or
soccer as we call it. We're what's his name? Try
Henry's sidele face Spain and the gold metal match on Friday,

(13:16):
and you know, oh, I think I think Spain won
then and one of those penalty kicked shootouts. All right,
there you go, So make sure you consult your tax
advisor if you're a winner at the Olympics. All right, Greece,

(13:40):
I haven't been to Greece. Everybody I know that it
has been to Greece. This loves it. It's from CNN
Travel from August fifth, and it talks about the worst
season ever. Says there's a volcano waiting to blow on Santorini,

(14:02):
but it's not the world famous called there at the
dazzling whitewashed houses, blue dome churches, and azure skies and
sea of this uniquely stunning Greek island, pulling a reported
three point four million visitors a year, far out numbering
Santorini's twenty thousand were so permanent residents. As many as

(14:26):
seventeen thousand. Cruise ship passengers surge onto the island on
peak days in high season, heading straight to hotspots such
as the capital Fira in the town of Hoi Hooia
I'm not sure on its northwestern tip. Renowned for its

(14:48):
spectacular sunsets, It's even earned the nickname Instagram Island because
of its perfectly saturated, no filter splendor. The narrow, cobbled
streets and cliffside balconies are filled cheek to jow with
vacationers seeking sunset selfies, and locals are disturbed as they

(15:08):
go about their daily business. When evening comes, however, the
crowd's mouth away, and some complain the island goes from
Times Square to ghost Town to vaultile mix. That's led
to discontent building on this cyclodes island in the Asian Sea,

(15:28):
whose rugged landscape was shaped by a volcanic eruption around
sixteen hundred BC. Santorini Mayor Nikos Zorzos has proposed a
cap on cruise ship passengers down to eight thousand a day.

(15:49):
It's a move back by Prime Minister Karacos Mitsotakis, who
told Bloomberg the measure is set for next year. Nuti
tourism protests have been a political flashpoint in Europe this summer,
with demonstrations taking place in Spain, the Netherlands and beyond.
On Thursday, Veneselmanited tour group sizes the twenty five people

(16:12):
in banned megaphones, having recently declared its temporary entrance fee
a success, notanding the city about two point sixty four
million in revenue. Overtourism has become a major buzzword in
travel in recent years, as popular destinations struggle to bounce

(16:32):
their need for visitor dollars with the quality of life
of the residents and maintaining a desirable and sustainable environment
for all. On Santorini, according to some, it's not simply
a case of too many tourists. Over tourism doesn't exist.
What I see is a lack of structures. Genn Luca Chimente,

(16:58):
a local tour operator in a Santorini resident for eighteen
years till CNN travel. While social media is filled with
images of the severe overcrowded in the islands hotspots at
peaked times, he says the picture. The rest of the
time is very different. The truth is that the island
is empty right now is like never before. It's the

(17:20):
worst season ever. July on August are high season in Santorini,
but the town centers are dead at nine pm and
restaurants and hotels are nowhere near capacity. He says cruise
ship passengers are valued and much needed, as are those
long longer stay visitors coming by boat or plane. But

(17:41):
he says the feeling among locals is that something has
to give. In the mid to late twentieth century, Santorini
was still a sleepy of island where residents got around
on donkeys and cultivated tomatoes and vineyards for wine. Now

(18:03):
the island's outdated infrastructure is under severe pressure, with the
main port under a particular strain. So yeah, it's a
balancing act. It's definitely an interesting issue that they face,

(18:26):
all right. Taco Bell, major changes come in to Taco
Bell's drive through from CNN Business from July thirty first.
There may soon be one fewer persons standing between you
and your cheesy Goordida crunch. Taco Bell is set to
expand the use of artificial intelligence voice technology, and it's

(18:50):
drive throughs to hundreds of US locations by the end
of this year. Parent company Young Brands said Wednesday, means
that when users pull up to place their order at
a Taco Bell, there's a good chance they will be
talking to a computer rather than an human employee on
the other end. Taco Bell isn't the only fast food

(19:15):
chain to test having customers talk to AI in its
drive throughs in an effort to free up employees to
spend more time on other tasks and boost sales, but
Taco Bell's expansion comes after a prominent rival had trouble
trying to use similar technology. McDonald's last month said last

(19:36):
month it was pulling the plug on the AI ordering
technology that it was testing at more than one hundred
US drive throughs after customers complained about the system getting
their orders wrong. Viral videos showed customers ending up with
absurd orders as a result of the McDonald's AI drive
through technology, like the woman who didn't really want nine

(20:00):
sweet teas, or the girl shouting stop at the screen
as it talies up more than two dozen orders of
chicken nuggets. That's awesome that AI struggled to perform well
in a drive through setting isn't totally surprising that technology
needs to be trained on huge sets of voice samples

(20:23):
to correctly understand the full range of human accents and
speech patterns, and noisy environments can throw off AIS speech
recognition tools. And we all know the frustrating experience of
being on the other end of a poorly functioning computer
assistant desperately wishing we could just talk to a human.

(20:46):
But Lawrence Kim, chief innovation officer Young Brand sol CNN,
he's confident that his computer's technology, which is already in
use at one HUNTERD Taco bill locations across thirteen states,
won't have the same issue. Instead, he said, the technology
has actually led to greater ordering accuracy, as well as
happier customers and shorter drive through weights. That will be

(21:11):
interesting to see how it really winds up work can
have And they I'm skipping down a little bit here,
but this is kind of funny. One thing the company
has learned along the way. Not every customer uses the
same words the order a specific item, nor pronounces than

(21:33):
the same way. For example, Kim said the company hadn't
to train its AI model to understand not only the
correct pronunciation of case idea, but also the incorrect but
still common case adilla. So they taught the computer that

(21:57):
the wrong pronunciation, you know, should bring up the same
case of the order when you say case of dila.
That's hilarious. So there you go. Can't wait to try
one out and see if I can bamboozle it all right.
CNN Style has this interesting art up in rom August seventh.

(22:20):
It's about safe rooms. A few things appear to sue
the existential anxieties of the super rich, like a bunker
designed to withstand anything short or total nuclear armageddon. Yet
it's no longer enough for the security conscious billionaire to
stick in impenetrable safe room in the basement, where it

(22:41):
might sit empty forever. In today's uber prime properties, bunkers
have gone seriously upmarket in high tech, in some cases,
growing to the extent that whole homes are becoming twenty
first century fortresses. We've seen a lot more of a
focus on entertainment, said al Korby, who has been at

(23:03):
the forefront of secure luxury for fifty years as a
president and founder of safe, which stands for Strategically Armored
and Fortified Environments based in Virginia, in the US. Obviously,
if you're going to be able to survive underground, we

(23:23):
want you to be having fun while all hell's breaking
loose up above you. Korby, who helped secure a twenty
seven floor private home in Mumbai for the billionaire industrialist
Moukesh and Bonnie, whose son a not recently made headlines

(23:45):
with his lavish wedding celebrations. Yeah went on for like
I forget weeks or a month or something. Crazy is
currently working on a sprawling house on a two hundred
acre wooded plot at an undisclosed location in the US.
He has understandably tight lips about many aspects of its work.

(24:09):
The house itself, Korby said in an interview via zoom,
is ultra secured with the blastproof doors, unbreakable windows, and
biometric door entry systems. Then there's the thirty foot deep
moat with a swing bridge. The water can is capable

(24:30):
of taking out helicopters and drones or skydivers in the
film of flammable liquid that can be automatically deployed across
the surface of the artificial lake and ignited to create
a defensive ring of fire. Look at medieval times, a
mote is one of the greatest deterrens, said Korby, but

(24:54):
they didn't have jet skis back then. Korby's clients, a
business mobile and Avid Waters sports fan saw dual use
for his moat and plans to use it as a
racetrack for his alpha pals too. The very wealthy have
always been targets, whether for am Intruder's kidnappers or assassins.

(25:17):
Now fears have grown to include eat the rich, anti
capitalist activity activists, extreme weather caused by climate change terrorists,
unforeseen apocalyptic events in a perennial pandemic threat that was
made all too real in two thousand. Corby, who was

(25:42):
also built underground escape tunnels that doubles go kart tracks,
said there is no appetite among his clients for utilitarian
design and safe spaces even fifty years ago. He says
traditional bunkers look like high end hotels, kind of like
the Ritz Carlton underground, but now as rich as clients

(26:04):
would scoff at such modesty, a spirit of one upmanship
may partly be driving demand. Several specialists have reported a
bump in inquiries since report's surface last year of a
huge compound that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is building in Hawai,
which public planning documents revealed includes a five thousand square

(26:28):
foot underground shelter with a living space, a plant, and
mechanical room to keep the bunker operational in an escape hatch.
Bill Gates reportedly has bunkers under all of his homes.
Graham Harrison, founding partner at SAHH Architecture and Interior Design

(26:49):
in London, one of the world's leading high net worth
design studios, said he too, is responding to shifting demands.
Not long ago, clients tended to build the bathrooms of
their primary suites to withstand attacks. Interior walls would be
made of concrete, and secure doors were designed to blend

(27:10):
with the homes to core. Better to be able to
pop next door at night than try to race down
to a far off basement. Oh, I've got one more
Olympic story here. I forgot about this one. So there's

(27:34):
a great sponsor here. This is from People magazine from
August first, and it's about a partnership with Parmisano Raisiano
and they make farmersan cheese. Well. One other sponsored athletes

(28:04):
is Italian gymnast Georgia Villa, who helped Team Middally earn
a silver medal in the women's team competition, but she's
gone viral for a much cheesier reason. Voters from Villa's
old partnership with Parmeigano Regiano have been taken taking over

(28:25):
the internet. People confirm that the sponsorship has ended. It
ran from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, but
that doesn't make the images any less amazing. At the time,
Via posed with giant wheels of Parmigiano Regiano in her
gymnastics uniform. I'm very happy to be part of a

(28:51):
great parmigan Eragiano family. Since I was a child, Iy've
always loved this amazing, amazing product, a symbol of excellence
in Italian culture, and since today being able to collaborate
with them makes me extremely proud and excited to face
future challenges, she wrote in a post announcing the partnership

(29:12):
in April twenty twenty one. In another set of photos
posted in November twenty twenty two, Vas shown flipping over
a wheel, the cheese and a balance beam, doing a handstand,
and enjoying a small packet of the cheese and a
park bench. Other posts include a snap of the gymnast
smiling while wrapping her arms around the Italian stable. Although

(29:34):
the company's partnership has ended, the company released a statement
following VIA's metal winning performance on Tuesday. The Parmigiano Aragiano
Consortium is always thrilled when the Italian team members, especially
when so young, achieved such extraordinary results. It has always

(29:59):
been so instence of the world of sports, the company
says in a statement to people, the company is in
fact an essential food or not the company, the Parmesan
cheese itself is in fact an essential food in everyone's diet,
and in particular that of athletes who find in it

(30:19):
a totally natural energy boost made with only three ingredients
raw milk, salt, and rennets renee. I'm not even sure
I've ever seen that word. Let's do a quick check here.
It's a complex set of enzymes produced in the stomachs

(30:42):
of ruminant mammals. I guess that gets the whole process
going when it's cheesemaking time, and it's free of additives
and preserves easily digestible and naturally lactose free. Is a
ready to use energy reserve before, during, and after any

(31:05):
physical effort. So that's a statement from the company there.
So they're promoting their own product. Here, simple three ingredients
and you can get those big cheese wheels as opposed
to the widely produced Parmesan cheese. Parmesan or regiano is

(31:26):
a specific product protected by a PDO, a protected destination
of origin, which means that the cheese can only be
produced in the Parma, Raisio e Milia Modana, Baloonian Mantua
regions of Italy. So this consortium is a governing body

(31:52):
that oversees and represents two hundred ninety two dairies operating
in the area. It was founded in nineteen thirty four
to help protect cheeses than her classification. All right, really interesting,
learned something new every day, all right. This crowd strike
deal that just took out a bunch of the Microsoft

(32:15):
of computers shareholders are taking CrowdStrike to court or the
global outage. CrowdStrike shareholders claim the cybersecurity company to fraut
of them after a faulty software update caused a global
outage it crash more than eight million computers on July nineteenth.
In a class action lawsuit filed too day.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
This is.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
A week ago, so keep that in mind. In Austin,
Texas federal court, shareholders accused CrowdStrike of making materially false
and misleading statements about it software testing. They say those

(33:04):
false statements came to light during the outage, which disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals,
and emergency lines around the world. They said crowdstrikes share
price fell thirty two percent over the next twelve days,
wiping out twenty five billion of market value. As the

(33:25):
outage's effects became known, Chief executive at George Kurtz was
called the test fot of the US Congress, and Delta
Airlines were poorly hired prominent lawyer David Boyce to seek damages.
So CrowdStrike is going to be getting hammered. Now here's

(33:48):
Crowdstrike's response. This is a different article and it came
out after that filing. CrowdStrike has rejected Delta Airline claim
that it is to blame for flight issues following the
worldwide Microsoft outage on July nineteenth. CrowdStrike instead insisted that

(34:12):
it had minimal potential liability for the subsequent disruptions. This
follows the Delta CEO Ed Bastian's revelations that the it
outage had meant a five hundred million dollar expense for
the airline and it would be pursuing legal action against
CrowdStrike for compensation. The five hundred million dollars includes reimbursements

(34:35):
as well as hotel and related transport expenses. Delta had
to cancel more than six thousand flights in six days,
which affected more than five hundred thousand passengers. Some forty
thousand systems also had to be manually restarted following the outage.
It is now also the subject of a US Transportation

(34:57):
Department investigation which will look deeper into the reasons for
its recovery delay. So I mean, there you go. You
got a global airline, Delta, forty thousand systems that are
all trying to work of consistently and with each other

(35:20):
with that disruption inside of Delta, and they had the
manu where you start. All those right, affected a bunch
of other airlines. So here we go in response Crowdstrikes.
In a letter to Delta through an external lawyer, Michael Karlinsky,

(35:44):
who is a co managing partner at Los Angeles based
law firm Quinn, Emmanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan, the letter said
CrowdStrike reiterates its apology to Delta, It's employees and its
customers and as empathetic to the circumstances they face. However,
CrowdStrike is highly disappointed and Delta's suggestion that CrowdStrike acted

(36:08):
in approvally and strongly rejects any allegation that it was
grossly negligent or committed a willful misconduct with respect to
the channel file two ninety one incident, your suggestion that
CrowdStrike failed to do testing validation is contradicted by the
very information on which you rely from crowdstrikes preliminary post

(36:32):
incident review. Yeah. I think that's kind of a weak response.
They didn't do much testing, if it wouldn't seem like
if they're taking out computer systems globally, sounds like they

(36:54):
missed something, all right. So here's an interesting headline that
caught my eye. So this is from Entrepreneur four days ago,
so I mean August six, and it says a famed

(37:21):
twenty three story New York office building sales for a
ninety seven and a half percent discount in an online haunktion.
I mean that right there, that how big the discount was?
Is what kind of blew my mind when I just
saw that, and let's get into it. I haven't even
read the article yet, but it's very intriguing. Despite many

(37:46):
companies issuing return to office mandates, a commercial real estate
market in big cities like New York remains baltam Iconic
office towers, once valued in the one hundreds of millions,
are taking a major hit. For example, a midtown Manhattan
office building just sold at a ninety seven and a
half percent discount after only receiving one offer. The New

(38:08):
York Times reported a twenty three story, nine hundred and
twenty five thousand square foot building redesigned by the Fame
Against the Architects team sold for eight and a half
million dollars last week. The building was last sold in
two thousand and six for whopping three hundred and thirty

(38:31):
two million bucks. The office building, located at one thirty
five West fiftieth Street, was built in nineteen sixty three
in auction off by a UBS on an auction website
called ten X, and it's ten spelled out. If anybody
wants to look up this auction website, so it spelled

(38:54):
out hyphen x, so ten hiphen x. It received just
one bid. UBS perspective was we need to sell this quick.
We've kind of made peace with this that it's going
to be a big loss. We need to sell it
and we need to move on. Ten X president Stephen
Jacobs told the Real Deal in an interview. The building

(39:17):
has been a slew of companies or has seen a
slew of company call at home over the years, including
Zales and Sports Illustrated, though it's now sixty five percent
vacant do the pandemic and companies downsizing an office space.
The building's website boast floors arranged from twelve thousand to

(39:41):
sixty three thousand square feet, with full floor blocks that
could serve as a building within a building for the
right tenant. However, the sell the building does not include
the land beneath it, as UBS sold that to Safehold
in twenty nineteen for two hundred and eighty five million dollars.
The new owner of the building has not been revealed.

(40:03):
So that's interesting. So somebody else owns the land, you
own the building, So I wonder if there's a land
lease that goes with it. Not sure, but anyway, that's

(40:24):
a huge hit on that price, all right. The Queen Mary.
Anybody that's been at the Long Beach probably has checked
it out. It's docked there for visitors, and.

Speaker 4 (40:48):
You got a lot of other stuff right there in
the area for tourists and everybody, but the former Queen
Mary operators they face fraud charges.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
This article says the former operators of the Queen Mary
were facing federal fraud charges, with regulators alleging they built
investors out of millions of dollars through schemes tied to
their ownership of more than a dozen hotels, including the
Iconic Ship in Long Beach. Taylor Woods and Howard Wu
were charged Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission with

(41:26):
two counts of securities fraud. The complaint was filed in
federal court in downtown Los Angeles. According to the sec
the pair doing businesses Urban Commons LLC member LLC stands
for Limited liability company engaged in a pair of fraud schemes.

(41:48):
In the first day, allegedly convinced investors to sell their
interest in the hotels, promising them prof returns when the properties,
including the Queen Mary, were sold with third party buyer.
Prosecutors contend, however, that the pair actually planned to retain
ownership of the properties and list them in an overseas
real estate investment trust in a second scheme perpetuated in

(42:13):
twenty twenty one after the RUT that's the real estate
Investment Trust had filed for bankruptcy. The complaint alleges that
Woods and Wu raised at least one point seven to
seven five million dollars from a second set of investors
to purchase the same hotels out of bankruptcy. According to

(42:34):
the sec, the defendants allegedly told investors that their funds
would be held in escrow, used only to fund the
hotels purchase, and return to investors that the bid was unsuccessful.
Prosecutors contend, however, that Woods and Wu misappropriated virtually all
investors' funds, using the money mostly for business and personal expenses.

(43:00):
Speaking of the Long Beach Post, an attorney for Wo
denied any wrongdoing. Of course, it's there you go, fraud
with the Queen Mary. Alright, if you haven't talked to
my good friend Tony Picaro, make sure you give him
a call. He handles my family's sure it's a state
planning needs. He'll give you a free review of you're

(43:25):
planned and let you know what he thinks, what he likes,
what he thinks you might improve on, and you take
that info and do what you want with you reach
him at two and four A three seven three five
one two. That's two and four A three seven three
five one two, or go to his website TRIPLEW dot

(43:49):
independent APG for Advanced Planning Group dot com. It makes
you tell him. Doctor Doug saying BOOKI to Beppo. If
you've done big, family style Italian dining, you've probably been

(44:10):
to a Buka Debeppo before Bookin Debeppo filed for bankruptcy.
This is coming out of Orlando, it says, just days
after several Buka de Beppo locations abruptly closed, company filed
for Chapter eleven bankruptcy. According to the court documents filed
just before midnight on August fourth, twenty twenty four, the

(44:34):
Orlando based company currently holds zero way of checkboxes on
the bankruptcy form, so that's why there's a range, says
the company currently holds zero to fifty thousand dollars in
assets and o's here's another checkbox thing on the form
of the liability side of Oh's at least fifteen million

(44:56):
to fifty million in liabilities to at least thirty creditors.
The bankruptcy filing comes only days after the company abruptly
closed thirteen under performing stores. Bukai Beppo has approximately forty
four locations across fourteen states and two international locations. According

(45:18):
to the filing, the company has been hit hard by
a significant drop in sales, alongside rising food and labor cost,
continued staffing challenges, and changes in customer preferences. At this time,
there's no indication in the court documents that any other
locations besides the locations that closed last week will be
closing as a result of this filing. So what's really

(45:44):
surprising to me is the assets they have is you're
at a fifty thousand. I'm not sure how you'd get
that unless that's supposed to be zero to fifty million,
Because you know, if you've got if you own all

(46:05):
the equipment in the stores, the furniture in the stores,
you own the store itself, you know those are all
going to count as assets. Inventory, you know, all that stuff,
computer equipment, and that range just doesn't make sense. This

(46:31):
may be a typo in the article, but it's not
going to be zero to fifty thousand in assets for
all those stores that they still have with that, that's
kind of crazy. So they shut one down in Channel Arizona,
one in Texas, Finchigan and Colorado, a couple of Utah, Carolina,

(46:54):
North Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia. Boar's Head,
everybody's heard of. Boar's Head got a big recall going.
They expanded the recall to an additional seven million pounds

(47:15):
of daily meat and poultry products, it says. The US
Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service announcedent update
on Wednesday that Boar's Head Provisions Company has recalled and
additional seventy one products produced between May tenth, twenty twenty
four in July twenty ninth, twenty twenty four another Boar's

(47:39):
Head and Old Old Country brand names. This is an
expansion to Friday's recall ennaancement. A minute ongoing investigation by
the CDC that's Center for Disease Control and Prevention into
an outbreak of listeria infections linked to meats slice of
Delis that had sickon thirty four people across their t

(48:00):
in states already say Further testing is required to determine
whether any recall products are linked to this outbreak. Think
about this, You running the business and you get a recall.
I mean you hear it on the you know, for
cars and drugs a bunch, But the cost of a
recall has got to just be enormous, and you gotta

(48:23):
be you gotta. I'm sure they probably have some kind
of insurance coverage they're paying for, but it's not the
kind of insurance you want to be using if you
can avoid it, because you sure don't want to be
getting people sick and hopefully nobody you know, dies from

(48:45):
the listery of it. Pretty crazy, says the Virginia based
meat producer. Recalled the approximate two hundred and seven pounds
of products that were distributed to retail daily locations nationwide,
including all liverwurst products and additional deli meat products that

(49:05):
were produced on the same line and on the same
day as the liverwurst that could be adult rated with
L that's initial L mono cytogenes. That's your hysteria, I
take it. So there you go. Watch out. If you
got bores head, get it out of refrigerator. Years Brazil.

(49:35):
Let's talk about what they're doing. They're very air there.
Aircraft manufacturer in Brazil recently announced a raft of upgrades
for its next generation E two airliner at the Farmborough

(49:56):
International Air Show, including a new automatic takeoffs SYSTE them
called the Rare and Enhanced Takeoff System or E two TS,
and that is really interesting if you can have an
automatic takeoff system that kind of does all your flight
control stuff based on the inputs it's getting. You know,

(50:20):
they're talking about how they continue to improve their aircraft.
They're trying to get some orders because it's been a
little slow for Embry Air itself on aircraft orders here
in recent years. So there you go. An automatic takeoff
system could be really kind of groundbreaking here for the

(50:41):
aviation industry. So there you go. That's a rent for
this week. You've been listening to Doctor Doug Ramsey Show.
Remember you may do without Doug State