Hold Tight Hermes.

Seems the Hermes heirs now have a bit of regret of taking their family business public. Via derivatives/equity swaps, Mr. Arnault now owns 17% of Hermes. As Karl Lagerfeld noted, "If you don't want to be taken over, don't put your business in the public market."

What tends to happen with family businesses is that by the third generation the heirs want to cash out or they run the company dry. Hermes happens to have made it to the 6th generation and posted a profit of 421.7 million euros last year.

In the March 5th 2011 NY Times article, Off the Catwalk, The Battle For Hermes, the Hermes Chief Executive notes,

“There is a part of our world that is playing on abundance, on glitz and glamour,” Patrick Thomas, the Hermès’s chief executive, said during an interview the week before Mr. Galliano was fired. “And there is another part that is concentrated on refinement, and basically making beautiful objects.”

Hermès counts itself among the latter, and it wants to stay that way. “We don’t want to be a part of this financial world which is ruining companies and dealing with people like they are goods or raw materials,” said Mr. Thomas, the first chief executive at Hermès who is not a member of the family. “It’s not a financial fight, because we would lose that. It’s a cultural fight.”

Amen Ellen.

The goings on at home.

Ellen Bravo, Milwaukee JS Online Op-ed 2.23.11

Stop Walker's sleight of hand

My older son did magic shows as a kid. He learned early on that the key to fooling the audience was a steady stream of patter and something to draw their attention so that they wouldn't notice the trick unfolding before their eyes.

I was reminded of his sleight-of-hand routine when a small group of tea party supporters approached me in Madison on Saturday, the sixth day of protests at the Capitol. They pointed to my sign: "Stop the Attack on Wisconsin Families."

"Are you one of those freeloaders?" one guy asked. The others started chanting: "Freeloader, Freeloader." They were filled with rage.

I hastened to assure them that I'd never been an executive at Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers or any of those Wall Street firms that crashed the economy and then took TARP money to pay big bonuses. "I never lobbied the government to get rid of regulations on financial institutions," I said.

Turns out that wasn't what they were angry about. They were up in arms (not, I was glad to see, literally) about public employees.

Gov. Scott Walker hopes Wisconsin voters will forget about the people who caused the economic crisis - the big banks and a host of other reckless CEOs. Instead, the governor would have us believe that nurses, home health aides and teachers are the villains.

As a Wisconsin taxpayer, I'm not buying it.

The governor and his wealthy corporate backers say public employees are the "haves" and demand they share the burdens inflicted upon other Wisconsin workers, naming those at Harley-Davidson and Mercury Marine.

The Institute for Wisconsin's Future has reported that Mercury Marine of Fond du Lac had profits of $1.1 billion from 2000-'07. During that time, it paid nothing in corporate income taxes to our state. The New York Times highlighted Harley last summer as one of the companies finding "surging profits in deeper cuts." As the article pointed out, the benefits of those profits "are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy."

Workers at Harley and Mercury Marine - who were told how lucky they were to have a job at all - had to accept huge cuts not because their employers were in danger of going under but because those highly paid execs wanted to keep more money for themselves.

It seems clear the CEOs on Wall Street and at Wisconsin corporations who are sitting on record profits while cutting jobs here, shipping jobs overseas and paying out record bonuses to their executives are the ones who should be the target of the budget-repair bill.

Not the woman who teaches severely disabled teens. Not the school librarian whose job was eliminated in the most recent Milwaukee Public Schools cutbacks. Not the technicians who test the blood of every newborn in the state and already are struggling after several rounds of wage freezes and furlough days.

Teachers, nurses and home health care providers aren't close to being the "haves." They're hardworking people who have organized and bargained to make sure they have a voice in their working conditions. They've struggled to ensure that employment is a way out of poverty, not another form of poverty.

For illusionists like Walker, here's the trick: State politicians give tax incentives and other breaks to large corporations that gouge their workers. The politicians then use the sacrifice of those workers as a sledgehammer to blame budget shortfalls on public employees who are in unions. Workers and the unions take the fall, making big corporations and their politicians even more powerful.

The losers? The middle class. Small businesses whose customers have less to spend. The unemployed whose need for a job is being trumped by politics. Wisconsin families who will be the ones to feel the real-world impacts of rollbacks in family leave, health care and education.

But the governor and his supporters have underestimated the Wisconsin people. Matching misery is a trick we cannot afford and will not tolerate.

Ellen Bravo is executive director of Family Values @ Work Consortium, a network of 15 state coalitions working for policies that value families.

Yves Saint Laurent on Style, Elegance, Dogs and Youth

"Genius is childhood rediscovered...Fashions pass, style is eternal. Fashion is futile, style is not...Women who follow fashion too closely run a great risk. That of loosing their profound nature, their style, their natural elegance...Anyone can whimsically create a fashion. Few can make a real piece of clothing...As Metternich said, the greatest art is to endure..."

"Elegance is a way of moving. It is also knowing how to adapt to all of life's circumstances. Without the elegance of the heart, there is no elegance..."

All creation is just recreation, a new way of seeing the same things and expressing them differently, specifying them, privileging one hitherto unnoticed corner, or revealing their outlines..."

"Nothing is more beautiful than a naked body. The most beautiful garment a woman can wear are the arms of the man she loves. But I am there for those who have not had the good luck to find that happiness...I am as they say a dog person. That is, that I live with him completely. Night and day. When I travel, I take him with me and when I can't, to England for example, I stay home..."

"Youth is egotistical. To grow older is to begin to think of others. Youth is an illness that people often recover from very late. In fact, some never do and die of it. The unease of aging comes from not having found oneself..."

Yves Saint Laurent

Economics of Happiness

Brooklyn Flea 6.6.2010 Dean Kelm

Last Thursday, post blizzard no. 2, I stepped into my rubber boots (the brilliant Loeffler Randall pair), trudged through the piles of snow and slush ponds to attended a screening of The Economics of Happiness, the "closed" Cooper Hewitt Great Hall. My friend, gifted patternmaker and co-conspirator Gabby met me to watch this moving documentary about the effects of globalization and the localism movement bubbling up in response to our declining mental and environmental health.

It's a bit ironic, but I really believe I moved to NY to escape globalization and find my "Sesame Street". I wanted to find neighborhood to live in, a place where there were still local businesses, family owned businesses (like the one I grew up in), artists, craftspeople, food cooked from scratch in small batches and distinct culture. Brooklyn, more specifically has provided me with a nutritious local life and a foundation to build a happy life. This is where I have chosen to live but this movie showed many locations around the world where happiness thrives or thrived before the subsidized big boxes, western marketing and the pressure of consumption moved in.

This could turn into a REALLY long blog post but I suggest you,

SEE THIS MOVIE, buy the DVD, hold a screening.

We live on a planet with finite resources and continue to demand infinite growth at any expense.

In addition, check out these other organizations writing about New Economic Theory/Alternatives. Its not scary, it'll make you happy, I promise.

BALLE Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

SLOW FOOD

NEW ECONOMICS INSTITUTE (formerly the EF Schumacher Society)

Some Good Cheez to Kick Off 2011

THIS IS YOUR LIFE. DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND DO IT OFTEN. IF YOU DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, CHANGE IT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR JOB, QUIT. IF YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME, STOP WATCHING TV. IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE, STOP; THEY WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU WHEN YOU START DOING THINGS YOU LOVE. STOP OVER ANALYZING, ALL EMOTIONS ARE BEAUTIFUL. WHEN YOU EAT, APPRECIATE EVERY LAST BITE. LIFE IS SIMPLE. OPEN YOUR MIND, ARMS AND HEART TO NEW THINGS AND PEOPLE, WE ARE UNITED IN OUR DIFFERENCES. ASK THE NEXT PERSON YOU SEE WHAT THIER PASSION IS, AND SHARE YOUR INSPIRING DREAM WITH THEM. TRAVEL OFTEN; GETTING LOST WILL HELP YOU FIND YOURSELF. SOME OPPORTUNITIES ONLY COME ONCE, SEIZE THEM. LIFE IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU MEET AND THE THINGS YOU CREATE WITH THEM. SO GO OUT AND START CREATING. LIVE YOUR DREAM AND WEAR YOUR PASSION. LIFE IS SHORT.
//THE HOLSTEE MANIFESTO - 2009\\