- American Express credit card: less accepted, more expensive. Sells prestige and exclusivity.
- Young Europeans emulating the financial success image of young Americans. Cultural assimilation of American status system replacing old European class system among European youth.
- Laid-off investment bankers labeled “puppies”: previously urban professionals.
- In addition to being a unit of account, a store of value, a means of exchange, money’s primary purpose in America is a source of entertainment.
- “The most perverse behavior exhibited by you American salesmen derives from (Dale Carnegie) courses on how to win friends…you think you can manipulate people with such dimwitted codes of conduct.”
- High-priced art is a financial instrument and tax loophole in Japan: it allows leverage (collateral against bank loan), a store of value, and is taxed on declared value (a fraction of market value).
Finished: Feb-2007