Northern Italy’s worst drought in 70 years is about to take a big hit on olive oil and tomato prices.
Farmers say the drought could dramatically impact crops on olive oil, tomatoes, and rice resulting in yet another increase in prices for these products.
The Italian government declared a state of emergency in northern regions of Italy as the weather dried out entire stretches of the Po River, the countries longest river and major source of water irrigation for the north of Italy.
The drought has already cost billions of dollars in damage to Italian crops resulting in higher prices around the world…
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Italy embraces as their severe drought dries up it’s longest river (the Po River). The Po River irrigates one of the biggest bread baskets in Europe. And it’s all dried up.
Farmers are extremely exhausted, and the situation is only getting worse. Here is a video of how the river depletion is causing havoc on the region…
Turns out, pretty rich actually. But how much money are we talking about?
For starters, according to a study, becoming a professional YouTuber has officially become the most desirable jobs on the planet.
Which makes sense given some of the biggest YouTubers are generating more money than professional athletes.
The amount of money they are generating is pretty crazy. Here are some of the top content creators on YouTube with the highest earnings.
These Top YouTubers Are Making How Much Money?
Ryan’s World — $22 million
Jake Paul – $21.5 million
Dude Perfect – $20 million
Daniel Middleton (DanTDM) – $18.5 million
Jeffree Star – $18 million
Mark Fischbach (Markiplier) – $17.5 million
Evan Fong (VanossGaming) – $17 million
Sean McLoughlin (Jacksepticeye) – $16 million
Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie) – $15.5 million
Logan Paul – $14.5 million
Which begs the question, how many views do you have to get on your YouTube channel to get a fat paycheck?
How Much Can You Make Off Your YouTube Videos?
YouTubers charge brands anywhere from $10 to $50 per 1,000 views, depending on the estimated amount of total views for the pending video. If the video hits 1 million views, then the YouTuber makes anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000.
Crazy right? But there’s a little more to it than that. Here’s the catch…
The Truth About Making Money on YouTube
The vast majority of YouTubers don’t make any money and despite how easy people think it is. Creating a quality YouTube audience and content is a hell of a lot harder than most people think. And it’s only getting harder…
It’s a competitive marketplace. As of 2022, there are more than 51 million YouTube channels out there. The number of channels is growing strong: last year it grew by 36%. People all around the world are creating a YouTube channel, and uploading 500 hours of video every minute.
But obstacles be damned, if you’re up to the task and are interested in cashing in on the billions of people tuning in to watch YouTube videos (and ads), here’s a video that breaks down exactly how to make money using the giant cash printing machine:
In a recent episode Valutainment’s Patrick Bet-David breaks down the myths surrounding the electric vehicle debate.
Which is timely considering Biden just announced that by 2030 50% of American cars need to be electric or EV’s.
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But it’s obviously a little bit more complicated than that.
Here’s why…
Patrick Bet David Breaks Down the Argument For & Against Having EV’s:
In a recent post the Valutainment team investigates and breaks down the argument for and against the environmental impact of the electric vehicle industry. Patrick breaks down;
Which industry will benefit the most from EVPS?
Who is hurt by EVs?
Are EV’s the new Diesel Scandal?
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What is Valuetainment?
Valutainment is an entrepreneur channel created by Serial Entrepreneur, Patrick Bet-David. Valuetainment is referred to as the best channel for entrepreneurs with weekly How To’s, Motivation and interviews with unique individuals. About PBD: During the Iranian Revolution of 1978, Patrick’s family had to escape to survive and ended up living at a refugee camp in Erlangen, Germany. At 12 years old Patrick found himself collecting cans & beer bottles to raise money that could help his family and get him a Nintendo.
Thinking of buying an electric vehicle? Read this first…
Blackrock is a company that virtually no one had heard of until recently. They have become one of the largest organizations on the planet with $9 trillion in assets under management.
That’s larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of every single country around the globe, with the exception of China and the United States.
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For perspective, the grand total of wealth funds managed by over 91 funds across the world is projected to be worth approximately 8.2 Trillion US Dollars. A single investment management firm based out of New York manages more funds than all the sovereign wealth funds in the world.
Crazy right? In fact…
If you were to make $1 every second, you’d be worth as much as BlackRock in about 240,000 years.
What’s more, if you research every major publicly traded company in the world and you’ll find that BlackRock is its first, second or third-largest shareholder. They also apparently own part of CNN and FOX.
How Much of the Media Does BlackRock and Vanguard Own?
18% of Fox
16% of CBS (and therefore also ofSixty Minutes)
13% of Comcast (which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group)
12% of CNN
12% of Disney (which owns ABC andFiveThirtyEight)
Between 10-14% of Gannett (which owns more than 250 Gannett daily newspapers plusUSA Today)
10% of the Sinclair local television news (which controls 72% of U.S. households’ local TV)
So yeah they own a pretty influential piece of the news.
Where Did Blackrock Come From Anyway?
The Company was co-founded in 1988 by a very well-connected billionaire by the name of Larry Fink, who has been described as “a defacto middleman and lynchpin between Washington, DC, and Wall Street.” The firm operates globally with 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.
BlackRock started making headlines during the 2008 financial meltdown.
When the financial crisis of 2007-2008 hit, the US government hired BlackRock to clean up the mess from the crisis by managing the toxic assets that were owned by firms like the Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac. In fact, even amidst the current financial crisis caused due to the Coronavirus outbreak starting in 2020, the Trump administration turned to Blackrock to bail out companies overleveraged in debt. the government is once again looking for BlackRock’s expertise.
Given the company’s habit of forming shadow cabinets ahead of presidential transitions and its involvement in the new Federal reserve programs, Bloomberg even went as far as calling BlackRock our “fourth branch of government.”
Pretty impressive positioning for a company that’s only 34 years old.
The Federal Reserve has been printing money like it’s going out of style in an attempt pay for about $29 trillion in U.S. debt. While it’s nothing new for a government to print money to cover some debt, what is new however, is that the 40% of US dollars in existence were printed in the last 12 months alone.
Which doesn’t seem like it will end well…
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Why is the US Printing So Much Money?
As part of its effort to stimulate the economy, the U.S. government issued stimulus checks to millions of employed Americans. With money they didn’t have…
The government had to borrow by selling its debt in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds and other types of securities.
On a similar but not altogether different note, here’s Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet explaining how, if the government prints too much money, it ends up like Venezuela.
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How Much Money Will the U.S. Print This Year?
For the 2022 fiscal year, a range of 6,876,800,000 to 9,654,400,000 pieces of money will be printed, totaling from $310,572,800,000 to $356,179,200,000.
Worth mentioning, in addition to the 1,700 locations, Five Guys has an additional 1,500 restaurants currently in development. So if you haven’t been to one yet, just wait.
In just 2 decades, Five Guys has become one of the fastest growing, successful restaurant chains in the United States making them a brand worth knowing and a model to look into.
The Five Guys Origin Story:
In 1986 the founder, Jerry Murrel, along with his 4 sons started a single burger restaurant. As the story goes: Parents Jerry and Janie Murrell offered an ultimatum to their four sons: “Start a business or go to college.”
The business route won and the Murrell family opened a carry-out burger joint in Arlington Virginia with the following business plan:
“Sell a really good, juicy burger on a fresh bun. Make perfect French fries. Don’t cut corners.”
When they say they don’t cut corners, they mean it. Fun fact: there are no freezers at any Five Guys locations, just coolers. Because freezers aren’t necessary when you only serve fresh food.
By concentrating on quality, they scaled the business model built on high ingredient costs, a limited menu, and absolutely zero paid advertising. They also refuse to deliver. Five guys doesn’t deviate from what they’re good at. Cooking badass cheeseburgers.
Five Guys Opened Franchise Locations in 2003
Early in 2003, the “Five Guys,” began offering franchise opportunities. In just under 18 months, Five Guys Enterprises sold options for more than 300 units. The overwhelming success of franchising a local restaurant made national news and word spread to new markets.
In an episode of Company Man (with 1.2M views), they break down the full history and the unique way the Murrell family grew the Five Guys unbelievable growth story.
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Getting hungry yet?
Three Key Lessons Driving the Success of Five Guys:
#1 Simplicity of menu – F#$% chicken sandwiches!
“When we first started, people asked for coffee. We thought, Why not? This was our first lesson in humility. We served coffee, but the problem was that the young kids working for us don’t know anything about coffee. It was terrible! We tried a chicken sandwich once, but that did not work, either. We do have hot dogs on our menu, and that works. But other than that, all you are going to get from Five Guys is hamburgers and fries.” – Jerry Murrell
#2 Obsession with old school quality control
“The magic to our hamburgers is quality control. We toast our buns on a grill – a bun toaster is faster, cheaper, and toasts more evenly, but it doesn’t give you that caramelized taste. Our beef is 80 percent lean, never frozen, and our plants are so clean, you could eat off the floor. The burgers are made to order. That’s why we can’t do drive-thru’s – it takes too long. We had a sign: “If you’re in a hurry, there are a lot of really good hamburger places within a short distance from here.” People thought I was nuts. But the customers appreciated it.” – Jerry Murrell
#3 No paid advertising. Word of mouth is still a thing?
You read that correctly. Five Guys doesn’t do advertising. Jerry believes that the customer is the biggest salesperson:
“Treat that person right, he’ll walk out the door and sell for you. From the beginning, I wanted people to know that we put all our money into the food. That’s why the décor is so simple – red and white tiles. We don’t spend our money on décor. Or on guys in chicken suits. But we’ll go overboard on food.” – Jerry Murrell
Once the world’s 6th richest billionaire in 2008 with a net worth of $42 billion, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, lost it all by 2019.
Here’s how…
Anil Ambani was born June 4th, 1959 in Bombay India as the youngest son of the founder of one of the most powerful companies on the planet. His father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of a company called Reliance Industries Limited which today is doing $7.366 trillion as a conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles.
Dhirubhai raised his 2 sons to eventually take over the “family business”. Mukesh and Anil started as executives at Reliance in their twenties. The two couldn’t have been more different. Mukesh was more of a reserved family man while Anil earned a reputation as a flashy playboy who enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Bollywood’s elite.
Tragedy strikes the Ambhani family
Dhirubhai Ambani passed away on July 6th 2002 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 69. At the time of his passing he was the 138th richest man in the world with a net worth of $2.9 billion.
Mukesh, the older brother assumed role of chairman and Anil took the office of Vice President. They were at each other’s throats almost immediately. Each had different ideas for what to do with the company and the two were making decisions without consulting each other.
It was a mess…
It became a real problem. So big that even India’s finance minister tried stepping in to get the bickering duo to make nice. After all, Reliance was one of the biggest economic powerhouses in India.
The sibling rivalry for the control for Reliance was resolved when the 2 decided to split the company down the middle. Mukesh would run the gas and petroleum businesses and Anil would run the communications and power businesses and ultimately leave each other alone.
But the proverbial sky was about to come crashing down.
That same year Anil Ambani made the decision to invest around $2 billion in advancing Reliance Communications Group, heavily leveraging his company into massive debt.
Then shit hit the fan…
In 2011, Anil’s Managing Director and two Vice Presidents were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to acquire mispriced mobile network licenses for companies Reliance Communications has invested in to illegally bolster the company’s share prices in an attempt to close the debt gap.
The following year In 2012, amidst scandals, Anil Ambani acquired even more debt to pay off the existing debts. Reliance Communications took a loan of over $1.2 billion from three Chinese Banks on Anil Ambani’s personal guarantee.
That’s one hell of a personal guarantee.
By 2016, many of Anil Ambani’s companies ran into debt and operational troubles. On the one hand, Reliance Power had to sell its assets. On the other, Reliance Communications lost 98% valuation in a period of just 3 short years.
RCom was unable to compete against the top reigning telecom companies and lost consumers. This brought down Anil Ambani’s net worth to $2.5 billion.
Still not a bad nest egg by anyone’s standards however, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communication owed the Swedish network company, Ericsson, $80 million, which he failed to repay. Which shocker, lead to a major lawsuit.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered Anil Ambani to repay the debt along with interest or go to jail. In an unlikely intervention, Anil Ambani’s older brother Mukesh paid the money owed to Ericsson and yes little brother from going to jail.
Reliance Communications then filed bankruptcy in 2019. But Anil’s problems were still far from over.
He still owed over $700 million including interest to the 3 chinese banks he borrowed money from. In February 2020, Anil declared that his net worth has fallen to zeroafter considering his liabilities. He pleaded poverty and claimed that he didn’t hold any meaningful assets that could be liquidated to pay off the debts he owed to the Chinese Banks.
Who would have thought that a man who had a net worth of $42 billion in 2008 would claim poverty by 2020?
He still managed to turn out ahead. Today he and his wife Tina Ambani reside in one of the most luxurious homes in India. A 17 story home situated at Pali Hill in Mumbai.
It goes without saying, Netflix has been dominated streaming videos like BlockBuster dominated movie rentals. However new players are catching up and giving the iconic brand a real run for their money.
In a shocking reveal, instead of achieving the target of adding 2 million new subscribers in Q1 2022 that it set for itself three months earlier, they ended up losing 200,000 subscribers…Ouch
This is the first time the company has net loss of subscribers.
This could just be the tip of the ice burg as Netflix is expecting to lose an additional 2 million more subscribers in the ongoing quarter. The market response was brutal. Netflix lost ¼ of its value as the stock price tanked 25% in 1 day.
Competition is cut throat with the emergence of Disney, Hulu, HBO, Paramount, Peacock, Apple and Amazon. This has presented a serious challenge now as people are ditching Netflix for those streaming services that are available at much more competitive prices (Netflix premium is up to $19.99/month which is almost double the competition).
Pricing be damned, the other problem plaguing Netflix is their competitors are reducing the pool size of originalHollywood content they got to pick from over the last decade.
TV and film companies have more options of providers to negotiate with.
Once the world’s 6th richest billionaire in 2008 with a net worth of $42 billion, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani, lost it all by 2019.
Here’s how…
Anil Ambani was born June 4th, 1959 in Bombay India as the youngest son of the founder of one of the most powerful companies on the planet. His father, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of a company called Reliance Industries Limited which today is doing $7.366 trillion as a conglomerate, headquartered in Mumbai. It has diverse businesses including energy, petrochemicals, natural gas, retail, telecommunications, mass media, and textiles.
Dhirubhai raised his 2 sons to eventually take over the “family business”. Mukesh and Anil started as executives at Reliance in their twenties. The two couldn’t have been more different. Mukesh was more of a reserved family man while Anil earned a reputation as a flashy playboy who enjoyed rubbing shoulders with Bollywood’s elite.
Tragedy strikes the Ambhani family
Dhirubhai Ambani passed away on July 6th 2002 of a sudden heart attack at the age of 69. At the time of his passing he was the 138th richest man in the world with a net worth of $2.9 billion.
Mukesh, the older brother assumed role of chairman and Anil took the office of Vice President. They were at each other’s throats almost immediately. Each had different ideas for what to do with the company and the two were making decisions without consulting each other.
It was a mess…
It became a real problem. So big that even India’s finance minister tried stepping in to get the bickering duo to make nice. After all, Reliance was one of the biggest economic powerhouses in India.
The sibling rivalry for the control for Reliance was resolved when the 2 decided to split the company down the middle. Mukesh would run the gas and petroleum businesses and Anil would run the communications and power businesses and ultimately leave each other alone.
But the proverbial sky was about to come crashing down.
That same year Anil Ambani made the decision to invest around $2 billion in advancing Reliance Communications Group, heavily leveraging his company into massive debt.
Then shit hit the fan…
In 2011, Anil’s Managing Director and two Vice Presidents were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to acquire mispriced mobile network licenses for companies Reliance Communications has invested in to illegally bolster the company’s share prices in an attempt to close the debt gap.
The following year In 2012, amidst scandals, Anil Ambani acquired even more debt to pay off the existing debts. Reliance Communications took a loan of over $1.2 billion from three Chinese Banks on Anil Ambani’s personal guarantee.
That’s one hell of a personal guarantee.
By 2016, many of Anil Ambani’s companies ran into debt and operational troubles. On the one hand, Reliance Power had to sell its assets. On the other, Reliance Communications lost 98% valuation in a period of just 3 short years.
RCom was unable to compete against the top reigning telecom companies and lost consumers. This brought down Anil Ambani’s net worth to $2.5 billion.
Still not a bad nest egg by anyone’s standards however, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communication owed the Swedish network company, Ericsson, $80 million, which he failed to repay. Which shocker, lead to a major lawsuit.
In 2019, the Supreme Court of India ordered Anil Ambani to repay the debt along with interest or go to jail. In an unlikely intervention, Anil Ambani’s older brother Mukesh paid the money owed to Ericsson and yes little brother from going to jail.
Reliance Communications then filed bankruptcy in 2019. But Anil’s problems were still far from over.
He still owed over $700 million including interest to the 3 chinese banks he borrowed money from. In February 2020, Anil declared that his net worth has fallen to zeroafter considering his liabilities. He pleaded poverty and claimed that he didn’t hold any meaningful assets that could be liquidated to pay off the debts he owed to the Chinese Banks.
Who would have thought that a man who had a net worth of $42 billion in 2008 would claim poverty by 2020?
He still managed to turn out ahead. Today he and his wife Tina Ambani reside in one of the most luxurious homes in India. A 17 story home situated at Pali Hill in Mumbai.
