Sri Lanka Just Announced They Are Bankrupt. And Out of Fuel…
A country thriving and wealthy in 2012 just announced they are bankrupt in 2022.
Before it’s recent bankruptcy Sri Lanka had a thriving economy. In fact its economy grew at an accelerated rate, ranked above Singapore, Ireland, and South Korea.
Located in the center of the world’s most important shipping location, the country was set up to be a world economic import superpower. But a crisis hit…
On Tuesday, the country’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, told the Sri Lankan parliament that the country is not only bankrupt and that it also has no fuel left. Government employees have been told to stay home due to fuel unavailability.
Inflation spiked 54.6% in a year and is expected to hit 60% soon, and transportation costs have gone up 128% in only one month, according to Bloomberg.
At the G7 Summit last month, the US pledged $20 million to assist Sri Lankans in the fight for food security. This came in addition to a previously donated amount of $12 million.
But despite global assistance, the nightmare is far from over for Sri Lanka. Premier Wickremesinghe said that the country was participating in negotiations as a bankrupt state, and the worse is yet to come…
“Due to the state of bankruptcy our country is in, we have to submit a plan on our debt sustainability to (the IMF) separately. Only when they are satisfied with that plan can we reach an agreement at the staff level. This is not a straightforward process,” he said, and CNN reported.
$6 billion of savings deposits just disappeared, leaving more than 400,000 depositors of six rural banks in central China’s Henan province devastated.
The journey to get to the bottom of how such a large sum of money disappeared started to unravel a series of systemic financial corruption.
Allegations of crime and corruption are spreading through China’s small banks as more depositors are being locked out from their life savings. And it appears the CCP is making the situation worse.
Hundreds of people took to the streets of Zhengzhou to protest their inability to withdraw money from four local banks since April! Similarly, citizens are accusing their local officials of widespread corruption and mismanagement. It’s getting ugly…
The demonstrations turned violent when a group of unidentified men in white shirts attacked the peaceful demonstrators.
Chinese authorities appear to be pinning blame for the banking issues on a group of “criminals” in charge of the local banks. But the issue runs much, much deeper. Watch the video for the full story. This is far from over…
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Experts are likening the situation to be worse than the US 2008 financial crash and warn of it’s global impact.
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…
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.
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.
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.
Did you know that Bill Gates owns more land than the entire city of New York? It’s true and more specifically its almost all farmland.
In 2020 Gates raised eyebrows when it was announced that year he had become America’s biggest owner of farmland consisting of 269,000 acres.
For the last 10 years Bill Gate’s money manager, Michael Larson has been making massive land acquisitions across 19 states.
But why?
Why the Hell is Bill Gates Buying US Farmland?
Speculations are aplenty and there are many conspiracies. But here is an explanation from investment expert Codie Sanchez that explains why. It’s lucrative investment.
First, he’s the biggest owner of one of the most valuable limited resources in North America.
The returns on US Farmland have averaged 11.5% annually since 1990, with consistently low volatility and a near zero correlation with the stock market (according to the U.S. Farmland)
Second, the demand for food is skyrocketing. The USDA and the UN estimate the demand for food will rise by 70% to 100% in the next 30 years. What industry can beat that demand trend?
Third, Owning farmland enables you to qualify for tax grants and credits.
Watch the video to get the full explanation from Codie on the business of farming. Plus a quick overview of the crazy Bill Gates conspiracies associated with the topic…
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About Codie Sanchez:
Codie Sanchez is a reformed journalist, turned institutional investor to cannabis investor and adviser, to now Founder at Contrarian Thinking and Cofounder of Unconventional Acquisitions.
Throughout her career, she has worked at the intersection of marketing and money, finding contrarian ways to invest.
How well, do you really know the market you serve? It sounds like one of those dumb, cryptic, things marketing people like to ask.
But according to Vusi Thembwayo, most companies don’t really know who they’re actually competing against. Or who we should be.
Who is Vusi Thembekwayo?
In short, Vusi is widely regarded as one of the most disruptive and influential forces in venture capital in Africa.
He was amongst the youngest directors of a publicly listed company in South Africa and now serves on several corporate boards.
Currently, he’s the CEO of a boutique investment & advisory firm in Africa. Leading by example, his firm forces medium, large and listed businesses into much needed, often painful, always lucrative new directions.
Having graced the covers on Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes and Inc500, his social media engagement often mirrors that of a Rockstar dressed in a $3K suite.
Professional accomplishments aside, he’s also more informally known as Aftrica’s biggest champion for spreading entrepreneurship on the continent.
He Hosts a Popular MasterClass on YouTube
Vusi has become famous to entrepreneurs around the world because he hosts an insanely valuable Masterclass. They tackle the hardest challenges facing entrepreneurs today. For free.
He broadcasts the videos to YouTube to allow anyone interested in honest feedback on how to grow a business.
The most common comments on his channel are: “I actually can’t believe this content is free.”
During on of his Mastermind events, Vusi shared that most entrepreneurs compete at an entry level way. Because we assume that our market, is the literal niche marketplace we’re currently selling to.
There is however, another way of looking at your business to scale better, and faster.
To understand what level this is, and how to get there, one needs to understand the value chain of their industry.
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For a full explanation you can watch this lesson from Vusi himself in his MasterClass. Just skip to minute 5:06 to get to the good stuff.
Meet the 3 Different Types of Business Owners
The biggest lesson to learn from Vusi is how to move up the value chain to “own” more of the supply chain and not just compete inside of it.
Vusi explains there are 3 types of business owners, and most of us are trained to think like 1stand 2nd time business owners.
The First-Time Business Owner
The first-time business owner focuses all of their efforts on improving and perfecting the product. But what the first time business owner doesn’t know is that the product worth nothing if you can’t actually sell it in mass.
Second-Time Owner
The second-time business owner having already experience this focuses instead on marketing and distribution, dramatically increasing their chances of success and survival.
Create Wealth By Owning the Value Chain!
But what the second-time business owner still doesn’t know, is that even if they got really good at distribution, they still work the third-time business owner.
The Third-Time Owner
The third-time business owner doesn’t focus on product or distribution. They move even farther upstream and provide a majority of all of the core goods and services the first 2 business owners needs to be operational.
Overtime by owing part of in the supply chain the third-time business owner can afford to buy business owner 1 and 2 (and all of their competitors).
This will show you why the biggest brands in the world, don’t have to do ANY marketing.
This Might Actually Blow Your Mind!
Oxfam created a pretty shocking infographic on the consolidation of the food industry industry a few years go.
In it you can get a sense for how massive the scale of production is to be a controller of the inputs to the products that are sold at mass. If you can afford it, it’s far more lucrative to sell core goods to the market than compete as a brand inside of it.
These 10 Companies Alone Make All the Food We Buy
Holy Nestle That’s a Lot of Cash
Nestle, the quant little Swiss multinational food and drink conglomerate is now the largest food company in the world pulling in an annual revenue of around $91.4 billion.
How did they afford to buy all these brands? The built the largest dairy company in the world and bought them.
Meet the Brands that Generate $64.66 billion for PEPSICO
PEPSICO was founded in 1965 when Pepsi CEO Don Kendall, and Frito-Lay CEO Herom Lay, sketched the deal on the back of a napkin to agree to combine companies in order to take get take over the growing larger snack industry.
They unlocked a new brand new market long before Blue Ocean Strategy became a thing.
Unilever’s Little $51 Billion Empire
Unilever started in on September 2, 1929 wither the merger of the Dutch margarine producer (Margarine Unie) and a British soap maker (Lever Brothers). Rub the names together and you get Unilever.
Joining forces they were able to increasingly diversified and supply a bigger market.
Conclusion
Know all the players in your business. This means you should understand the whole process, or the entire value chain.
For long-term planning, how can you partner with acquire a new business to put you into a much larger marketplace?
Visit your venders and get to know their business. This is a sign of a seasoned entrepreneur – they build great networks.
The 2019 Mid-Year Tax changes eliminated or drastically reduced tax incentives and deductions that businesses depend on. Some of the tax changes took effect in 2018 and also impact the filing of 2019 taxes. In particular, The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) added dozens of tax changes that directly affect businesses. These changes are incentives and deductions that firms use to offset their tax liability.
Although, according to the IRS, “The new law changed tax rates and brackets, revised business expense deductions, increased the standard deduction, removed personal exemptions, increased the Child Tax Credit and limited or discontinued certain deductions.” www.irs.gov. Those deductions are what businesses have counted on for years.
Making it to the chopping block, here are a few deductions that have been eliminated:
Moving expenses deduction, Mileage rebated deduction, Entertainment deductions, Transportation fringe benefits, Corporate AMT, and NOL carryover, to name a few. Not only do we lose them, but we have to discover what each of them proposes.
Here is an example pertaining to entertainment. “The new law generally eliminated the deduction for entertainment, amusement or recreation expenses. But, taxpayers can continue to deduct 50 percent of the cost of business meals if an employee of the taxpayer — is present and the food or beverages aren’t lavish or extravagant.” www.irs.gov. We are noticing terms like those being used more often. What is considered lavish, extravagant, or a fringe benefit? It’s our responsibility to ascertain how the IRS defines them.
Now let’s look at what has been drastically reduced:
Tax brackets, Standard deductions, Charitable contribution deductions, State and local tax deduction capped at $10k from unlimited, Office snacks and meals, Like-kind exchange, Excess business loss limitations, Depreciation for luxury vehicles and more. Again, how does the IRS define what each means? How much is a business going to have to make up for from losing these deductions? These changes will affect the filing of 2019 and future returns and don’t count on any of them coming back.
Keeping up with all the changes requires experts that specifically focus on the monumental amount of information in over 74,000 pages of the Federal Tax Code. Your CPA and Accountant are not able to and don’t want to know all the ins and outs of the tax laws for this year. They would need to hire experts who are proficient in each of the myriad of fields. That means they hire more people and charge their clients higher rates. CPAs have 73% of their clients with one foot out the door so they don’t want to raise their prices.
Let’s turn this around. What didn’t go away? The Tax Payer Certainty and Disaster Relief Act, coming in under the Ways and Means Committee, extended WOTC (Worker’s Opportunity Tax Credit) through 2020. What also remained is Cost Segregation and R&D Mitigation. These are tools that will help offset the tax pain businesses will face in 2020.
Through these 3 programs, businesses get to keep the money instead of splitting it with the IRS. Having an engineered Cost Segregation Study executed, which is what the IRS recommends, a business can receive a sizable amount of benefit. My definition of sizable can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Accordingly, WOTC benefits have increased. Along with Cost Seg and WOTC, the biggest change of all comes from R&D mitigation, where tens of thousands of dollars are available in manufacturing of all kinds.
It’s ridiculous to pay the IRS more than we are required. It’s absurd not taking advantage of all the benefits, the money, that’s earmarked for businesses and just let it sit. The answer is before you. Have an engineered Cost Segregation Study completed, take advantage of WOTC, and realize what an R&D Mitigation can do for you.
