The Nation's Pulse/The Malibu Plan
Stein, Benjamin J.
THE NATION'S PULSE THE MALIBU PLAN W ell, it had to happen. In the 1980s, taking a cue from the big boys—the Trumps, the Belzbergs, the Icahns, the Farleys—and everyone else who got a museum wing...
...If we keep going like this, I'll tell him, we'll own that, too...
...The worst thing is that the creditors are baying at my heels...
...All of this was "supported" by the single slender toothpick of one very vulnerable man's earnings and the certainty that it would all be saved by an everlasting tide of prosperity, rising property values, and still more borrowing...
...sometime in 2020 or there abouts, when everyone was on the cover of People for being a billionaire...
...One or two have bitten, though, and I think that's where the money will come from for my boy, Tommy...
...That is, any old time I'm not at home and need someone to, uh, manage Ttbde-Ginger Partners...
...Likewise with all my stereo equipment: if you guys want to try to resell my CD players in a retail environment where stores pay customers to take new ones, do it...
...I would leave it to Tommy, my threeyear-old, to work out the payments Benjamin J. Stein is a writer and actor living in Malibu, California...
...For the BMW lender, I simply cannot allow such generous terms...
...The stereo store...
...If they want to repossess my little shack and add it to the mountain of houses they already have, good luck to them—I'll move into my RV...
...And it's getting to be kind of a pleasure thinking about it...
...You guys at Bank of America don't like it...
...The bank that insanely gave me a mortgage on this house in Malibu...
...Now it's 1991 and, like everyone else, I'm busted...
...In I fact, I've been talking about it at my health club (membership bought on credit, of course), and a number of my fellow health fiends have offered me generous retainers to help them out with their own packages, many of them 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 involving collections of Judy Garland photos...
...We borrowed for everything, sold and leased back everything, bought multi-disc CD players, trips to Kenya, houses in Malibu, thoroughbred German short-haired pointers, Beemers, Benzes, and a helluva lot of fresh salmon fillets...
...You get the picture...
...If they want a repossessed car that gets about three miles to the gallon to try to sell in today's world of two-dollar gasoline, hey, guys, get the battery charged up and go for it...
...First, I blithely tell the people at the bank that holds the mortgage on my house that I can't pay it anymore (even if I can...
...That's the problem of the fools who loaned me money...
...I'll look at any cash offer, I tell them, and they mostly leave me alone...
...Rejectron pays 20 percent dividends of the actual raw material manufactured by Trixie-Ginger Partners, which will be appraised by Benjysuncle Valuation Partners, of Passaic and Pacoima, and delivered weekly in large green bags...
...Here are the keys...
...My deal for them is that I get a new 850, gasoline and insurance for a year, and an eighttimes-oversampling NAK CD player for the dashboard...
...As for the stereo dealers, well, they can come over and listen to the great KEFs they sold me on credit any old time...
...In the next century in America, all of the money will be in poverty...
...Then I tell the same thing to the people who made the lease on my car...
...If I can't pay my bills, if I'm overextended, that's not my problem...
...In the 1980s, taking a cue from the big boys—the Trumps, the Belzbergs, the Icahns, the Farleys—and everyone else who got a museum wing named after him, I led my own little family into the wonderful world of leverage...
...I can't wait to get behind the wheel of the 850, with my Tommy next to me, and drive by the local bank...
...The new issue, unless called, allows the bank to have a 15 percent dividend, payable in the shares of yet another corporation, GSP Associates, which holds as assets by Benjamin J. Stein fertilizer products manufactured by Ti-ixie-Ginger Partners (there is presently no public market in these shares...
...For the mortgage holder, I will need a loan of about a hundred K, to be used (of course) for the mortgage payments on my house for the next ten years...
...Property here in Malibu can't be sold for love or money (unless you're willing to take less than a million dollars for a 2,000-square-foot house a mile from the ocean, and that's just plain insulting...
...The bank that leased me the Beemer in the first place...
...I'm drinking tap water...
...The BMW dealer who was supposed to have fixed the generator...
...In return, they get 49 percent of any proceeds from the old BMW, a new preferred in Benjyrama, L.P.'s main subsidiary, Rejectron, which holds as its main assets certain written materials in my files for which no ready use has yet been ascertained, but which is sure to find some market in the future, according to Benjysuncle Partners, a management consulting firm of Hackensack, New Jersey...
...And watch out for those ants near the refrigerator...
...Not since I learned my lessons from Trump and Farley and the people who run some of the big retail chains...
...If they don't like it, let them have the car with its permanently dead battery in their garage, and let them try to sell it to buyers who won't give them the kind of deals I'm offering...
...But not today...
...Those payments, in turn, will be far less than they had been, because the package calls for my mortgage to be reduced by half...
...Then I invite them over for some smoked salmon (I still have a lot of it in my freezer) on my deck, and tell them that they can either eat the salmon with worthless collateral for dessert, or they can listen to my "prepackaged" bankruptcy plan, which I have worked out with my lawyers, who double as German short-haireds...
...In return, the bank mortgage holder will get a new issue of stock in Stein Family, NY., a Netherlands Venture which is a subsidiary of Benjyrama, L.P., a Bahamas Partnership, which in turn is held by Trixie-Ginger Partners, of Zug, Switzerland...
...I wanted not only the fifteen minutes of fame that Andy Warhol had promised me, but also the middle age of living like a Trump...
...The mortgage holder's shares of Stein Family, NY., also allow a 50 percent share in any capital gains from the sale of my house, after I have made 20 percent a year on the whole price of the house...
...If I were the me of ten years ago, Imight be worried...
...The Beemer's battery is dead...
...have to say that I like it a lot...
...H ere's my plan...
...In fact, maybe that will be Tommy's career as well...
Vol. 24 • March 1991 • No. 3
