Word: abracadabra
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...France to produce single varietal and assemblage wines with straightforward, stylish labels. Cleverly named Côtes du Rhone wines like Le Freak Shiraz-Viognier and Rhôning Stones are also showing up on supermarket shelves around the world, as are Languedoc wines like Bois-Moi ("Drink Me"), Abracadabra Blanc and Petit Bistro Syrah, which has a label depicting a romantic Van Gogh-inspired café scene. (Read "New Wine In Old Vessels...
...food at Ece, tel: (90-212) 245 7628 - the vegetable-in-olive-oil dishes are delicious. From there, you can go down to the Spice Market and then hop onto a ferry to Uskudar to watch the sunset. Come back to the European side for dinner, at the inventive Abracadabra, tel: (90-212) 358 6087, in Arnavutkoy. Chat or dance the night away at any of the cafés in Cihangir or bars in Beyoglu. There's no sleeping in Istanbul...
Previous campaign reforms have failed not because they lack a magic ingredient, some legislative abracadabra, but because as long as the government wields extensive power to tax, spend, and regulate, interest groups will try to influence its actions. It’s not clear what proportion of campaign contributions are motivated by such rent-seeking (and therefore whether this is really a big problem), but unless we eviscerate the First Amendment or shrink the government, money is here to stay...
What do Schwarzman and Blackstone do for all this money? Oh, this and that, but mainly they buy publicly traded companies, take them private (that is, replace the public stockholders with private equity from institutions and rich individuals), do some abracadabra that increases the companies' value and then take them public again. The $20 billion to $40 billion that Blackstone is said to be worth--Schwarzman may own 40% of that--does not include the value of any company that it happens to own. It is solely the value of the abracadabra. Blackstone and other private-equity firms collect...
...habit of selling at the bottom. "I always think about what will kill off the other person," Schwarzman once noted, charmingly. Go ahead and buy Blackstone when it becomes available. But don't be disappointed if you take your shares home, unwrap them, wave your magic wand, say abracadabra ... and nothing happens...