Chapter 19

We invested the smaller $10 Billion amount into several more secure stocks(to us) and the casino business under our control. Our new speculative ventures, such as the arms business we were going into were to be funded by the $25 Billion fund we had designated earlier as our ‘war chest’; the feeling of all of us was any or all of that was speculative anyway so if we lost it, so what. Since it was a general fund, everyone including Bren and the Nashville gals got a piece to start with.

Tony and my Dad took an international as well as a domestic funding and took Jeff’s advice regarding divesting the malls and office buildings. This was later proven to be a smart move. In several of the ‘good’ climate areas where there were not fires, three malls and two large parking fields got huge screens for a modern version of the old ‘drive in’ theme. When people could no longer go out and socialize, watching from your own vehicle was a big hit. It seemed we were doing a few things right. Tony and Dad cut back on foreign investments as did we, it was almost impossible to ‘trust’ outsiders beyond places we could touch and feel whenever we wanted to.

We were starting to take some losses too. Following Tony and Dad’s examples we cut back more, cut back investing a lot really. It took nearly 4 and a half months for our participation in some ventures to stop. A few, OK, a lot of people were upset when we no longer played banker, but our war chest of $25 Billion was still where it began. Our increase was NADA but at least we had not lost principle just any profits.

One area however, later got over $3 Billion of investment, that was the food business. The money bought existing farms, raw land and retail food distribution in the US and parts of Canada; stores and warehouses mostly. Profits increased 15-22% within a year. It sure beat putting in the bank.

Jess was now showing. My comment “Are we having twins?” cost me; for a while anyway. One visit from Lila and her “Why is Nicky so sad looking?” must have changed Jess around some. The ‘high five’ was given when Lila left she put a smile on.

Bren’s portion of Amazon was growing, so was her existing food relationships, we started ‘growing’ that too.(Pun) The Casino foot traffic was way down, but the gaming take numbers stayed about the same. More money was being bet but by fewer players. We created a deluxe to semi-luxury suites for our most-preferred players.

One change happened just before the the birth of our twins.(Yep Jess had twins) Heather and by association Arthur became partners in the Food portion then later the entire Amazon business. Heather and Bren took to things like ducks to water. Amazon was doubling in size and scope. Jeff got divorced; Bren was happy and Heather now had both her Daddy’s and our money to play with.

Not counting anything else, membership fees alone was bringing in more than $2.5 billion a month at Amazon; some 200 million accounts across the world. That matched the Casino business and was half of food’s revenues for now. I told Arthur he could now afford a short vacation somewhere warm. Lila offerred to show him some ‘hot’ places ‘they’ could go.

Hope and Anthony were the names chosen for the twins. I think Tony was on cloud number 12. Dad was pissed when we told him ‘Vincenzo’ was not an acceptable name for a girl. Nevertheless, both set up a trust for the kids.

In all things, there comes good times and bad times. ‘Our run of luck’(A Vegas term) was due to change; it did, that next year.