Fake Purses

One thing I would have never dreamed that I would develop an interest in is fake (or for that matter, real) women's purses. Yet, I notice every Louis Vuitton purse that passes by, and I wonder if it's real or a replica. This interest goes back around seven years ago when we were first introduced to the replica merchandise trade in New York Chinatown. Having heard about this interesting sounding phenomenon on Canal Street, we found ourselves on the northeast corner of Canal and Broadway. A large, old building contained numerous small narrow storefronts on both Broadway and Canal, plus an indoor swap meet behind the storefronts. It is there we met Monique from Malaysia, who has been our "dealer" ever since. Back then Monique operated from in front of another merchant's counter inside the swap meet. But her stash, counterfeit Louis Vuitton purses was kept on a set of shelves. Now if that seemed brazen, it was and it wasn't. Because when a lookout gave the word that police were in the area, a metal rolldown door would quickly be pulled down to cover the merchandise. And it wasn't just Monique hiding her stuff. You could hear the metal doors coming down on the exterior shops on the street, all in unison creating a concert of sorts.

A few months after we returned to Los Angeles I happened to read an article about the crackdown on Canal St. counterfeit purses. Purses were no longer being sold out of the stores, but rather by women carrying black plastic bags full of purses, on Canal St. between Broadway and Lafayette. When the police was spotted they would run off and hide on the side streets. A couple of months later we travelled to Canal St. in search of these ladies, but alas none were to be found on Canal or any of the side streets, nor were any replica purses apparently being sold in the stores that had them the year before. But it wasn't that the merchandise wasn't there. Rather an entire new distribution system had popped up. Initial contact would be made by a runner standing on the street whispering words like "Louie" or "LV", or perhaps a discreet inquiry to a shop owner. Soon you would be following a runner a block or two away from Canal St., on your way to what would turn out to be a secret showroom on the second floor of a restaurant. Or the showroom might be on Canal St. or Broadway, but way in the back of the shop behind a door not visible from the street, or up a flight of rickety steps in the storage area of the building. One secret showroom was accessed through a false panel in the swap meet which revealed a ladder to a second floor showroom.

This turned out to be the halcyon days for the merchandising of fake purses. Louis Vuitton sued the landlord that owned the building at Canal and Broadway containing the fake purse shops. That strategy was so successful that the building is now a Bank of America branch. Most of the secret showrooms closed down. But you can still buy fake purses in Chinatown. Chinese men and women loiter, mostly on the corners of Canal and Lafayette, with catalog pictures of different styles of Louis Vuitton purses folded up in their pockets. For a while, Monique staked out a space a half block up on Lafayette, but now she operates out of another storefront in another building on Canal St. She keeps her merchandise offsite a couple blocks away. You pick your bag from a picture in the catalog, then she runs off and brings it back in a black plastic bag. We had one incident with Monique where she sold us a defective purse, then when she said to meet us to make an exchange she never showed up. Mary believed she had been stiffed, but on my next trip to New York by myself I ran into Monique, who explained she had been arrested by the police right before she was going to meet us. She said it was her seventh arrest.

So If I Published An Article in Taiwan 20 Years Ago Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me?

In my younger days when I had much more free time, I had a strong interest in the history of Chinese-Americans. Not to say that I have lost interest in the subject, but I just haven't had time for much outside reading, and certainly no time for any research or deep study for many years. I was fortunate that I was in college when the very first Asian American studies courses were just being offered back in the late 1960s. What made it so fortunate was that there was no developed body of works on the topic, which enabled the most inexperienced amateur scholars, e.g., college undergraduates, to pioneer the study of their topic of interest. In my case, it was two topics--the history of Los Angeles Chinatown, and the Chinese exclusion laws passed by the U.S. government starting in the 1880s that particularly attracted my interest. So even though I was an economics, business and law student, I was able to publish a number of articles in ethnic publications having a miniscule circulation, and even appeared on radio, television, and at conferences and other events as an "expert" on the subject. The most laughable instance was a presentation before a program sponsored by the Los Angeles School District on the USC Campus on Asian American studies. Representing the Japanese-American viewpoint, was Dr. Harry Kitano, Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA, author of hundreds of books and articles. Representing the Chinese-Americans was myself, senior tax accountant at Kenneth Leventhal & Company.

On a couple of occasions since then I had actually run into current scholarly works on Chinese American studies that mentioned one of my prior articles in the text and footnotes. However, it wasn't until today that I decided to try to see if there were any other references to items I had authored. With a name as common as mine (there are hundreds of people with my name on Facebook), I had never bothered Googling myself. However, it occurred to me that I could do a focused Google search with my name and part of the title of some of my written works. Imagine my surprise when I did one of the searches and it pulled out an article about Los Angeles Chinatown I had written in the 1980s for the Chinese-American historical society--but described as appearing in "Sino-American Relations (Hwa Kang, Taiwan) 16, no.4 (Win 1990 54-66)". Did somebody in Taiwan appropriate that article without telling me? Is the Internet reference in error? Was it translated to Chinese? I guess I'll never know for sure.

The Financial Meltdown Should Be Blamed On Bill Clinton

As we slowly dig out from under the subprime crisis and the ensuing financial meltdown I thought it would be interesting to take a look back and point out someone not often connected with these events. For over 20 years I had the privilege of working for two of the greatest minds in real estate finance, Kenneth Leventhal and Stan Ross. Even today, more than a decade after their official retirements, they are revered as pioneers who helped lead the residential construction industry from post-World War II mom and pop builders starting the construction boom for returning veterans into players on Wall Street, and who advised all segments of the real estate industry through decades of development and evolution.

About 20 years ago Messrs. Leventhal and Ross invented something called the multi-builder mortgage backed bond. This enabled small residential builders, who had been required to tie up valuable capital in seller financing for their homebuyers, to access the public capital markets. Publicly issued debt would be secured by these seller financed mortgages of multiple homebuilders, permitting these builders to cash out and move on to their next project. Of course, if you're really smart, you'll realize this was the start of the securitization of real estate debt, so in a way Leventhal and Ross could be considered to be the Godfathers of the financial meltdown. But really, making Wall Street financing available available to small builders was unquestionably a good thing for these builders, and the subsequent subprime crisis merely shows that even the best ideas may be abused and turned into implements of evil.

With this in mind, I asked Kenneth Leventhal where he thought things went wrong. Interestingly, he pointed the finger at President Clinton. He traces the whole subprime disaster to the Clinton administration's push to make home ownership available to low income taxpayers requiring minimal down payments. In hindsight, this indeed appears to be the start of it all, and I don't know why this hasn't been more widely acknowledged that it has been. Historically, to buy a home, a prospective homebuyer needed to make a 20 percent down payment. I put down almost 30 percent when I bought my first home. Yes, there were FHA/VA low down programs in the past, but actively targeting a group of homebuyers who were likely to default probably was not a good thing, despite the noble goal of home ownership for all. Of course, President Clinton was gone for quite a while before things blew up, so that's probably why he didn't get the blame. In a climate where home prices were escalating rapidly, after just one or two years of home ownership, the no down/low down homebuyer had his 20 percent equity and everything was hunky dory. Personally I became at least a little worried when I discovered that there were virtually no residential properties in the city of Los Angeles, not even in the worst neighborhoods of South L.A. or East L.A., that were selling for less than $400,000. Or when I read the quote in the newspaper of a Los Angeles homeowner who said he had no need to save any money because he was "sleeping in his piggybank." Or when houses in places like Adelanto and Murietta were rising to the same price level as properties in Los Angeles.

The most striking thing about the subprime meltdown and financial crisis was that it played out over such a long time. It was clear there was a big problem with subprime mortgages over three years ago. Yet amid Citbank's announcement of loan loss reserves for subprime loans back in 2007, the Dow Jones Industrials marched past the 14,000 mark. The subprime problem, everybody said, was just a temporary problem. Boy, were they wrong.

Tuesday's Election Predictions

There's no way from watching the news how one can get a sense of how an upcoming election will turn out. Candidates and political parties do not provide legitimate assessments of their chances, but rather engage in posturing. News organizations don't want to influence elections by saying there is a particular inevitable outcome. Polls are caveated with a margin of error and distorted because of significant early absentee voting. All we can glean is that the Republicans have a good chance to gain at least 39 House seats and a remote chance of getting 51 in the Senate. Interestingly today's news is full of increased public optimism from the Democrats that they'll hold both chambers and caution by the Republicans in assessing what will happen on Tuesday. Indeed, RNC Chairman Steele said that even if the Republicans came close to taking the House, it would be a significant accomplishment. So is the tide really turning? Certainly the news and public statements say "Yes."

But as I mentioned before, there is a neat resource called Intrade, where futures contracts are traded on all sorts of political and other events of public interest. And today, the futures for Republican control of the House are still over 90, and the overs/unders for Republican House gains is right about 60. So it seems in reality that nothing has changed. One interesting event is a surge today in the futures on Republicans taking at least 50 Senate seats (and particularly the Senate being split 50-50), a one day increase from 21 to 32. Still long odds, but something significant must have happened today to trigger such a jump.

Toronto Dim Sum Crawl--Six Restaurants In Six Hours

In hindsight it was probably a crazy thing, and it wasn't planned in advance. However this past Sunday I ended up going to six different Toronto area dim sum restaurants between 9 am and 3 pm. Originally I was just going to hit two or three places with the intent of judging the quality of Toronto area dim sum as well as to look for innovative items, but it ended up being more like a marathon.

My morning started out at Dragon Dynasty on Brimley Road in Scarborough. Arriving a little after 9 am I ran into the Sunday dim sum dilemma. The good thing about early dim sum is you avoid the crowds. The bad thing though is not all the dim sum is out. I was very surprised to find that Dragon Dynasty was largely cart service, with a few off the menu items. It turned out to be the only cart style of the day. And did the carts come slowly. After a considerable while I had taken only one item, a scallop shrimp dumpling, and ordered another from the menu, the rice noodle roll with scallop and snow pea leaves, which interestingly used the large pea leaves. Both items were fantastic, particularly the wrappers and fun. It was at this point, with the prospect of a long wait for who knows what that I began to launch my dim sum hopping plan.

Next stop was Regal 16 Seafood in Richmond Hill, which was probably a 25 minute surface street drive from Dragon Dynasty. I hadn't realized until then that Toronto's equivalent of the San Gabriel Valley, covering Scarborough, Richmond Hill, Markham and parts of other communities like North York, was similar in size to the SGV, though obviously not as densely Chinese. At 10:30 am, Regal 16 still had plenty of room. I had the beef dumplings with wolfberries, the vegetarian chicken bun with ginger sauce and the garlic chicken pastry rolls, with the latter being the only loser. It was here I decided to only eat some of each order and save the rest in lieu of going out to dinner.

I then drove over to Highway 7 in Richmond Hill to O Mei, another highly rated Chowhound favorite. But something was wrong. While Regal 16 was full when I left, O Mei, which wasn't that big to begin with, was half empty. Furthermore, the dim sum menu was very ordinary. I ended up ordering just the rice noodle rolls with beef and the diced lotus root meat patties. Not to say that these weren't good, but hardly Toronto's finest.


Moving a couple of blocks west on Highway 7, I landed at Rich Land Chinese cuisine. The restaurant was bustling and packed. I ordered one XL item, the garoupa with fruit, as well as the chicken avocado rolls. Actually the garoupa with fruit wasn't as exciting as it sounded--battered garoupa slices with four red grapes on the side. The chicken avocado roll was essentially an egg roll with a chicken and avocado filling, and was very good.

At this point I was starting to get full so I thought I'd drive back to Scarborough and scout around. What I hadn't discovered until the last day of my previous Toronto visit was that a lot of Chinese shopping centers are barely visible from the street, if at all. This trip I discovered a whole bunch of them. Driving down Warden Ave. I spotted another large Chinese shopping center which was actually highly visible, and moreover the signage "Sam Woo." I knew from prior trips to Toronto that L.A.'s Sam Woo chain had set up shop in Toronto, and I had often wondered whether they were able to keep up with the high Chinese food standards in Toronto. So in I went. I wasn't surprised that the choices here were more mundane. The snow pea leaf dumpling once again used the large leaf variety, and the shrimp and avocado roll was pretty good. The real surprise was that Sam Woo's dim sum was the most expensive I had all day.

At this point in time I needed a respite so I drove to another hidden Chinese megamall in Markham and walked around for a while. At about 2:15 I figured it was time for one last selection of dim sum. I chose Casa Victoria in Markham, having previously been to their sister Casa Imperial for dinner, which had been the highlight meal of my previous trip to Toronto. The last dim sum of the day was clearly the best, with a selection of interesting and tasty items--lamb roll with cucumber and avocado in teriyaki sauce; duck with chive dumplings; chicken with black fungus dumplings; and crispy fried mashed potato cake with shrimp.

This trip reinforced my previous conclusion as to Toronto's place in the Chinese food pecking order, which is below Vancouver and above Los Angeles. The difference is that in Vancouver everything is clearly better than the food in Los Angeles. You can walk into any Chinese restaurant in Richmond, B.C. , even in a food court, and get a superior meal. In Toronto you will find food that is just as good as Vancouver, but you will also find food that is comparable to what we have here in Los Angeles. Last time I came back from Vancouver, I had no interest in eating L.A. Chinese food for over a month. Back in L.A. from Toronto last night, I'm going out for Chinese food today.

Does California Have An Anti-Business Climate?

This fall's Proposition 24 once again raises the issue of whether state government policies are so anti-business that they drive businesses out of the state. Proponents of the viewpoint say that between layers of regulation not present in other states, as well as tax policy, California is tangibly business unfriendly. The other camp says that California is such a population and economic center that businesses would be irrational to leave the state.

In reality both sides are correct to some extent and one might argue that there is really no way to determine who is right. However, I think there is in fact very strong evidence of which argument is correct, based on an examination of economic activity on both sides of the Colorado River dividing California and Arizona.

I remember crossing the Colorado River nearly 45 years ago on a family vacation where we drove from Los Angeles to Texas. I did not return to that area until just a short while ago. Stopping recently in the towns of Blythe and Needles, I was amazed how so little had changed in 45 years. No offense to the good citizens of these towns, but the California side of the Colorado River was depressing. The streets of these towns were not very busy and there had been very little in the way of new construction since the mid 60s. Small local retail businesses far outnumbered any chain stores. The California side of the river was lined with cheap motels and the entire path along the river was either undeveloped or in disrepair.

On the other hand, the Arizona side of the river was amazing. Fancy river side resorts. Tons of new construction. Nice shopping areas with major stores. Gasoline prices almost $1 a gallon cheaper than the California side. The differences between the California and Arizona sides of the river are what I imagine the contrast was when a visitor crossed from communist era East Germany over to West Germany. The California/Arizona border is the one area where businesses have a choice of whether to operate in California or outside of California, and it is clear that anybody who really has a choice will not operate in California.

So while it's obvious that major retailers won't abandon Los Angeles and San Francisco due to the sheer number of customers, there's no doubt that if given a viable alternative, a business will choose to operate somewhere other than California.

Chilean Miner Rescue

The rescue of the trapped Chilean miners is one of the great stories of our time. As the time for beginning the rescue approached I was hearing about the thought going into the order that the miners would be removed, the fact that they would be coming out one at a time, and that each miner would have to ride the rescue capsule for perhaps 15 or 20 minutes. I was struck by a random thought that waiting for all this to start was like waiting for the start of the NFL draft. Well apparently, I wasn't the only one to see the broad analogy. For once the rescue started, the CNN home page had a display showing numerically which miner was being rescued, and how long it had been since the current miner rescue started, e.g., miner #7 is 8 minutes and 24 seconds into his ascent. Did they include biographical info too? Just like the NFL draft countdown clock!