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Judging by what I've heard, Colorado had miserable weather during the past week. I must rely on hearsay because on Monday morning, I was not shoveling my car out of a snowdrift, nor was I wondering when the plumber would get by to thaw my pipes. Clad in T-shirt and cut-offs, I was strolling barefoot along a beach at Padre Island, one of the many delights I've discovered during my winter expedition to the Republic of Texas.
Tempting as the warmth and sunshine were, though, I figured that my moral character might suffer without regular exposure to the rigors of mountain winters. Besides, I've had time to assemble the prospectus for the Quillen Investment Group, which soon will be offering surefire Colorado opportunities. In 1988, we will thereby all get so rich that we can retire to some warm, sunny place long before next winter.
Recall all the excitement about superconductors? These are alloys that offer no resistance to electrical current at relatively high temperatures (-350 degrees F in this context). They promise all sorts of marvels -- highly efficient motors, high speed ground transportation in the form of linear-induction trains ... that sort of thing.
The important ingredients in superconductors are obscure
chemical elements from the rare earth
family:
ytterbium, dysprosium, praesodymium, etc. A huge market for
these metals might be in the making.
Now, I don't know if Colorado contains euxenite, samarskite or other exotic, rare-earth ores. But a lot of people will believe us if we tell them that we have a promising claim somewhere in the Mosquito Range or the San Juans. They can invest with us, and we can decamp.
That follows an honorable tradition in Colorado's blue-sky minerals industry. Even where there really was gold, as in Cripple Greek, for instance, for every $20 ounce of shining metal, there was a $30 sale of dubious shares of stock.
Mining the public has always paid better than drilling in rock -- but it does sound risky. So the Quillen Investment Group will hedge with substantial real estate speculations.
Does that sound imprudent, too, considering how many condos are going at absolute auctions these days?
Well, look at it this way. If you put you money in a bank and you thought your deposit was insured by the state, you were wrong if it was an industrial bank. Our state legislature won't guarantee your investment there, even if you thought you saw a sign on the door that said deposit were insured by the state.
But if you speculate in real estate, our legislature will try to protect your Investment. That is, our legislature will do its best to keep your neighbors from exercising their constitutional right of initiative to change your zoning.
Once word gets out, that should bring a lot of people into Colorado. Doesn't everybody want to live in a place where it's safer to subdivide than to have a savings account?
The Quillen Investment Group has also found a promising place for venture capital. Many Republican state senators have been retiring from office, and with the upcoming elections, this represents a window of opportunity to purchase new legislators, and thus favorable laws, with benefits that should continue into the next century. If everybody else buys a senator with a consulting contract, why can't we?
Also on the political front, I'm proud to report that
our group refused, on grounds of taste, to provide start-up
capital to an enterprise that proposed to market women's
designer jeans embroidered with Gary Hart slept
Here.
However, the Quillen Investment Group did corner one vital market late last January. Remember how the stores were jammed with orange Bronco merchandise right up until the-Super Bowl, and then it all vanished?
That's because my agents were buying it all up. At this moment, elves that Santa just laid off are busy with an easy transition, adding a line so that Super Bowl XXI becomes Super Bowl XXII. Then we will flood the market just before the play-offs start.
And if that doesn't work -- there is always the chance the Broncos might lose a play-off game -- then we'd just paint everything red and sell it in Nebraska.
So there's the prospectus for the Quillen Investment Group in 1988. Invest in rare earths and state senators; one or the other is bound to pay off so that I can stay where it's warm.
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