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Postmodern Gatsby

“Let’s say you’re a super-wealthy single dude who just sold your company,” [says the real estate agent for a $500 million Los Angeles house]. “You’ve just moved to L.A. and you don’t know anybody, so you hire someone to fill your house with partyers. You want everyone to know who you are, but you don’t want to talk to anybody. So you go sit in your V.I.P. room.”

… [One] buyer, from Malaysia, paid [the agent] $40 million for [another LA] home and then promptly gutted it. “That house looked like this,” he said, stretching his arms out wide for emphasis. “Furniture! Beautiful! Everything!” Eventually, he said, the Department of Justice took possession of the home after the owner ran into legal trouble. It’s been empty ever since.

Margaret Soltan, December 31, 2017 6:41AM
Posted in: extracts

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2 Responses to “Postmodern Gatsby”

  1. dmf Says:

    for all the high-tech wizardry of modern trading/banking it still all comes down to the same old piles of material goods and similar sad nonsense. The Trump/Russia scandal and all will likely be about money laundering and real-estate, throw in some prostitution, water/oil/mineral rights and we are endlessly looping back in Chinatown.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    dmf: Yes. The fundamental things apply….

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