Grrl Power #386 – Aggrandizer-X!
Ok so I sort of lied about how many pages this day has as this interview takes place on the same day, albeit super late. (It’s a show about economics and interviewing businessmen so it’s still working its way up to prime time.)
This will be an interesting experiment because really for the first time we’ll be spending a few pages away from the main cast, but I figured I needed to start setting up some story elements and characters for later.
“We’re interviewing the head of Machina Industries. I’m not going to say his name because the guy writing this comic can’t decide if that’s his first or last name, or if it’s a mononym like Sting or Madonna. Probably leaning towards mononym cause otherwise if it’s his surname then what, his full name is Motimer Deus? Brad? Jordache? No, just no.”
If any of Deus’s claims in panel 3 seem absurd, (I think shorting the banks for $7 billion is totally within the realm of realism actually – the upcoming movie The Big Short is about people who did this on a smaller scale, but only because they weren’t billionaires to start with.) especially moving a country up the GDP rankings so fast, keep in mind this world has super powered people in it, most of whom work for private industry, and Deus is probably “cheating” somehow.
#MakeComics: That map in the background showing all the countries with their local currencies might not look like it, but that took over 2 hours to make. I really would have thought something like that would already exist, like in open source clipart form, but my googling didn’t turn anything up. Obviously keeping something like that up to date would be a pain in the ass, and then someone has to decide whether to actually use the symbol for the local currency, or whatever they actually use the most when doing business. If any tourist can spend US dollars or Euros at any shop there, but they have a local currency that only gets used when people are buying their groceries, then what do you put on the map, or do you make multiple versions of it? Eh, not important for this show. It’s just a backdrop, but they probably get letters all the time about this country or that showing the wrong symbol.
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Tex Richman is humbled..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS_gCOtM75U
You… I like you ♥
I’ll bet his real name is something like Mortimer Snerd.
Deus is nobody’s puppet…
or… Deus Xavier Machina. Seems appropriate enough for a supervillain with more money than… well…
D. S. Xavier Machina.
Douglas Steven? Daniel Samuel? Could be anything.
I love the work you did for the map. Any chance you’d be willing to make it downloadable?
I can imagine this being very welcome somewhere like Wikipedia ;-)
Being a moron in private is one thing but in an interview… all my WOT?!
I suspect that he’s his worlds Donald Trump….
Deus is who Donald Trump Thinks he is, and is not even close.
I don’t think moving a company that far up the GDP chart would really be that much of an accomplishment. You’re basically going from 0 to 19 billion or so, and it sounds like as long as he made himself a resident of that country, whatever company he owns is going to single handedly produce that much. If Apple spent all it’s cash on a single country, even if no one else produced anything that country would still be in the top 50.
I think he took over the foreign country solely so he could avoid paying US income taxes.
Deusylvania? Deusbekistan? His ego would probably go for Deus Salvador.
It’s millions, not billions.
Poor countries are poor
No, it’s billions. $18 billion or so in total GDP, in fact.
Ok, yes, my mistake. And a stupid one at that.
Its only arrogance if its not true.
+1
No. If it’s not true, it’s lying.
The point being, that it is true
So… is this guy making a PSA that he’s a supervillain? Or is he running for president? Either way, I’m voting for him.
Tell ya what, he’s already beat out Trump.
I haven’t been following the presidential campaigns. Why does everyone hate Trump?
Apparently, only Liberals hate Trump. It takes a Conservative Thinker to make that kind of success in business & Liberal Thinking doesn’t achieve such self-made success.
Expecting the Liberal Troll Fallout in 3…2…1…
No trolling from me, but then I’m pretty conservative about most things.
My main beef with the guy is just that he’s an arrogant blowhard without one shred of humility. Mind you, I also believe that our current President is an utter amateur who has been a disaster for this country and that Mrs. Clinton, the next candidate from his party, is a thoroughly corrupt woman.
Here’s what I want to see on ballots in the future! At the end of the list of candidates for an office, I’d like to see a box for None Of The Above. If that vote gets more votes than any of the candidates, we should hold new elections with a new set of candidates. The people who just got rejected would be barred from taking part in the new election, but would be free to try again when election time rolled around again.
“I’d like to see a box for None Of The Above.”
I take it that you’ve seen the movie, “Brewster’s Millions” with Richard Pryor?
I have to say that if there’s anyone running for office named No confidence, I’d have no one to vote for…
Brewster’s Millions is such an underrated movie! :-D
And I still haven’t heard any actual reason why people hate Trump.
Heck, I would feel like I’m liberal, and I really hate Clinton.
trump is a minor busness talent that, when the rich/powerful decided to lift to there level, overshot the level of success the rich wanted for him and have been trying to bring him back down but are reliant on business inept crownys that share they’re rich becouse the previous rich chose them to be friends to do it and can’t beat the actual business ability trump has. that said trump is no more business competent than a quarter of the people I meet working in fastfood and would have never been heard of if he wasn’t set up to become rich
Trump so far has shown some talent for populism. But an amount of political acumen (and I mean the kind of acumen that enables you to run a country, not just to get elected) that is about on the level of… what to give as an example… The wrestling character Bo Dallas?
That plus a number of quite mysogynistic comments he’s made.
And a few utter racist ones on a level we usually hear from guys rather on the right side of the political spectrum. No, not tea party. Further to the right, by a good measure.
Honestly: If what he preaches is what he’d actually tried to implement as president, the best chance of all the enemies of the USA to actually destroy their hated nemesis is to help him get elected to the office.
I second the “None of the Above” option. I’d love to have that on the ballots.
No, not only liberals hate Trump. The establishment in the Republican party certainly doesn’t like him. They think that with how extreme he is, that he’ll cost the Republican party the general election.
Here’s an article on politico (about 6 months old though) that covers it:
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/trump-bump-terrifies-gop-119449
I’ll check it out, but you didn’t actually state a real reason to hate the guy, just that people hate him and they think he’ll screw up.
From what I’ve picked up (I don’t live in the US, so I don’t follow US politics, but since I know people who do I am exposed to a certain amount of it whether I will or no.) the man is a massive bigot and one of the cluelessly wealthy.
What really caught my eye in that report, apart from the stuff I already knew:
At two events, the person said, Trump insisted on speaking earlier than scheduled so he could get back to his home in New York City: “It was kind of embarrassing. He left before our donors showed up.”
That’s not the kind of working morale I’d expect from a presidential candidate, truth be told. Not if he’s taking the position any seriously.
Woops, that got a bit mangled:
The part from “That’s not…” is from me again, not from the report.
I can think of several reasons why a lot of people hate Trump:
His frequent highly offensive, often bigoted, & downright false claims. Two recent examples that come to mind are where he said (paraphrasing here) that “All Mexicans are rapists”, and “that all Muslims are suspect, or terrorists.” The second one basically being part of his plan to ban all Muslims from entering the US.
And then there’s the fact that in media, at rallies, and especially at debates, he does almost nothing but ridicule and insult people, even his own supporters. I would definitely say he’s extremely arrogant and narcissistic (I’m defining narcissism here as believing yourself to be extremely important, more so than almost anyone else, regardless of whether it’s justified or not), and he comes across as massively bigoted too.
And furthermore, he’s using too many tactics that dictators have used (minus the violence, murdering, and purges). He’s got a whole cult of personality thing going on, and strongman thing going on (always attacking opponents, even insulting supporters, never apologizing) which were also methods used by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao Zedong, and others. That to me is a giant red flag. (and yes, I’m aware that at least a few people will probably accuse the above of being a “reductio ad hitlerum” fallacy. I’m just calling it as I see it).
Trump also to me scores highly in the dark tetrad of traits, those being narcissism, machiavellianism, sociopathy, and sadism. Narcissism I already covered. Machiavellianism is being highly manipulative, seeing other people as mainly tools to be used for your own ends. Sociopathy is having little to no remorse for causing others harm, pain, or suffering (Trump never apologizes, or shows remorse for his actions). And sadism (taking pleasure in causing suffering to others), well, he seems to take pleasure in his vitriol towards others.
So in summary, I see Trump as a highly bigoted person, with little respect for truth or reason, and having a dark personality. This is not someone I would want as President.
And just to be clear, I dislike the current President (he’s made a right mess of things), and don’t like Hilary as a candidate either. But I’d rather take any of those two turds over Trump.
What you said.
Yeah, the only thing I’ve heard so far is the “ban all Muslims from entering the US” thing, which is completely unfeasible. It’s not like you can run a blood test and prove whether or not someone’s a terrorist.
And if he’s insulting people, so what? Good for him I say. People running for election are ridiculed enough as it is, good on him for biting back.
And being narcissistic and having a very strong personality doesn’t make him a bad candidate. Heck, that makes me like him even more.
Okay, next you list some personality traits, but without actually citing examples of him acting this way.
And as for being bigoted, yeah, you have something going there, but it seems really mild. I’d still vote for him over Clinton’s bigotry, but not really. I don’t vote for someone because the other one is worse. That’s not how democracy should work. If I’m voting for Trump because I hate Hillary, I’m not actually voting for Trump. I’m attempting to take a vote away from someone else. When you realize that’s how your voting system works, then you should also realize that your voting system is EXTREMELY broken, and that’s not even taking into account that the electoral college is completely bullshit.
So no, I don’t think I’m voting this election. I don’t like either Clinton or Trump.
Well, I might vote for Sanders. He won’t win, but I’d like him to get enough votes so that we’re no longer a bipartisan system. It’s not that I think our country needs a third party, but because I just want to see what happens.
Because he has a long history of this kind of behaviour: https://www.cracked.com/blog/10-stories-about-donald-trump-you-wont-believe-are-true/
It’s not like people [i]hate[/i] the guy. They sort of laugh at him and are really afraid that he can actually get elected.
Mostly that’s because he says a lot of inane and silly things that are clearly not very realistic.
A good number of people actually think them to be quite realistic.
Well, “think” probably being not a good choice of word here. They hear it, find that it kind of suits their taste and don’t do any more thinking about it past that level. Just repeating it themselves (and since so many are repeating it, it must be true, right?)
That’s nothing knew. It’s classic hanger-on behaviour. The angry protest voter who feels vindicated by anyone being loud enough in their critic of the “stupid and evil big shots ruining the country”. Whether the critic is factual in any kind of way doesn’t matter. It helps to put a kernel of truth in here and there (Trump does as well). But many people won’t actually think about what you said and thus not spot the inconsistencies, fabrications and inanity in it.
Mind you: Just about anyone currently running for president does it (lying, fabricating, etcetera) to at least some degree. You won’t get a majority of votes without, sad as that is. But Trump is about the only one of the lot whose whole campaign basically consists of nothing else. And most certainly the loudest.
Criticism, not critic, sorry. Lack of sleep.
Exactly where’s the villainy in anything he’s announced? The shorting the banks during the financial crash? Overhauling another countries economy? Giving away $500000000 stock to the poor just for curiosity? His astonishing hair?
I remember once a friend was telling me about a role playing game he once played with some friends. They were all demons tasked with tempting, corrupting, and dragging sinners to hell. His strategy was simple: as the game master for more money, and then continue giving it away. People damned themselves very easily that way.
Anyway, this fella sounds like a cross between Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom. Either one would be a good candidate for president.
Deus is his first name.
His surname is Mackinaw.
Machina just sounds cooler.
You forgot his middle name, which is Xavier.
I call in a vote for this.
Deus Xavier Mackinaw
I like Xavier Deus. It’s a plausible enough full name, and cool enough to have a kid grow up with that sort of ego. Middle names are for suckers. And in the unlikely event that he ends up with a mugshot, it’ll be labelled “Deus, X.”
I’m thinking his name might work as Deus “Ace” Kingford – slip in three card references in one name (so Sydney can eventually gripe when his villan motif is not card related)
People looking to get on his good side call him Ace. But it’s late and I’m tired and I wonder if that name will look as good once I’ve slept
Amadeus (Deus) Xavier Mackinaw.
Works for me.
Shouldn’t that be Deuce “Ace” Kingford then? :D
Well, with the name Deus & his tie in a Trinity Knot, he’s got 2 & 3 as numbers (if not cards) already covered…
Hey Dave, you couldn’t have linked us into this interview a few minutes earlier where she asked him how he got that facial scar? Hopefully it will be explained to those of us on this side of the fourth wall at some point.
Do you want to know how I got this scar?
that sounds like a SERIOUS story
It occurs to me that we probably should have guessed that DaveB would treat us to a glimpse of a bad guy on this page of the comic. Sydney did spend the last two pages trying to smash cut to a villain, after all.
Lawful evil?
Anti villain?
trope break set for cut to villain go instead to mischievous red herring
It’s like Larry King’s backdrop. When my wife was a kid, she saw those lights and thought, “This looks like boring.”
I dunno how believable it would be to short banks for 7 billion, even assuming you start with over a billion in investment. There’s these pesky little things like Insider Trading Laws and SEC Regulations which would pretty much hammer you into oblivion for trying to pull this on this scale. Look ’em up some time, you’re basically guilty unless you can PROVE that you are innocent. And even then, you’re still guilty of something, just not the worst thing. If nothing else, the banks would be litigating for improper financial practices with intent to defraud. For a couple hundred thousand? Not worth the attorney’s punch-clock. For seven billion? Oh, you betcha it is.
Having said that, it’s absolutely something a comic artist can hand-waive since it isn’t something in the public eye. And a corrupt financial swindle that is gotten away clean is a classic staple of villain rise to power.
As far as going from 168 to 109 in GDP… that is ABSOLUTELY believable. Once you get down below a hundred, it doesn’t take you much to get some huge leaps. The claim about pushing into the top 50 in short order is the more ludicrous one, however depending on how he uses his assets… it’s in the realm of possibility. Even without supers getting behind and exploiting their powers.
He wouldn’t happen to have someone supplying him with a steady stream of gold bricks on the sly, would he?
Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge
What’s it like?
Those are the rules on paper but in a lot of cases the SEC just doesn’t investigate let alone convict. With the number of people regularly switching jobs between the SEC and big investment companies it’s not that surprising.
Then again he’s not one of those big investment companies so he’d be an outsider without that protection so who knows.
He might have a super lawyer with hypno vision or something.
Bank of America (for example) has a market cap of $165B. $7B is a small enough percentage of that to not run afoul of security laws.
BoA went from 50-ish to 5-ish in about 18 months during the recession. So you could make $7B shorting stocks if you started with a billion or so, less if you use leverage.
The way to really make a killing, though, is with options. If you time a major move right, you can make 50x your investment or more.
Shorting isn’t insider trading though. It’s betting against the market and it happens all the time. Sure a $7B windfall might get investigated, but it’s not like any of the people who actually perpetrated the fraud that caused the housing/toxic debt crash spent any time in jail. Basically nothing is illegal if you’re rich enough.
Shorting the Poung is how we got George Soros the Billionaire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Wednesday
Ain’t that the truth. The rich screw everybody who isn’t them and almost never get held to account until their stupidity reaches biblical proportions like the “affluenza” kid who’s only going to jail because he broke his parole after getting away with murder. The rich tend to pay the lowest tax rate (average 1 Percenter pays around 15% taxes) and have sucked up over 99% of all wealth increase since the economic recovery. The average corporate earnings over most of the last century were around 6%. It’s currently 12%, most of that increase being pocketed directly out of lower employees wages and benefits.
Last year Warren Buffet, the epitomy of a good billionaire, publicly stated that he thought the wealthy should pay more of their fair share and was so badly denounced for it that his own stockholders forced him to recant his statement lest they vote him out of his own company.
Stop trying to force laws from our world into a world that advanced differently
Does anyone get the feeling that this guy has an incredible lawyer? Anyone? I’m talking Sean Connery meets Morgan Freeman amazing.
Ah yes, the rules lawyer… The Mighty Halo’s greatest opponent on the other-side of the DM screen.
… Wait, no, real life. Yeah, no, I can see it.
Ashley: “He’s also bought from me -several- times. Spider-silk suits are hard to come by after all, and Armani just -isn’t- the same.”
Perhaps he could purchase a supply of spider-silk from Skitter, from the web-serial, “Worm”…?
Or Spinnerette, she produces her own silk, of various types
Deus can give Vehemence lessons on arrogance done RIGHT :) Loooooooove Deus. Reminds me of Maxwell Lord on Supergirl :)
I dunno, ‘Douchebag’ Deus has a nice ring to it. Oh brother, the ego that walks like a man. He must have taken the service elevator up to the studio, his ego wouldn’t fit in a regular elevator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd3esamc2Rs
…
I’m posting the video for 3 reasons
1: HE IS FUCKING DR.DOOM [With less selfneed of being momy’s perfect angel]
2: I posted at the last page but this morning so probably no one noticed. And it adresses the power of the force vs marvel powers
3: I’TS F**** AWESOME
I am DR.REVENGE and I approve of this video.
Now I want to see batman vs. Dr. Doom.
I would figure that Batman would have to be capable of researching Dr. Doom & have time for preparation first. Batman uses science & technology, but Doom’s advantage is his ability to combine science & magic. Batman is a survivor though, and a genius in his own right…If prepared beforehand, Batman could survive long enough to effectively use Doom’s arrogance against him.
If Doom really wanted to “destroy” Bats he could before bats had any idea what was coming.
In several stories Batman shows fairly advanced ritual magic skills. Not saying he could match Doom in that respect, but it isn’t as much of an advantage as you might think. Batman after all has worked with John Constantine, Dr. Fate, Zatanna, and many other powerful magically aligned beings. He has long ago accepted the existence of magic and he prepares himself accordingly. I think a conflict between Batman and Doom would be a fantastic read, but to be done properly it would need to be at least a 12 issue series.
For Doom to defeat Batman would be relatively easy.
Scenario
Doom does something “suspicious” to get Batman to go to Latvaria to investigate.
Doom lets him do his “investigation”.
Then issues an arrest warrant for him once he leaves the country and provides full evidence of Batman’s crimes.
Because lets face it Batman habitually commits crimes
Breaking and entering
Theft
Assault
So once Doom puts out the warrant for his arrest Batman has to go real low profile if not stop all together or the U.S. and justice league will have a pr nightmare explaining why they are shielding a law breaker.
Deus has a giant X on his face and runs a company named Machina. I see what you did there.
It’s blatant. Sickeningly blatant. AND WE LOVE IT SO.
Actually, political stability and an open market alone is enough to explain the jump. The next jump will be much tougher unless you have an educated population.
Two decades in total can bring you quite far in that regard.
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT.
What if he’s so open about being shady/evil because THEY LIVE IN A WORLD WITH SUPER POWERS?! I mean, it’s a friggin’ Trope!
He’s setting himself up to be Lex Luthor, so fucking rich that he can’t be arrested for the most part and somehow inexplicably capable of becoming President of the United States!
There’s nothing inexplicable about Luthor for president. Next US election, you can vote for Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, or a supervillain genius inventor/financier who builds robot suits to fight an invincible alien.
Tried to make out the Swiss Franc in the background. But it’s probably too small. :(
That’s what you get for being a country of approximately 200×300 kilometres.
Admission, some of the smaller countries may have gotten lumped in with neighbors, partially due to time constraints, but also because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see the symbol since they all had to be large enough to be legible.
I was also trying to spot it :'(
lol. Did anyone else notice the slimy bastard weasel his way out with wordplay and misdirection?
Deus redirected “narcissistic personality disorder” with “megalomania”.
On the surface, they seem like different things, but in details, they are not. While megalomania may involve “unwarranted feelings of self importance” (aka delusions of grandeur), narcissistic personality disorder does not. One only needs to have inflated (very large, not necessarily unwarranted) sense of self importance and a lack of empathy for others.
He then goes on with a long list of self-aggrandizing examples disproving something that he himself brought up.
The question here isn’t whether he’s a megalomaniac. The question is whether he has narcissistic personality disorder. He definitely has the latter.
Honestly though, a pretty strong case could be made against him for the former as well…
I would question whether Deus has demonstrated ‘a lack of empathy for others’. We’ve only seen him interact with a few people, and never under stress. He could be a decent guy, who just happens to be a financial genius.
“I’ve made public my plans to give away $500,000,000 in stock to a handful of the poorest Americans, mostly just to see what happens.
Doesn’t sound like a person who understand the idea behind charity or empathy…
A real TV station would probably want to have the background animated in some fashion, slowly fading from one state to the next, ever changing… Which would be a great way to incorporate all these different currencies. But some randomness should be involved to keep it from becoming repetitive.
In fact this sounds like a nice project to learn about programming. It’s small but flashy, so it’s fun. It’s data driven like a real program but it doesn’t need to deal with messy real world data. Bugs are low-impact, but you can optimize a lot on the performance side, because you’re more or less boxing an animation. Basic correctness is necessary but not enough, just like in the real world. And if you polish the result a bit, you might even be able to sell it as an animated background. Or incorporate it as such in a more complex financial app to make it more flashy, or turn it into the seed of a TV-station-flashy-background-creator or whatever strikes your fancy.
Maybe it’s even something to weave a tutorial around.
I’m digging on the dinner roll knot on his tie…
If you look at panel three it appears to be a two dimensional representation of a cube, which in his universe would be a three dimensional representation of a hyper cube. He has in fact created the tesseract tie.
It’s called a Trinity knot.
Tie-serract.
I’ll give you an Internet +1 for that.
Hmmm, that sounds like a worthy enough concept for invention.
Ok, who among DaveB‘s readers has the necessary Physics to come up with a Tie-serract?
it’s knot for the world to see so it’s locked in the vault guarded by some of my finest jewels and by jewels I mean warrior princesses.
I’m surprised that government agents haven’t demanded that you turn it over to https://www.scp-wiki.net/
as a member of the demon dragon clan they need to talk to the clans leader and get authorization to take it against my will unless they can politely convince me to relinquish it.
Deus gets even better if you hear his voice as kronk
Patrick Warburton has a good voice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Warburton
but I identify him with the Tick so I can’t hear him as a villain. (maybe for the goofy Deus scenes)
I have been hearing Deus as the voice actor that did Lex Luthor in the animated Superman series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clancy_Brown
He also does the money-obsessed Mr. Krabs for SpongeBob, a personality that fits well with today’s interview.
P.S. The voice of Vehemence was played in my head by Ron (Hellboy) Perlman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Perlman
Clancy Brown and Ron Perlman… dang, that’s what I pictured, too.
What about Officer Joe from “Family Guy”? Or that role years ago in a TV News Station?
Personally view Warburton as more of a straight act than a comedian
Don’t worry about the pages being longer. It happens. I once wrote a fanfiction story that I thought was only going to be 2 chapters long. Then it kinda started snowballing and I thought, okay, 10 chapters long. Got to 10 chapters and thought, okay, 20 chapters long? Got to 20 and realized, nope, 40 chapters. Got to the 40 chapter mark, realized I still had a lot more to tell, rolled my eyes, and said, “Okay, this effer’s gonna be 80 chapters long.” Got to 80 chapters and said ” F*** IT! It’s going to be as long as it’s going to be, dammit!” …and just kept writing, focusing on telling the best story I could, not the story of the most specific length I could. Some stories are like that.
Including the epilogue, it was 163 chapters long, over 578,000 words long (over half a million!!), and ended up with 8 nominations and 2 awards in the fandom I was writing. Oh, and it snagged the attention of an editor at a major publishing house, who went on to read and follow some of my other fanfic writings, and then offered me a chance to look over some of my original fiction, and ended up giving me the first of many publishing contracts.
So relax, you have at least one fan of your work who totally understands it when extra pages/chapters happen. And, I suspect, a lot more than just one. (We’re greedy little buggers who want more more more!)
Thank you very much for sharing your story!
Heh! If you’re going to get carried away with something, at least you make it a good something…When there’s a lot of people enjoying it, you have plenty of company along the way.
Carry on.
So who publishes you, and where can I find your work?
“Women want me, and men want to be me.
Also men want me and women want to be me. It’s not my place to judge.”
Alright, the man can tie a Trinity knot, or has someone who can, he has significantly larger portions of my respect now.
Probably Vale (she’s not just there to stop him pawing at TV screens :P)
I can’t help but like this guy.
Yeah, with you there. I’ll probably stop when he reveals his moon lasers or what have you, but he’s certainly a fun interview.
That’s a great villain and a perfect arch-nemesis for Sydney.
So he’s a less cool version of Doctor Doom, with some Lex Luthor (with hair!) thrown in for good measure.
I admit that Deus has some Epic Hair, but it doesn’t come anywhere near Sydney’s Anime-Powered Bangs.
I still think he has an ego. He can down play it a bit but he still has some level of a large ego.
Did he deny having an ego? o_O
He’s trying too hard. :)
Or, that’s what he wants you to believe, so you dismiss him as being someone who just tries too hard, letting him sneak in the backdoor
C.C. ain’t charmed by him, nice to see :D
Hi there. I actually have a master’s in economics, so I found the topics today pretty interesting.
$7b from shorting banks is totally within the realm of possibility. Lehman Brothers went from $67/share to $3/share in a single year. investing ~$350 million shorting them alone would have done in. For someone who’s already a billionaire, that’s easy. Heck, if he really predicted the crash a year ahead of time and was already a billionaire, $7b is actually a pretty low payout.
As far as raising a country’s GDP so drastically, the current #168 is Bhutan with a ~$2b GDP. #109 is Gabon at around ~20b GDP. As impressive as that sounds, it isn’t even unprecedented. Singapore went from a GDP of $1.9b to $18.5b from 1970 to 1985. That’s a little slower than the comic example, but by 1990 they were up to $38b. It did however, take another 20 years for them to break the top 50 (2010). So while that goal is ambitious, it is totally within the realm of reason.
Either you did some decent research to find numbers that were both impressive and reasonable, or you got pretty lucky. Either way, it works.
Good to know! I did do a little research and tweaked my numbers as I was lettering it. I didn’t want to go too crazy with that dollar amount, it bugs me when people overdo it with their rich characters, though it seems these days with companies like google, microsoft, Disney buying up other companies for a billion here and 4 billion there, almost anything sounds reasonable. It seems like any transaction under ten digits doesn’t even make the news.
The problem with shorting like that is getting paid by a greater fool. Sadly the govt bail out was the greater fool. Too bad Gerald Clemente didn’t break the banks shorting democrate financier Corzine’s MF global Ponzi scheme, he is still waiting on his money. Iceland was smart and threatened to toss bankers in jail, and recovered quickly.
Aww, you put his face in front of India, which has a shiny new currency symbol.
Oh yeah, it takes an evil bastard to actually use a trinity knot. Love that touch.
Suggestion on the full Deus name: Exeter Animus Deus
It has the right level of pomp and as a bonus animus can be translated as motive force or machine thus Ex Machina Deus. :-)
Or Exeter Deus Rex. That could be roughly translated as “of god a king” or “king by god’s hand”.
On the subject of taking a country from 169th to 109th rank in gdp, as of last year that’s only the difference between ~1.5 billion and ~16 billion. Totally doable in a decade if you pour a new major industry into a third world country.
(ahem)
“X” Luthor mayhaps?