Years of Poems and Spirits

He also likes the cruise lines: “If you survey people about vacations, almost everybody says they had a good time on cruises.” Cruises are relatively inexpensive, appeal across generations, and the companies pay almost nothing in taxes because they’re registered in tax havens. And like hotels, this is an industry with high barriers to entry. His favorites are Carnival Corp. (CCL) and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL).

Steven T. Goldberg is an investment adviser and freelance writer.
http://www.kiplinger.com//columns/value/archive/2007/va0213.htm

LaFleur said factors contributing to the Caribbean weakness, according to management, include an unseasonably warm start to the winter, macroeconomic pressure, overcapacity, and higher prices and diminished capacity in the airline sector.
LaFleur, who has a “Neutral” rating on the stock, also noted risk related to Royal Caribbean’s purchase of tour operator Pullmantur for about $552.8 million, plus about $347.1 million in debt.

Carnival also has a cruise ship operating in the Chinese market, but it stated that results are running below its expectations, and moved the ship to serve the Hong Kong market. It believes it has the product offering right, but it’s working to build up a distribution network and better penetrate the marketplace. In other words, it is still learning, but it plans on sticking around and making further inroads into China as a future growth avenue.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070129/travel_trend_cruises.html?.v=1
“Given reporting lags and more severe seasonality, Pullmantur will drag down Royal Caribbean’s earnings in the first half of the year and boost them in the second half.”
Royal Caribbean gave up $1.39, or 3 percent, to $42.12, and rival Carnival declined $1.77, or 3 percent, to $49.01, both on the New York Stock Exchange.
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070208:MTFH33819_2007-02-08_15-05-31_N08491201&type=comktNews&rpc=44

Carnival and Royal Caribbean, the world’s two biggest cruise companies, are looking to grow in Europe with the Caribbean market suffering from weaker pricing after recent hurricane damage and expanded port capacity in the region.
Carnival, the No. 1 cruise operator, signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture with a unit of Spanish travel firm Orizonia Corporacion. The venture will operate and expand Orizonia’s Iberojet Cruceros cruise brand in Spain.
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehybrid.aspx?storyID=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20070208:MTFH33819_2007-02-08_15-05-31_N08491201&type=comktNews&rpc=44

Carnival Cruise Lines Names New 130,000-Ton Superliners ‘Carnival Dream’ and ‘Carnival Magic’
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070209/clf064.html?.v=16

Long known as a leader in romance, Princess Cruises is stepping up its commitment to love. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the hit TV series The Love Boat, famously set aboard a Princess ship, the company is debuting a new Department of Romance made up of a “dream team” of romance experts, and is launching a number of new “romantic pursuits” on its ships and on its web site.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070208/lath062.html?.v=74

Royal has been able to grow sales, earnings, and cash flow close to 10% on average over the past five years. I would characterize this growth as unspectacular but respectable, and operating cash flow exceeds reported net income by a wide margin, primarily because the cruise business is very capital-intensive and has high levels of depreciation and amortization.I do see some drawbacks for Royal, including a high amount of debt — something that Carnival hasn’t escaped, either, though that company posts much higher net margins. Both are also subject to high fuel costs, which they saw in 2006. In addition, the hurricanes prevalent in the core Caribbean markets can wreak havoc on bookings and cruise outings.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/02/06/royal-caribbean-submerged.aspx?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y

Carnival Freedom’s European Cruises: The Ultimate Family Vacation
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070201/clth099.html?.v=20

If the explosion in family cruising hasn’t destroyed the stereotype of cruises as a vacation choice for older travelers, perhaps this will: Sixty-eight percent of Gen-Xers, those born roughly between 1965 and 1978, say they intend to take a cruise. That compares with 65 percent of baby boomers and 59 percent of seniors. The data comes from market research conducted online for CLIA last year among 2,000 people.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070129/travel_trend_cruises.html?.v=1

Why Carnival is innovative:
https://www.bookccl.com/misc/todaysccl.asp
in-cabin amenities baskets, Carnival Comfort Bed sleep system, Try our new Georges Blanc Signature Selections , conference centers , fleetwide Internet cafes (including wireless Internet service) where guests can access e-mail and Web sites, Spa Carnival, the industry’s top-rated children’s program.

Carnival connections
http://www.carnivalconnections.com/?wt.mc_id=Hwhatsnewconnections

CRUISE INNOVATIONS
http://www.lowellsun.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?articleId=5156640&siteId=105

Although the United States was founded on the rhetoric of “no representation, no taxation”, the political entitlement of tax payers has yet to be extended to immigrants. This is one of the most glaring hypocracy that I found very offensive personally. Even as the marginal weight of voting declines, high tax-paying immigrants (like I once was) are till excluded from participating in political life. They have no choice but have to take whatever was decided by those who benefited from their contribution but don’t represent their interests.

This is not just a matter of fairness. In fact, by so doing, the politicians are inflating the value of citizenship and give rise to jerks like Lou Dobbs, who built his entire nonsense on the assumption that citizenship has its own inherent price.

In fact, in a true market economy, the value of citizenship should mirror the coefficient in the political factor of national economy. In other words, it should reflect the “political economy factor”. For example, the price of citizenship should be higher in controlled economies, like China, and/or socialist regimes, like Western Europe, than in a free economy like that of the U.S.

Anyway, read this article online and wish I could influence the vote in the Big Apple.

Is state an independent variable?
Can a political institution survive in the long run if the political culture get its meanings from the political institution, but not from cultural meanings?
For example, the Soviet political culture was based on an ideaology. After the breakup, the new institution rely on Russian culture.
Iraqi P.C. was centered on Sadam and Baathism. Once the bubble burst, it found itself lack of underlying cultural coherence.
In this regard, it is hard to say “strong state, weak society” but should be the other way around.

“In fact, there is a civil war in progress in Iraq, one comparable in important respects to other civil wars that have occurred in postcolonial states with weak political institutions.”
-http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86201/james-d-fearon/iraq-s-civil-war.html?mode=print
Is it because institutions weak or lack of coherent meanings?