Miracle in Monte-Carlo
Monte Carlo is many things to many people, but it is certainly not the sort of place
where you would expect to find the path to Shangri La – and even less so, in a status
gym wedged between the Monte Carlo Casino above and the Loews Casino below.
It is at Loews Hotel, in the magnificently fitted gym with one of the most beautiful
views in the world extending over the Mediterranean to the promontories of the French
and Italian Rivieras, that I am initiated, together with the Monaco Olympic team,
into the techniques of High Energy.
Prince Albert sees to it that our gym acquires a top team of trainers. I can hardly
believe my good fortune that I am allowed to join in some of the training programs.
Prince Albert is a delightful presence in the gym and a lovely man to talk to. It
is thanks to his endeavors for his own team, that I find myself quite fortuitously
being coached by four leading Olympic trainers. I am deeply indebted to him for
this opportunity.
Thanks to the Prince, there I am working out with the Olympic team, under four world-class
trainers taking us through a daily routine of weights, aerobics, karate, running,
rowing, swimming. The compulsory sessions of 600 sit-ups make my abdominals so hard
you can jump on my stomach. The aerobics classes are strewn with ballerinas from
the Ballet de Monte-Carlo and chorus girls from the Cabaret. Four hours of training
each day, followed by power breathing at home between midnight and 2 am, make me
ten foot tall. Inevitably I become addicted to endorphin highs. Working out with
the Olympic trainers bends my life. I seem to fly straight from middle age to pre-adolescence
– which, having tried both, is very much nicer.
Frank Gutstein is the boxing and swimming instructor. He is passionate about energy
and he explains that, all other things being equal, it is the player with the higher
energy level who wins. Energy is the path to winning. But, much more than that,
it is the path to happiness, power, success, creativity, freedom, youthfulness,
attractiveness. Energy is life's precious gift: we welcome its divine touch; we
deeply lament its loss. How wonderful is it then that, with correct personal energy
management skills, it should be possible to access energy at will. I think of William
Blake’s “Energy is eternal delight”.
Frank explains to us that there is a direct mathematical ratio between the amount
of your oxygen retention and your ability to recuperate during effort. He teaches
us the so called “active rest” techniques whereby you can actually use the activity
itself to trigger the recuperation process. The key always lies in increasing the
amount of oxygen intake and retention. The greater the amount of oxygen in your
lungs and body, the slower you will be to fatigue and the quicker you will be to
recover from fatigue.
When friends and clients visit me in Monte-Carlo, I show them the gym and they gasp
with excitement and envy. Then I take them to the Salle Privé across the gardens
at the Casino, where the Russian Princes used to shoot themselves when they blew
the family fortunes. In the Salle Privé everyone whispers and they cover a table
with a black shroud when the table loses out. Americans say it’s like being in church.
Tax Planning Tip from Louis B Mayer
Louis B Mayer of MGM was a spectacularly successful cinema tycoon—so successful
that his lump-sum retirement payment would have been taxable at the rate of 91 percent.
His plight was brought to the attention of the Senate Finance Committee in the form
of a proposed amendment vaguely titled “Taxability to Employees of Termination Payments.”
Mr. Mayer’s lawyer appeared in his capacity as the official spokesman of the United
States Chamber of Commerce and gently eased through the passage of the special provisions.
Under the amendment, Mr. Mayer’s golden handshake qualified for tax treatment as
a capital gain at the substantially more favorable effective rate of 25 percent.
The letter of the law was observed, since it met the “uniform” test, in that it
applied to “all persons similarly situated”—but it is doubtful whether any other
person ever qualified or could have qualified under it.
Clearly, the amendment would not have passed so smoothly if it had been called “A
special tax break for Louis B Mayer.”
“Not only has Dr Spitz never lost an international tax case – no plan he has constructed
has ever been challenged” - Offshore Investment
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