Mediaboss Marketing

A train station is where passengers begin a journey, or change direction. For the past year, Freedom Station has been a place where San Diego sailors and Marines with broken bodies start their journey to a new life.

It looks much like many apartment complexes in old San Diego neighborhoods. A handful of cottages circle a courtyard.

But every detail is ready to pass a drill instructors inspection. The grass is military-style neat. There is a white picket fence in front of each door.

And the residents, most in their 20s, arent ordinary. Josue Barron is missing a leg above the knee, and one eye is glass and bears the emblem of his infantry unit 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Timothy Read also lost part of a leg, and one wrist bears scars where doctors stitched it back on after a roadside bomb blast.

Barron likes to sit on the small porch of his cottage in the afternoons. Other residents call out greetings as they come home from their doctors appointments.

Being combat wounded, with all these guys here, I felt comfortable. If I was living in any other neighborhood, I wouldnt be able to talk to my neighbors because they have nothing in common with me, said Barron, 22, who lives with his wife and their dog in the small house while waiting for his medical discharge.

Here, we all are transitioning, and we all have our own demons, said David Smith, 23, an injured Marine veteran who was one of Freedom Stations first residents. But were all doing it together, so its easier.

Operated by a grass roots San Diego nonprofit group, Freedom Station officially opened one year ago, on Memorial Day weekend.

Since that time, the quiet complex has been home to 15 injured service members, who were once resident patients at San Diego Naval Medical Center in Balboa Park. An additional 23 are on a waiting list.

Sandy Lehmkuhler was volunteering at the Navy hospital, one of the militarys national centers for amputee care, when she got the idea.

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Next stop for wounded vets: Freedom Station

Conversation turned to a local couple, who are desperate to leave Spain but who can't because their house is still unsold after four years on the market - despite dropping the asking price from 1 million to 750,000.

In 1992 the BBC spent millions of pounds launching an ill-fated soap opera, Eldorado, following the fortunes of British expats on the Costa del Sol. The project flopped and was cancelled a year later. Now, 20 years later, the real-life diaspora is experiencing an equally disastrous end to its Iberian dream.

Times are desperate in Spain. More than a million people took the streets earlier this month to protest at budget cuts, 24 per cent unemployment and the rising cost of living.

The price of milk and bread has risen by 48 per cent during the last year, according to a recent study, and of potatoes by 116 per cent.

Electricity bills are up 11 per cent while property prices are in free fall; they have declined for 15 consecutive quarters and are 41 per cent lower than in 2006.

Several of its banks are faltering: this weekend Spain's government is preparing to pump a further 19 billion into Bankia, the country's fourth-largest lender, in the biggest single bank bailout in the country's history. Trading in the bank's shares was suspended on Friday until negotiations over the rescue were complete.

Santander, Europe's largest bank, was among 11 Spanish financial institutions to be downgraded by the credit rating agency Standard and Poor earlier this month; and there's no sign of anything like economic recovery on the horizon.

Expats are finding life hard in a country where they once basked in a cheaper way of life. Around one million Britons spend part or all of the year in Spain, but thousands are now returning home and more want to, but say they can't afford to because their property is no longer worth what they paid for it.

For the first time since 1998, Spain recorded a drop in foreign residents last year, according to newly released figures.

With its narrow cobbled streets, whitewashed houses and children riding horses down the main road, Frigiliana lives up to most tourists' idea of an authentic Spanish village.

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Spain financial crisis: Sun setting on expats' Costa dreams

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Safe Havens Best Investments 2012 - Video

Posted on May 27, 2012, Sunday

SIBU: Suez Domain Sdn Bhd, the developer for KL Gateway, is in town to promote their newly launched Corporate Office Towers from May 25 27 at RH Hotel Sibu.

Response has been overwhelming from investors due to the properties unchallenged strategic location and connectivity to major motorways in Kuala Lumpur such as Federal Highway, Sprint Highway/Kerinchi Link and New Pantai Expressway.

Amongst the attractions offered include exhibition bonuses, rebates and an excellent investment package promising a 7 per cent leaseback guarantee for the first three years, which has been well received among Sibus experienced investors and are poised for capital appreciation.

Investors can still make their way to the hotel today for the roadshow.

Do not miss this golden investment opportunity.

All investors are invited to the Hibiscus Room, RH Hotel from 10am to 8pm today.

For more information, logon http://www.klgateway.com.my or call a Suez Domain sales marketer at 010-9772285.

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Today last chance to visit Suez Domain’s roadshow

The surprising thing about the embarrassing flop of Facebook is that anyone is surprised. Back in 2000, Michael Lewis, the one-time bond trader turned author, wrote an early expose of what went on in the the dot.com bubble at the turn of the millennium.

Two quotes attributed to the bankers and internet pioneers from that time have never left me. The first and I paraphrase because it is from memory: "I never understand why journalists expect to be told the truth. The share price is far too important for that."

And the second: "You sell a bad company the way you sell a bad movie. The IPO is the premier and the trick is to hype it so much that everyone rushes to see it on the first weekend. By the time word of mouth spreads that it is rubbish they have already parted with their money."

That was then and the people are different now, but I have limited sympathy for anyone who bought Facebook because dot.com mania is not that long ago. The lesson from those days is that the valuation of an internet stock is what the seller thinks he can get away with, and as a further rule of thumb it is normally a bad idea to buy something when an investment bank is the seller because it is always going to know more than you.

But there is a wider economic point made by Warren Buffett, arguably the world's most successful investor. He says the investor should never confuse an innovation which transforms society with the opportunity to make money. Thus successive generations of investors who failed to heed this rule have lost fortunes by trying to get in on the ground floor in automobiles, in radio and television, in airlines, in personal computers and now the internet.

Such failure is predictable, says Mr Buffett, because innovations are glamorous and exciting, and therefore attract far too much capital which leads in turn to intense competition. In such a febrile atmosphere no firm retains an advantage for long, and others leap ahead of it before it has had an opportunity really to make money. Most fall by the wayside. Once there were hundreds of car companies, radio manufacturers and personal computer firms. Long after the event there are two or three winners, but you can never predict which these are likely to be at the beginning of the race.

a.hilton@independent.co.uk

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Anthony Hilton: Facebook flop is really no great surprise. Remember the dot.com debacle?