Are we entering an economic recovery or just kidding ourselves? Depends on who you ask. Lake Forest-based exhibit consultant John Funk (Skyline Orange County) said his online ads for a sales position attracted 50 resumes in one day, including several applicants who used to make double what he was offering: “It’s very bleak out there.” At the OCBJ-Cal State Fullerton Family Owned Business Awards luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Irvine the mood was more upbeat. Union Bank’s Scott Connella suggested a positive “leading indicator”—attendance was 360, up by 40 from last year. (An aside: Charis and Luke Burrett of Silver Star Casting Co. in Irvine accepted their award in semi-formal attire, a contrast to the company’s gothic, mixed martial arts-inspired garb. “I told him to wear a suit,” Charis said, nodding at the tattooed Luke, “so everyone wouldn’t think he was going to hold them up!”) The consensus at a UCI Merage School investment luncheon at the Pacific Club was that inflation isn’t here “today,” but will arrive “tomorrow”—or within three to five years. “The seminal question of our time is the dynamic between deflation and inflation,” said Jim Berens, managing director of Irvine-based hedge fund Pacific Alternative Asset Manage-ment Co. “If you can get that right you will make your career.” Added VCer Chuck Martin of Mont Pelerin Capital in Newport Beach: “I think I’d rather put my money in Brazil than in California.” But some challenge the contention that California is losing ground to more business-friendly states. “Texas is an armpit …
I was born there,” former Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook said on “Inside OC.” On an earlier episode, journalist Will Swaim, also intending no compliment, compared Texas and Nevada to Wal-Mart and predicted that complaints about jobs leaving California would ebb once the economy picks up …
More signs of détente between Anaheim and the Angels: The city’s Rose Bowl float will promote next summer’s Major League All-Star game at Angel Stadium, and the Anaheim Chamber has named Angels President Dennis Kuhl its Businessman of the Year. The awards luncheon is Dec. 10 at the Disneyland Hotel. Info at (714) 758-0222 …
The Forum for Corporate Directors has dinner with Allergan CEO David Pyott Dec. 3 at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach …
At his celebrity golf tourney at Coto de Caza, Pat Boone wore green knickers, commercial RE broker Karen Sunday won the women’s long drive and $95,000 was raised for the Ryan Corbin Foundation for Brain Injury …
Yard House founder Steele Platt, who turned 50 in May, had to reset his long-awaited birthday bash and housewarming at “The House That Beer Built” in Crystal Cove until next month after a digestive disorder (diverticulitis) landed him in Hoag hospital. The irrepressible Platt converted the hospital room into “my new office. All I need is my IV, TV and Fox News!”
