Oh My Goodness! A Model Rejects Dollars!
This is one of those stories that are all too common these days. The BBC headline screams: Supermodel 'rejects dollar pay'. The story hyperventilates about how supermodel Gisele Bündchen is refusing to be paid in US dollars because of concerns about the strength of that currency.
Gisele Bündchen is said to be keen to avoid the US currency because of uncertainty over its strength.
The Brazilian, thought to have earned about $30m in the year to June, prefers to be paid in euros, her sister and manager told the Bloomberg news agency.
However, Ms Bündchen, 27, declined to comment on her pay arrangements.
The BBC, not deterred by the refusal, goes on at length about the dollar. One teeny, tiny problem.
This morning a Bloomberg story got picked up by several news outlets, including Warren Buffett Watch, reporting that Bundchen had asking to be paid in euros rather than dollars due to uncertainty about the U.S. currency's future. That would have put her in the same camp as Buffett, who's been bearish on the dollar for awhile now.
But just a few minutes ago, CNBC Squawk Box producer Stephanie Landsman spoke by telephone with Anne Nelson, Bundchen's manager. Nelson tells us reports that Gisele wants to be paid in euros are "false." Nelson's take: "Some idiot in Brazil reported something just to make news."
Nelson points out that Gisele lives in New York City, and thus needs U.S. dollars for her big-city lifestyle.
Biased BBC is all over that little bit of fraud.
Bündchen's manager's statement of the obvious (to anyone in possesion of half-a-brain and access to Google that is), that "Gisele lives in New York City, and thus needs U.S. dollars for her big-city lifestyle", rather gives the game away, at least for any reporter who wants to honestly report the finer details of the remuneration of a supermodel (who's not exactly a household name, at least not in this household), as distinct from reporters keen to rush into print with an anti US-dollar story.
I, frankly, have no clue who Gisele Bündchen is and would not know her if I tripped over her in the street. But suddenly, according to the BBC, she is a financial whiz with all the answers and amazing acumen in global currency trading. Yeesh.





