The Buzz

John Peterman topped himself on Wednesday.

Among his “unusual and unique and different-type stuff” on the jpeterman.com Web site was Macroneaux, a tiny (about 6 acres) country between France and Spain that was priced at $750,000.

Along with Macroneaux was a collection of truly rare items, like baseball glove leather pants for $479, Napoleon’s three-inch shoe lifts for $249,000 and J. Peterman Unfiltered Drinking Water at $199 a case.

The source of the water was a well on the Peterman estate, the description declared.

“Lexington, Kentucky is world famous for horses and it’s strictly because of the water. Pure, Unfiltered Limestone water has been proven to grow organic matter faster than any other tap water in a 300 mile radius.”

Of course, this was all an elaborate April’s Fools Day prank that was tied in with a 21-percent-off sale on the “real” items on The J. Peterman Co. Web site.

It was Peterman’s first such prank, but it rated a mention in The Huffington Post and drew emails from customers.

“April Fool’s jokes are good if you don’t take them so far that people get angry,” Peterman said, “but everybody had fun with this one.”

Asked how the recession has affected his Web and catalog sales of clothing and household items, Peterman said business is “not gangbusters, but it’s held up, knock on wood. We have a very good and loyal customer base, but every day is a challenge.”

He noted that his company has weathered several soft economies in the last 22 years, but “I’ve always maintained that if you have something good, people will buy it,” he said. “Our job is to give them items that they don’t know they want until they see them.”

Picture this: A stately dining room with a massive table loaded with food and surrounded by family members who are chatting and dining. A young lady lefts her left hand to display an engagement ring — and the room falls silent.

“He went to Kroger’s,” someone says.

“Kroger’s?” the crowd shouts.

That’s right, Kroger’s — or more precisely, Fred Meyer Jewelers, a company Kroger has owned for 10 years ago.

Fred Meyer Jewelers will have a 1,305-square-foot store within the Kroger Marketplace that opens April 22 on Beaumont Centre Circle in Lexington.

Don’t shop at Beaumont? Not a problem.

A Fred Meyer Jeweler store will be opening later at the Kroger on Richmond Road, which is being expanded into a Kroger Marketplace, says Meyer spokeswoman Kirsten Darrow.

Kroger has Fred Meyer Jeweler stores in two Northern Kentucky Marketplaces so the Beaumont store will be No. 3 in Kentucky and No. 388 nationally.

Talk about convenience.

You’ll soon be able to get a ring, a dozen roses and a box of candy while you pick up your weekly groceries. Now if Guest Services could only issue wedding licenses …

Richard Yamarone, the chief economist of Argus Research in New York, gave the keynote address at the 2009 Bluegrass Business Summit on Thursday.

He was introduced by Insight Communications’ John Dobken, who mentioned that Yamarone had been treated to his first Kentucky Hot Brown shortly after he arrived in the state.

Yamarone apparently wasn’t impressed with the meat and cheese dish that has become a symbol of Kentucky cuisine.

He followed Dobken’s Hot Brown comment by saying, “I also had a flat tire on the way in from the airport. After this (presentation), I intend to go to Woodford Reserve.”

The Bernie Madoff scandal was a strong undercurrent that surfaced during the 2009 Bluegrass Business Summit on Thursday.

How can investors avoid being ripped off by the likes of Madoff?

A titan among Wall Street investment fund managers, Madoff has confessed to running a Ponzi scheme that may have clipped his clients for $50 billion over the years.

Madoff “stands as an example of how the financial services industry has failed to protect the best interests of consumers,” says D. Scott Neal, a financial advisor with offices in Lexington and Louisville.

“It highlights the increased need for consumers to proceed cautiously when working with an adviser,” Neal said in a statement shortly before the Summit began.

He recommends getting “to know an adviser and gauge his or her commitment to placing clients’ interests first.”

On a more practical level, Neal says investors should know how their adviser gets paid (usually fees or commissions) and “you should always know where your money and securities are actually held.”

Neal says “most reputable advisers will use an unaffiliated custodian (say, E*Trade or Charles Schwab) for the safe keeping of your assets. This simple check and balance could have saved the Madoff investors millions by bringing the problem to the forefront earlier.”

During the Summit, a panel of bankers and investment advisers briefly took up the issue.

Laura Boison, a former banker who now works for the E.S. Barr investment firm in Lexington, said a big problem was that Madoff controlled all aspects of his firm’s business.

There were no “dual-controls,” she said, echoing Neal. “You have to have crosschecks” — internal and hopefully by independent outsiders.

Madoff was trusted because he was a sophisticated, debonair Wall Street insider who was believed to have a long history of producing above-average returns for his clients. His record was falsified and his clients didn’t catch on before he confessed.

Bo Henry, president of Republic Bank & Trust Co. in Central Kentucky, said investors became “rate conscious” and were blinded by the growth in their investments as falsely reported by Madoff.

They chose Madoff instead of an honest adviser. “The good institutions may not always pay the highest rates,” Henry said.

Bill James, president of First Federal Bank in Lexington, said greed blinded the Madoff investors — just as it did the mortgage lenders who made the loans customers couldn’t pay back that helped trigger the current recession.

“Risk and reward go hand-in-hand,” James said. “Everybody just got a little bit too greedy.”

And, Boison reminded the audience, “It’s our responsibility to use good sense. If it appears too good to be true, it probably is.”

Picture a rocket rising into the heavens.

Now you’ve got a mental image of what Pearse Lyons expects to happen to Alltech’s sales as a result of the agreement to make food flavorings in partnership with Mitsui and Asahi Breweries.

Lyons, founder and chief executive of Nicholasville-based Alltech, tells Feedinfo News Service that Alltech’s annual sales could double to $1 billion in five years.

Production of the yeast extracts is expected to total 3,000 tons in the first year and 10,000 tons annually in five years, Lyons told the European biotech news service.

The goal of the company formed by Alltech and its partners, Advanced Yeast Technologies Japan, is to capture 25 percent of the additives market by displacing monosodium glutamate, or MSG, and similar substances.

“For now” the yeast product “will co-exist with MSG — but in time, MSG will disappear,” Lyons said.

Continued Feedinfo: “The Alltech president shrugged off any suggestion that the current financial crisis meant now was not the best time to launch a new venture.

“‘I see the danger but recognise the opportunity,’ he said. “‘Alltech is lean and ready to advance to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves to us.’”

They looked like respectable young professionals — well-dressed, well-groomed, educated, honest.

“Never in a million years would I have thought they were scammers,” says Anna Marletta, general manager of Bellini’s on Main Street in Lexington.

The two men came into the restaurant one evening recently, had a couple of beers and paid with American Express gift cards.

They also asked the bartender to give them the remainder of each card’s value in cash, a fairly common request around bars and restaurants, Marletta says. Patrons need cash for tips or other incidentals and their bank may be blocks away.

When the bartender scanned the cards, American Express approved the transactions.

A little later, the company notified the restaurant that it was declining the transactions because the cards were overdrawn.

In the end, Bellini’s and American Express shared the financial losses because American Express had approved the transactions initially.

Customers lost, too, Marletta says. The restaurant changed its policy and no longer pays the cash balances on gift cards.

The cards often look like credit cards and can be easily confused by busy employees, she says. Moreover, verifying the up-to-the-minute balance on some gift cards requires a telephone call to an 800 number.

The system is not very merchant-friendly, she said, so customers are losing the convenience of getting cash back.

“Scammers come in all shapes and sizes, and in these (tough) times, it’s good to remind people that scammers are out there preying on them,” Marletta said. “It’s pretty sad.”

Did you see a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day?

You know, short guy, bald head, biggish nose, broad smile and friendly eyes?

You did, you say — or was it maybe Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com?

Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, happens to look a little like a friendly leprechaun.

He arrived unannounced in Lexington to work this week at the Amazon.com “fulfillment center” — that’s distribution center to most of us — on Mercer Road.

Why didn’t you read about it or see it on TV, you ask?

Good question.

We asked to speak to The Man, but Amazon.com declined.

“Thanks so much for your interest in speaking with our CEO Jeff Bezos,” said spokeswoman Patty Smith. “Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to arrange any interviews or photos this week while he is in Lexington.

“He is there to work,” Smith said, “and, unfortunately, we are just not scheduling any interviews while he is in town.”

Local Amazon employees say Bezos is working in the warehouse with the company’s hourly employees to see what they do and hear their comments about their work.

Most CEOs would benefit from spending a few days on the shop floor. Life has changed there since they were young and on the way up — thanks to innovators, like Amazon.com.

During her years in the restaurant business, Lucie Slone Meyers has been around a lot of really hot stoves.

But now there’s a stove that didn’t even make it to her kitchen before it became hot — in other words, stolen.

Hunting for a bargain, Slone Meyers paid about $1,200 for a used, dual-convection, six-burner stove that had belonged to a Chevy Chase restaurant that went out of business.

After the stove was hauled to Slone Meyers’ a la Lucie restaurant on North Limestone Street, it quickly became clear there was a problem: The stove wouldn’t fit through the doors of the restaurant.

She also realized that someone would have to be there to connect the stove to the gas line when she got it into the restaurant.

So Slone Meyers left the stove outside of the restaurant, covered with a big tarp, for about two weeks while she made the arrangements.

In the meantime, someone stole the stove.

“I’m sure it went straight to a junkyard and it’s scrap metal,” she told Herald-Leader reporter Steve Lannen.

But the missing stove hasn’t affected a la Lucie’s business. The restaurant’s 23-year-old stove is cooking away in the kitchen.

Still, Slone Meyers said, “If you know anyone who has a used one to sell …”

If you need a little cash to smooth your way through the recession, the tax folks at H&R Block have an idea.

Block says 1 million taxpayers did not file tax returns in 2005 and that there are $1.3 billion in unpaid refunds from 2005 waiting to be collected.

The IRS only allows three years to claim a refund, Block says, and that means the 2005 refunds will expire April 15.

“The IRS estimates (that) 14,600 of those taxpayers are Kentucky residents,” says Lezlie Shivar, Block’s Lexington district manager. “They could be due an average of $588 for a refund if only they filed a return.”

Of course, Block is eager to help you file that 2005 return, but no one says you can’t do it all by yourself and save Block’s fee.

That win-win might just make your recession a little easier to take.

The Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon & miniMarathon is among the footraces featured in a new paperback, Great Races, Incredible Places: 100+ Fantastic runs Around the World, to be published in April.

In the “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry” section of the book, author Kimi Puntillo says “southern hospitality and horse-racing are hallmarks” of both the Kentucky Derby on May 2 and the footraces on April 25.

She says hot-air balloons will fill the sky at the start of the marathon, which takes runners on a scenic romp through Iroquois and Cherokee parks, downtown Louisville and the Churchill Downs racetrack where the Derby will be run a week later.

Puntillo says “runners juiced as Thoroughbred horses rounding a turn at Churchill Downs race toward the famous track, its often-photographed twin spires in sight.”

Did she say “juiced?”

That can mean the runners are really excited, or on steroids, or drunk, according to definitions on Google.

She meant excited, I’m sure. We all know that athletes never use steroids and never abuse alcohol – at least, until after the race.