International associates:

Tavana & Co.
Chartered Accountants
Toronto, Canada
Tel.416-229-2221

• Persian rugs:  a leaf-patterned
blue rug from the courtly heyday of
17th century Iran was sold at
Christie's in Spring of 2010 for
$9.6 million.  That's 20 times it's
asking price, and the highest price
ever paid for a rug.  The
centuries-old carpets from Iran
and the Caucasus are now
commanding sums more often
reserved for masterpiece
paintings than floor coverings.
Persian court rugs made in royal
workshops during the 15th and
16th centuries and featuring
pastel, botanical designs, are now
particularly popular with
collectors of Impressionist art, and
their prices have been soaring into
the millions.

• Great achievements involve
great risks.

• Sigmund Freud was an avid rug
collector.  The couch on which he
saw patients was covered with a
rug made by the Qashqai nomads
from southwestern Iran.

• The effect of immigrants on the
total output and income of the U.S.
economy can be studied by
comparing output per worker and
employment in states that have
had large immigrant inflows with
data from states that have few new
foreign-born workers.
A thorough statistical analysis of
state-level data (conducted by
Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco) shows that immigrants
expand the economy's productive
capacity by stimulating investment
and promoting specialization.
This produces efficiency gains and
boosts income per worker.  At the
same time, evidence is scant that
immigrants diminish the
employment opportunities of
U.S.-born workers.

• U.S. Hispanics outlive whites
by over two years and blacks by
more than seven.

• For more of the Generalist,
please visit ARKCPA•COM. 
 

• theGeneralist, a one-page monthly
publication of the accounting firm of
A.R. Kakhsaz Company, is in its 17th
year of providing information, presented
fairly and accurately, from sources we
can depend upon and trust.

• Israel can't resist Iran's
marble, pistachio and caviar.
While the Iranian government may
be bent on Israel's destruction, it is
also contributing to the Jewish
state's construction.  Iranian
marble is featuring prominently in
some of the most prominent
Israeli buildings, despite a
near-total ban on trade with Iran.
The high-ceilinged lobby and
stately exterior of the new
headquarters of Bank Leumi, a
partially state-owned Israeli
lender, are swathed in thousands of
square feet of gray-beige Gohara
stone, a coveted variety of marble
found only in Iran's Lorestan
province.  "It has a coffee color that
you can't find anywhere else," says
the owner of Israeli Marble, the
country's largest stone wholesaler.
To get around the ban on trading
with Iran, middlemen in Turkey or
Greece repackage it with false
certificates of origin and ship all to
Israel.  Gohara marble is also sold
in Europe and Asia.  Additionally,
gourmet food stores in
Jerusalem's open-air market sell
Iranian pistachio and caviar to
shoppers in the know.

Nine oldest countries in
chronological order of their
statehood:

1		Iran	3300	BC
2		Egypt	3100	BC
3		Korea	2333	BC
4		China	2070	BC
5		Georgia	1300	BC
6		Armenia	858	BC
7		Ethiopia	700	BC
8		Japan	660	BC
9		Greece	337	BC

  
• We see more in numbers
than just numbers...

Ali R. Kakhsaz
www.arkcpa.com