Category: Fourre-tout

I don’t know if you realize it but many people wish you dead.
They wish you dead because you are worth more dead than alive.

When you die, especially if you were a struggling artist, your unsold paintings or writings will suddenly become valuable and in grand demand.
Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Vincent Van Gogh to name a few, struggled all their lives and never made any money during their lifetime.
They achieved fame (and made money for a few) only after their demise.

On January 29, 1845, Edgar Poe’s poem “The Raven” appeared in the Evening Mirror; it became a popular sensation but Poe was only paid the paltry sum of $9 for its publication.

When they died, artists’ fame skillfully orchestrated by a few literary agents spread like wildfire and brought great riches to those (think insider trading) in the know.

Same goes for politicians.
Even if you policies were decried while you were alive, you become a shining beacon of virtue after you die.

Margaret Thatcher (union buster), Ronald Reagan (here he goes again) and Francois Mitterrand (wily French Socialist) despised by many while in office, became a few years after their death, revered icons of their party.

When Jesus died, very few people knew or cared about him. He was just one the thousands crucified by the Romans for seditious speeches.
It is only a hundred years after his death that the Catholic Church appropriated him and made him what he is today: the first successful hippy.

Alive, Jesus was of no value to the Jews, the Romans or the young and struggling Roman Catholic Church.
His fame, propagated by a few zealots, grew much after his death when nobody could really recall what kind of man he was or what he really accomplished.
And when you are dead, even if you were very humble, you cannot object to anything said about you. If Jesus was the kind of man we are told he was, I don’t think that he would have liked to become deified.

Personally, I cannot wait to go ad patres to become famous.
My humble stories that few people read will undoubtedly become universally praised masterpieces.

If I were you, I would carefully preserve all my writings and put them aside to assure the wealth and wellbeing of your grandchildren.

As agents are fond of saying, “die, we will do the rest!”

Alain

Money is a funny thing.
It doesn’t smell good, it doesn’t taste good and it is dirty; but everybody is madly in love with it and some people will not hesitate to kill for it.

But once they get it, they are not really sure what to do with it.
For money, if not properly nurtured will evaporate like water on a hot rock.
In order to bear fruits, money needs to be transplanted into a fertile environment and carefully looked after.

And for this, you need a specialist because the average Joe knows absolutely nothing about growing this kind of potatoes.
Invest in stocks, invest in bonds your friends will tell you… but what kinds of animals are those, and how reliable are they?
The answer: they are totally unreliable!
These animals have a mind of their own and like a skittish herd of buffaloes they can panic, stampede and fall off a cliff.

The money agribusiness has become (on purpose I believe) extremely complicated and very few people (even bankers) understand fully how it works.
The average guy therefore, if he comes across some serious money, has no choice but to put himself in the hands of a financial handler… and buy a prayer rug.
Because there are no guarantees says the moneyman. You can make money, but you can also lose your shirt.
Always nice to hear…

You have to trust the moneyman, even when knowing very little about him.
It is almost like giving your savings to a guy you met in a strip joint.

Once the financial institution has swallowed and digested your hard-earned moola, you receive monthly statements.
They are very long, very detailed and almost totally incomprehensible.
It is difficult to figure out if you are making or if you are losing money, because things are never what they seem.
You can have money on paper but if you try to cash it, things might be different.
Don’t ask me why.

“Money is like manure; you need to spread it around or it smells.” J. Paul Getty

I didn’t want my bedroom to stink so I took my money from under my mattress and wheeled it to a bank.
I have a “diversified” (sounds reassuring) portfolio to prevent catastrophes, but once in a while, after perusing a statement I wonder if my ship’s watertight compartments are tight enough and if there are enough life jackets aboard to accommodate all the passengers.

The captain said so, but what else would he say?

Alain