Power and money

The boss and Michel Sindona

Good job. Work is interesting, pays good, and I've never seen anything like it. Money just flows into this place. A quarter-million dollars every Friday, cash, lots of quarters. Tons of quarters. Vending business on a roll. Nice thing about something like this is you get to count your own quarters, so you decide how much tax to pay. On the other hand, if you want to have access to big bank credit, you keep records of every penny. Cash flow, bankibility. Yes sir, you can borrow big money with cash flow and the universal lubricant. That would be money's ability to reduce friction or create it. Bribes, payoffs, operating expenses, so to speak. So much money that the boss had to buy some banks to do the laundry. Good to be the banker. Write you own credit references for loans from your competitors. Hire staff full-time to write proposals that might get funded, and take them to lots of banks, and diligently apply universal lubricant where needed. You get the picture, even more money, more of everything.

Conversationally, I'm chatting with the boss about all the money. What's enough money, I ask? Well, comes the thoughtful reply, it's not money I'm after. I want power. I thought if I made a million dolars, I'd have some power. Made a million, but didn't have any power. No problem, just need more money to get into the halls of power. Got two million, no power. So I was wrong about the amount where power lies. I borrowed a couple million more from a group w;ith power, and I paid them back, by the way. I know this guy only actually pays the people who say they will break his legs if he is late. I'll get ten million, says the boss, and he did. No power. He states that his accountants have told him that he is worth about $222 million this week. Lo and behold, still no power. A couple of weeks later he was killed in an accident, and I remembered the story, because, like the boss, I thought money was power.

His words left unanswered questions in my mind. It's two years later and a lawyer friend has loaned me a book titled "Power on Earth", by Michel Sindona. Sindona is a rich man, thirsting for power. He just bought the Franklin National Bank, the world's fifth largest bank at the time. Now he is in a jail cell in Italy and writing his story about the bank, that he states was broke when he bought it, but the auditors didn't figure it out until a year later. So the bank goes bust and Sindona is accused of embezzlement of the funds. He says if the bank was insolvent, it was the fault of the previous owners, David and Lawrence Rockefeller. He also can't get out of jail, and is having trouble coming to grip with the fact that he is personally worth $660 million and doesn't have any power. Where have I heard that before? Sindona goes on to elaborate on the money power blocs around the world, and speculates on the amount of money it takes to be real power. Sindona is killed with poison in his coffee just as he finishes the book, still in jail..

Now I have heard this same power refrain twice from unrelated sources and my curiousity is strong. Relate to power blocs. Rockefellers, $500 billion, maybe a trillion. British royals, $100 million, maybe a trilion. Kuwaiti royals, doing a trillion a year in the oil business. The picture emerges that power is in the Billions of dollars, but how many billions. I see that Bill Gates and his $92 billion got invited to court to have his ears clipped. I'm suspecting that $92 billion might be the threshold of power. I feel like I'm on the right track, and suspect it is in banking where one finds real power. That would be very big banking. Real power.