How Money Became Dangerous – Christopher Varelas (1)

Vivendi was footing the bill, so, Dick figured, why not go large? No one would ever accuse him of being frugal or reserved. Classic Southern California beach-party fare was served—burgers, hot dogs, and booze. One of Dick’s gifts for each guest was a T-shirt depicting a fish engaged in coitus with a frog. The cartoon illustration was tricky to pull off anatomically, but the metaphor was clear: U.S. Filter and the Americans had had their way with Vivendi and the French frogs.

Emblazoned on the shirt in French was Merci pour le bon temps! (which translates as “Thanks for the good time!”). Andy overheard a conversation at the bar between Steve Wirtel, Filter’s VP of sales, and Beach Boys frontman Mike Love. “Man,” the musician said, “is it hot here? We had to practice all afternoon. It was hot as shit.” “Wait a minute,” Steve said, “why do you guys have to practice? You’ve been doing this for like forty years.” Mike Love said, “Oh, it’s the drugs.” Dick pranced through the crowd with a cocktail in a plastic cup, saying hello to people, grinning and gesturing toward the band.

A contingent of revelers did the twist, and Andy recalled “a lot of bad white-people-type dancing on the stage.” After enduring a ten-year race against market expectations, scores of acquisitions, train wrecks, and near misses, capped off with a legendary sale to the French, people were cutting loose as if they hadn’t tasted alcohol or heard live music since they were in college. Dick climbed onto the stage to address the crowd. “He was just loving life at that point,” Andy said.

“I don’t exactly remember what he said—we all were a little wasted—but I think he put his arm around Mike Love, like he knew him forever, and said something like, ‘My best friend Mike Love and I, we’ve gone through a lot. And U.S. Filter means so much to me, and I’m so glad that he could come here and play.

What a great way to end the epic story of a Southern California company. We’re rock stars.’ Something like that. I remember thinking at the time that it was a great way to close out this crazy run. Dick was good at that stuff, at the gesture, at making things memorable.” The party continued late into the night. Every so often, someone was unceremoniously hunted down and tossed into one of the pools.

2: Welcome to the Jungle 3: Milk and Balloons 4: Conquistadors of the Sky 5: Modern Art 6: Shooting an Elephant 7: Reach Out and Touch Someone 8: Diamond Dogs 9: The Other Line 10: Everything Rhymes With Orange Epilogue: A Survival Guide Acknowledgments Index About the Authors Copyright About the Publisher OceanofPDF.com Prologue: Zero Balance If you learn how money moves, you can understand how the world works. —ANN RICHARDS, FORMER GOVERNOR OF TEXAS, IN CONVERSATION, AS REPORTED BY A COLLEAGUE The world of money used to be simple.

A person might have both a checking and a savings account, a home mortgage and a car loan, and maybe some basic investments in the markets, like municipal bonds or shares in Sears, Roebuck or General Motors. But rarely were a person’s finances more complex than that. Wall Street wasn’t particularly controversial. The financial services industry didn’t have a reputation for being impersonal, selfish, and reckless.

Most of the time, it was seen as just another facet of a functioning and growing society. That all started to change rapidly in the 1980s as our financial system became increasingly complicated, with each evolution moving the world of money further beyond the understanding of the general public. Wall Street began to feel like an adversary, an enigmatic and potentially dangerous force controlled by slippery bankers whom we didn’t trust. After the mortgage crisis, collapse of banks, and Great Recession of 2008, our wariness boiled over into anger.

The system no longer seemed to be working for the average person. How did we get here? In just one generation, how did our financial system become so labyrinthine and loaded with peril as we became more disconnected from its workings? Why do we care so little that the national debt is more than $20 trillion and growing?

Why do we care so little that our government employee pension system is massively underfunded, with the gap growing wider each year? Why do we care so little that we have grossly insufficient funding for promised Social Security and healthcare benefits? Why do we care so little that student debt stands at $1.6 trillion, weighing down millions of graduates who can’t find jobs worthy of their degrees and are incapable of repaying what they owe? Is it really the case that we don’t care about these looming crises, or is it that we feel shackled by our lack of understanding and connection?

Whatever the reason, the result is the same.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 379
• Language: English (en)

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