A month ago, my wife and I spent eight hundred and fifty dollars on two sets of earrings at an auction. We’d bought them for Christmas presents, and were stunned to find that they were appraised for$84,000.00. The appraiser was surprised, as well, and called the manufacturer. The value was affirmed. Pink diamonds in the earrings came from one mine in Australia and are, at least for now, incredibly valuable.
She’d bought so many things that it took two auctions to sell them all. They purchases were extraordinarily expensive, but sold at the auctions for very little. All who heard the story realized anew that when money drops from the sky, clever people take it.
A person who knew what happened explained: “She and three other people split a $250,000,000.00 lottery prize. Four years ago, the woman who bought all this stuff got almost $48,000,000.00, after taxes. Now, it’s almost all gone.” Truly, money drops from the sky and clever people take it.
“My goodness!”, I responded. “She spent a million dollars a month!”
“She did. And, she said she enjoyed it.”
Jewelers would travel to her house. She bought a horse farm in Virginia, and bought the highest quality oriental rugs. They later sold for less than a tenth of what she paid for them. She had mahogany furniture custom-made at great expense.
Art dealers in exclusive galleries sold her “investment-grade paintings”. An auctioneer told me that one gallery owner purchased a painting at one of his auctions for $3,100.00. The newly wealthy woman came to his gallery, and bought it for $41,000.00. “I got a very good price on it.”, she gloated.
Many of her friends and family members needed help. Again, she proved the point that when money drops from the sky, clever people take it.
Now, the horse farm in Virginia is gone. So is most of the money.
It is obvious that when money drops from the sky, clever people take it. Not so obvious is the fact that a surprisingly large section of the economy is based on taking money away from people who suddenly get it.
M0ney does not drop from the sky and disappear. When money drops from the sky, clever people take it. Those cunning people spend their days hunting for people who suddenly come into money, gaining their confidence, manipulating their desire to seem intelligent, and take as much as they can get from them.
Another reason to “be as cunning as snakes.”
