A Lesson From History Or Is It?
These men were considered some of the world’s most successful of their day. Now, 80 years later, the history book asks us, if we know what ultimately became of them. The answer:
1. The president of the largest steel company, Charles Schwab, died a pauper.
2. The president of the largest gas company, Edward Hopson, went insane.
3. The president of the NYSE, Richard Whitney, was released from prison to die at home.
4. The greatest wheat speculator, Arthur Cooger, died abroad, penniless.
5. The president of the Bank of International Settlement, shot himself.
6. The Great Bear of Wall Street, Cosabee Livermore, also committed suicide.
However, in that same year, 1923, the PGA Champion and the winner of the most important golf tournament, the US Open, was Gene Sarazen. What became of him? He played golf until he was 92, died in 1999 at the age of 95. He was financially secure at the time of his death. The moral: Screw work. Play golf. You’ll live longer and be better off in the end.
In 1923 at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, eight of the most powerful and wealthy men in the world gathered together for a meeting. These eight, if they combined their resources and assets, controlled more money than the U.S. Treasury. In that group we find such men as Charles Schwab, the president of a steel company. Richard Whitney was the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Arthur Cutton was a wheat speculator. Albert Fall was a presidential cabinet member, personally a very wealthy man. Jesse Livermore was the greatest bear on Wall Street in his generation. Leon Fraser was the president of the International Bank of Settlements. And Ivan Krueger headed the largest monopoly in the world. Quite an impressive and ambitious group of people!
Let’s look at the same group of men later in life. Charles Schwab died penniless. Richard Whitney spent the rest of his life serving a sentence in Sing Sing Prison. Arthur Cutton became insolvent. Albert Fall was pardoned from a federal prison so he might die at home. Leon Fraser committed suicide. Jesse Livermore committed suicide. Ivan Krueger also committed suicide. Seven of these eight ambitious money-magnates lived lives that ended in disaster before they passed on from this life. Again I ask, are you chasing the wrong dream, my friend?
The lessons we’re to take from this item are many and varied: money and power don’t bring happiness so be careful what dreams you pursue; a lust for wealth is necessarily a corrupting goal; playing golf more and working less will do wonders for your lifespan (and possibly your wallet). Whether one could prove any of these lessons from the examples offered is problematic, as the data have been carefully selected to establish the desired conclusions. One could just as easily draw up a very long list of wealthy and powerful men who did not lose great sums of money, who did not earn their fortunes through fraud, and who lived long, healthy, and happy lives, but none of their names appear here. And by its very nature the list offered here is somewhat self-selecting for failure in the sense that:
· Any sufficiently large list of wealthy and important men from the mid-1920s is bound to include at least some who lost large fortunes, due to the twin financial disasters of the 1929 stock market crash and the economic depression of the 1930s (especially since modern market safeguards had not yet been enacted).
· Any sufficiently large list of very wealthy men from the mid-1920s is bound to include at least some who made their fortunes through now-illegal market manipulations, because much of the legislation which regulates securities, holding companies, and stock markets had not yet been enacted. (As noted above, the fallout from the spectacular collapses of some of the men on the list prompted the passage of much of this type of legislation.)
As with most glurge, we might scratch the surface of this one to find a darker subtext beneath: only a few of us lead lives of privilege, it says; the rest of us can take comfort in a skewed "sour grapes" tale which casts those privileged few as corrupt individuals struggling through flawed, unhappy existences, inevitably suffering disastrous losses of their wealth and health. Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds are within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.
Mark Crisp
http://www.stressfreetrading.com
