One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  “Hmm,” John mumbled and thought about Constantina. But also that German journalist, the supposed history student, Ursula or something like that. To her, money didn’t seem to be so sexy at all.

  “You don’t have to be attractive when you’re rich. You don’t even have to be intelligent or talented, because you can buy intelligence and talent. It is better to be rich than to be an artist, because you can buy art — oh, what the hell, you can buy artists!” McCaine stopped talking to catch his breath and looked at John. “You don’t have to be a good salesman when you have lots of money, because you could force your competition out of the market. You don’t have to be a good businessman, because you don’t have to go through the difficulties of starting a business, including the long hours involved at the beginning and the weekends and the fear that customers won’t pay their bills. Instead you can buy a business that’s ready to go! Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Do you know what money really means? Money, Mr. Fontanelli, is power!”

  John noted his mouth was gaping open and closed it.

  Slowly, McCaine came closer; his hands dramatically stretched out towards John. “You are in an absolute incomparable position, Mr. Fontanelli. You can be the most powerful man in the world. Your money, your thousand billion dollars are more effective than all the nuclear missiles, because money is the lifeblood of the world, the decisive element. If you have power over money you have the world by the balls.” He pointed at the book still open on the page with the diagram that showed the world reverting to a sustainable existence. “This here won’t ever happen on its own. I know it, you know it, and everyone else knows it. The past twenty years have proven this beyond any reasonable doubt. The only chance that still exists, and the reason why things have happened the way they have, is that someone will come along with the power to say this is the path we must take. Mr. Fontanelli, you can make it happen, you can force it to happen.”

  $19,000,000,000,000

  “THAT’S YOUR PLAN?”

  “Yes.”

  ”Use force?”

  “There is no other way.” McCaine was staring at him with eyes that looked as if they could burn holes in the furniture. “It’s not nice, I admit it, but the alternative isn’t nice either.”

  “Force change … can I even do that?” John looked skeptical. “I mean, okay, a trillion dollars is a huge chunk of change, but is it enough?”

  McCaine nodded.

  John shook his head. “I’ve read about banks that have balances of four or five hundred billion. Citibank, was it? And Some Japanese banks, but I can’t remember their names. There are insurance companies with hundreds of billions in reserves…“

  “Yes,” McCaine nodded again. “But your trillion, Mr. Fontanelli, is not only unique, it has one very crucial advantage: it belongs to you!” He started to wander around the room again. John realized now why the carpet was so worn. “Banks, insurance companies, and investment bonds are slaves of the market, and believe me, I know what I’m talking about. They are the servants of wealth. The billions that they move around are only entrusted to them, and when they stop earning money, it is taken away from them. That not only restricts their flexibility, it also robs them of power, almost completely. What decisions can they make? Whether to buy this stock or another? Their decision depends on which one will earn them the most and/or is the less risky. I manage five hundred million pounds with my firm. What do you think would happen if I were to take that money and buy land in the Amazon to save the rain forests there? The investors would promptly take back their money, and I’d either go to jail or the loony bin. An investment like that would benefit their children and grandchildren, but it wouldn’t earn money, wouldn’t pay dividends. Do you understand? Do you see the difference? The banks have the money, but they cannot use it freely. They’re only tools, service providers, the collection pools of the investors, nothing more. No, don’t confuse possession and ownership. Ownership is what counts.”

  He went behind his desk, lifted the blotter pad, and pulled a small note from underneath it, a note that seemed to have been waiting for precisely this moment. “Now to your second question: what is a trillion dollars? I have written down a few numbers as an aid. These figures, by the way, are difficult to come by, and they’re not exactly up to date. These numbers here are from 1993 and taken from a list of statistics of the Financial Times. According to them the gross sales turnover of the world trade for that year was 4.5 trillion dollars. One trillion of that was in services. If you add overseas income and international monetary transfers, then the total capital involved was 5.8 trillion dollars. The total worth of all US companies traded on the stock market was 3.3, and Japan’s was 2.3 trillion dollars. Worldwide it was 8.8 trillion dollars.” He looked up. “One trillion, Mr. Fontanelli, is a lot of money. Not enough to buy the world, but enough to say which direction it should turn.”

  John rubbed his forehead. This was just too much, too hard to grasp, too depressing. “But what does it all mean in concrete terms?” he asked, angry with himself because his voice sounded so weak and feeble, more of a whine. “I go out there and say, ‘From now on everyone does this and that?’”

  “No, of course not.” McCaine smiled and stuck the note into his pocket. “Power isn’t the same as blackmailing. No, what you have to do is to buy companies. This is something I haven’t explained to you yet. You don’t need to fully own a company to have control over it. It’s usually enough to have fifty one percent, sometimes even less. And once you own a company you can buy others with its money. This way you can increase the influence of your money exponentially. Add the fact that today’s decisive production factors, such as intelligence, know-how, and personal engagement, are being completely incorrectly assessed because we still think in terms of the early days of modern capitalism and the value of the stock inventories, the machines, and so forth.

  “Now imagine finding a small company whose founder has a brilliant idea and needs only enough money for a few computers, then with fifty thousand dollars or a hundred thousand and a loan of a few million, which you will even get paid back with interest, you gain control over a company that may be worth billions within five years.” He folded his hands together. “Okay? Obviously there is no point in investing in video stores or fast food chains. You have to grab a chunk of strategically important branches of industry, foodstuffs, for instance, or finances, information technology, media, raw materials, energy, and so on. When Shell or BP wants something, don’t you think that they’ll get it? There are people who are convinced that oil companies were the reason behind at least half of all wars in this century. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, just the fact people believe it might be shows how much power they wield.”

  John’s pressed his lips together, where had this headache come from? He was thirsty too. “I just can’t imagine that owning a few companies gives you so much power,” he told McCaine. “I mean look at the kind of influence that the president has; to be able to make certain decisions.”

  McCaine crossed his arms and thought for a moment. “I understand what you mean.” He thought some more, and then said, “Perhaps I’m getting too far ahead of myself. I’m dumping on you all at once knowledge that it took me decades to acquire. There is a historic example.” He came back over and plunged into the easy chair across from John. “Have you ever heard of the name Fugger?”

  “No.”

  “I thought so. This name should actually be as well known as that of Napoleon or Genghis Khan, but historians seem to be blind to the financial side of history.

  “The Fuggers were a family of merchants based in Augsburg, a city in southern Germany which still bears signs of their influence to this day. They started out as weavers, but by the time they reached the epitome of their power they practically ruled the known world. Their long arm reached from the west coast of South America, across Europe all the way to the Molucca spice islands. They maintained control over this vast empire with an efficiency tha
t any large corporation today could only dream of, and this without telegraphy, satellites, or computers. They effectively dominated every aspect of the economy back then. They were the greatest landowners, the most important bankers, and the greatest trading house that had ever existed. Furthermore they were the greatest mining company, the largest employer, the most important arms manufacturers — they simply ran everything. For a time they owned almost ten percent of the entire collective wealth of the Holy Roman Empire. You can’t even imagine a corporation these days with the same might, relatively speaking, as the Fuggers possessed. Such a company would have to incorporate the sixty largest firms in the world. The mightiest companies in our times, be it General Motors, Mitsubishi or IBM are mere dwarves compared to the Fuggers.”

  McCaine nodded, narrowed his eyes, took a breath of air, as if he needed a lot of it to say what he was about to say. “The name of the man who I was thinking about in particular is Jakob Fugger, head of the family during its zenith. He was known as Jakob the Rich. And that’s what he was … rich. Rich and powerful. When you consider the period he was born in, he was the most powerful man who ever lived. Never before and never after did any individual unite so much power and influence. Jakob Fugger was the one who decided when a war was to be waged and when peace was to be made. He had princes deposed if they hindered his business. His wealth decided who was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was he who paid for the emperor’s armies. When the Reformation burned across Europe, he hesitated for a while over which side to join. And only because he had good business relationships with the pope, he decided to go with Rome, and the rebellious peasants were bloodily put down. I’m convinced … had he sided with the Reformation, the Catholic Church as we know it today would no longer exist.”

  McCaine put his fingers together and there was a glassy sheen in his eyes reflecting an obvious fascination with this period of history. “The Fuggers, Mr. Fontanelli, and this is what makes them so interesting, were contemporaries of the Medici. While the Medici lived in Florence and fostered the fine arts, the Fuggers lived in Augsburg and hoarded money. And they were the contemporaries of your ancestor. Jakob Fugger was a mere twenty years older than your forefather Giacomo Fontanelli, who no doubt, as a merchant, felt the overpowering might of the Fuggers in all markets. Fontanelli knew where the real source of power lay during his times, who the true decision makers were in politics. There is no doubt that he knew this. They all knew it back then.” He took a pause and looked at John. Had he noticed a sudden change in his expression? “Have you never asked yourself what made Giacomo think that the person who should get mankind back on the right track would need money of all things to do this?”

  John agreed that this was indeed a good question, but one he had never asked himself.

  “Fontanelli didn’t have a vision of some wandering preacher going barefoot through the countryside urging a turnaround with the mere power of his words,” McCaine told John. “He saw someone with money — with lots and lots of money. Don’t forget, he was a merchant. Interest and compound interest were his daily livelihood. He was able to calculate how much his fortune would be worth after five hundred years. How unbelievably great it would be. And it was this huge sum of money he wanted to bequeath to his descendant. This and the prophecy. Why? Because he knew money was power. And because he, however he came upon the idea, knew that there would have to be someone to make a change in the distant future.”

  Before John could say anything McCaine jumped up, turned to face him and put a finger on John’s chest. “You are the first person in five hundred years able to continue where Jakob Fugger left off. You can become as powerful as he was back then. And you can only affect a change according to the prophecy when you have enough power. For the moment, Mr. Fontanelli, your trillion is nothing but a pile of money that’s lying around uselessly. But if you use it to gain economic influence, you may be able to force the world to change!”

  John looked down at the finger resting on his chest, his face tense and pale. He moved the finger away from his chest, like the barrel of a pistol, and then he wiped his own fingers on his pants. McCaine’s finger was cold and moist. John cleared his throat and asked, “How exactly do you think this can be achieved? I buy IBM, or Boeing? And when I have them, what should I do with them?”

  Musing, McCaine went away and walked over to his cabinets. “The truth is, Mr. Fontanelli,” he explained slowly, faced away from John, “is that you won’t be able to do this alone. You can buy a yacht, but you can’t buy a company, and you certainly can’t manage one. I don’t want to be critical of your person or your competency, but you’ve never learned the necessary skills for an enterprise on this scale, nor do you have the experience of a quarter century of financial management. If you attempt to take the path I have just illustrated to you on your own, then all you will do is risk your fortune.”

  He opened a cabinet filled with binders. “These are the current financial statements of the most important companies in the world. Can you read them? Could you find out which ones are healthy and which ones are ailing? Could you follow the discussions during a supervisory board meeting, or what is said in a conference of the central bank council? Could you negotiate with the International Monetary Fund?” He closed the cabinet again. “I haven’t invested twenty-five years of my life just to tell you in what direction the solution lies. I did it to accompany you on your path. To do the detailed work. What you must do is make the big decisions.

  “Mr. Fontanelli, when you decide to use my services and call me, I will drop everything else, sell my firm, and tear down all bridges behind me without batting an eye. When you call me I will be there for you one hundred percent. All you must do is to decide that that’s what you want.”

  John had unconsciously begun massaging his own cheeks. When he noticed it he stopped and put his hands on his knees again. He was still thirsty and still had a headache. “But I don’t have to decide right now?”

  “It is up to you; whenever you call me I will be ready. But don’t call me until you are sure.”

  “All this was a bit much for one morning. I will have to think about it.”

  McCaine nodded. “Yes, of course. I will call a car to take you back to the airport.” He glanced at his watch. “There should be enough time to catch the next plane to Rome. Please, don’t think me rude if I don’t see you back to Heathrow. I said what I had to say and don’t want to pressure you into a decision. Please see it as a discrete withdrawal on my part.”

  “Yes, I understand.” It was okay with him — very okay even. Another history lesson and his head would explode. If this McCaine worked the way he talked — nonstop, without even considering his bodily needs — he might really be able to force the world to its knees if he had a trillion dollars behind him. “I need to think about this in peace and quiet. I’ll have to sleep on it.” And he would get a bite to eat and something to drink together with Marco at the airport.

  “A day more or less won’t matter.”

  “Maybe it would be a good idea to give me your phone number, now that I know your name.”

  “I was just about to do that.” McCaine went to his desk and took out a laminated business card. Malcolm McCaine, it said, and a phone number, but nothing else. “One more thing before you go,” he told John as they shook hands, “please don’t wait too long. Even if one day more or less is no big deal, time is still running out for us. I believe in humanity and I’d like it to have a future, and I think that Giacomo Fontanelli’s plan is the last chance we have.”

  John closed his eyes as the plane took off. It felt good. And he didn’t open them again for most of the flight. He didn’t sleep, and he didn’t think either. McCaine’s long talk seemed to reverberate in his mind until the words finally faded away.

  He opened his eyes when the food was served. Marco leaned over to him as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Signor Fontanelli, may I ask you something?”

  John nodded tiredly. “Sure
.”

  “Were your talks successful?”

  John thought for a moment; what should he tell him? What was there to say about the talks? “I’m not really sure yet.”

  “Might we be visiting London more often?”

  “Hmm.” John thought again. “Yes. It could be.”

  Marco gave him a broad smile. “I wouldn’t mind it. I like London.”

  John looked at him a bit confused. “How can you? You’ve practically seen nothing of it.”

  Marco still smiled. “I saw enough to know I liked it.”

  $20,000,000,000,000

  “WHAT WOULD YOU do with the money if you were me?”

  Eduardo picked up a flat stone and threw it out to sea. It skimmed twice over the waves before it sank. As if in response a foamy wave rolled up to lick his shoes. “No idea,” the young lawyer answered. “I, at least, wouldn’t worry about some silly prophecy of an old superstitious merchant from the Middle Ages. I mean, there are more than enough sensible projects that you can support. Like helping some of the poorest countries economically and such. Splurge several billion on that, you can’t spend all your money in your lifetime anyhow. A hundred million or so is still enough for a great life,” He grinned mockingly at John, “especially as you still live too modestly, if you ask me.”