“Well, I’ve got news for all the Bills and Ruths and their daughters and prospective sons-in-law. Not only will all this happen, but it will happen quickly. America doesn’t have the luxury of being stupid any longer. The country must get back to honest money and get there quickly. Real wealth, gold and silver, must come out of the ground. That’s the only wealth the Chinese can’t steal or hack. But now there’s a problem called the uphill battle. The elites, the one-percenters, stole the American citizens’ gold from Fort Knox and the New York Fed. It was leased out to them for worthless paper dollars and it’s gone. If it wasn’t gone, they’d let independent auditors audit it. The one-percenters made the administrative rules that made the leases legal. The ninety-nines weren’t allowed to vote on it. The one-percenters took the gold offshore, so good luck catching them and recovering it. You got swindled! You let rats into your granary! That’s not entirely your fault. Your elected Congress was too complacent to demand an audit of the Fed and the gold. Your great-great-grandparents and every generation since them drank the socialist dream and voted for easy times in their own times too. They never dreamed their progeny would end up in this mess. Maybe they didn’t think about it or even care if they did. Who knows? They’re dead.
“The insects don’t comprehend what’s about to happen. The insects’ clients don’t believe it will ever happen to them. They just want to watch Dancing with the Stars and the NFL. They refuse to think. It’s easier to dream! When their toboggan goes off that cliff of a phony propped-up market, they’ll just want to sue. Problem with that is so will everybody else and there won’t be anything left for anyone to get. When a debt bubble collapses, money gets vaporized. Even maggot asshole-eating lawyers will be washing cars and dogs for a living! All this hell will happen because the American dream goes off the cliff in the markets. And whatever happens in the stock market, the bond market will be just as bad, except for the yield hogs in the high-yield products. Those hogs will get skinned and gutted. There won’t be anything left. The bear will eat them.
“Mark my words. The day is coming when the whole financial planning concept will get exposed by Mr. Market! Mr. Market knows bullshit when he smells it. He invites everybody onto the meadow with his fancy brochures and coaxes all the dummies to play and dream. Mr. Market sniffs the air and smells the time is right. Everybody is fully invested in his market of stocks, bonds, and real estate. Everybody is dreaming on the meadow. Then Mr. Market opens the door to a huge cage. It holds a surprise for all the dreamers playing on the meadow. The cage door opens, Mr. Bear comes out, and he’s hungry.
“Mr. Market lets Mr. Bear out of his cage, and Mr. Bear goes into the meadow and eats all the dummies. Mr. Bear guts them and eats them while they’re still living. It’s painful when Mr. Bear shows up. He doesn’t give a shit about the house on the beach, doesn’t care about the glossy brochures, doesn’t care if the wife screams. Mr. Bear just wants to eat. He’s a voracious eater and he eats fast. He doesn’t stop eating until he eats everybody’s dreams. People lose everything they ever had to Mr. Bear. Everything! Grown men cry. Women scream. Then everybody gets mad. They’ve got to blame somebody! When the crowds come with their pitchforks, tar, and feathers, they don’t stop with the one-percent elites who set the stage for this unholy mess. They come for the insects too. People get pissed off when they lose everything. They’ll feed the insects to their dogs. You’ll see.”
“Your point is well taken, but the planners will say that an exchange in their fund to a money market fund is no different than the redemption of shares in a single fund.”
“There’s a huge difference. It has to do with how the fund is sold in the first place. If the customer is told that the manager will manage long term and the customer should just go to sleep for twenty or thirty years, most of them will just do that. The fund won’t get cannibalized to raise cash to send to the money market fund. Investors who sell some fund in a family of funds in a panic were sold on the idea that the customer and the insects would move the money around. The insect sold Mr. and Mrs. Bambi in the headlights the notion that there was this wide array of pigeonholes each with a fund in it. Maybe even several arrays of multiple families of funds were shown to them. The insect whips out his computer, sticks in some numbers, and voilà! They have a plan!
“The computer says you’ve got to make eight percent a year! Well, here’s a fund that made eight percent a year. Let’s buy it and our problem is solved! Wasn’t that easy? We didn’t even have to think! Thanks for the commissions.
“Some time goes by and the eight percent isn’t there. Maybe it’s six percent or maybe it’s a loss, or maybe it’s ten percent. But we need to track eight percent. If the Bambis are running shy of eight, the insect finds a fund that did ten, and thanks for the commission. If they are doing ten, the insect says rebalance to something that did six to even things out, and thanks for the commission.
“Now the insect has burrowed into their skin. He gets a percent for seeing who’s above eight and who’s below eight. He’s always getting a commission. He’s performing a valuable service, he tells the Bambis, and they agree. What the Bambis never understand through the entire experience is that nobody is actually managing their money. Their money is just like rounded-up cattle in a corral, the corral being the Standard and Poor’s top five hundred companies by market value of their stocks. The Bambis think they are in some big cap funds, some mid-cap funds, some this and that funds, but they are all just in the corral with all the other Bambis. But it’s all a marketing con job. All the insects have all the Bambis trapped in the Bambi corral. All the Bambis own the same stocks, just packaged in different ways.
“The problem comes when Mr. Market lets Mr. Bear into the corral. That’s called a bloodbath followed by a stampede. The herd panics and their money and their dreams get trampled. This is not money management. This is national insanity. The money market fund that Bambi was supposed to be able to switch his stock and bond funds into and get money to live off has closed its gates. He can’t get money from it to live. It’s kind of like Yom Kippur. If you don’t repent before the rabbi puts the Torah away and closes the gates of the Holy of Holies on you, you’re totally screwed. Markets freeze up. Bambi can’t get out of the funds he’s in and the insect won’t return phone calls. His mutual funds will only give him fractional shares, for which he can’t find a decent dealer bid, and the commission costs eat him alive anyway when the market finally opens. He gets pennies on the dollar for his fractional shares of stocks that were once his dream beach house.”
“So I gather from your comments that we are not changing.” Bob had the look of a man who knew he was destined to market poor performance, a losing hand of cards.
“That’s right. We are not changing.” David was matter-of-fact. Bob’s lesson time was over. “Look, you are a great salesman, one of the greatest ever. The tide will turn for you some day. It always does. Forget the insects that control people with their shell game. Just find those reps and clients who want honest, good old-fashioned money management. That’s enough. Just go out there and do it and don’t look back. You keep building on the sales side as best you can, and I’ll keep building here in the office, here at home. We’re a great team.”
David called Bob late one night, following that exchange. “I have a terrific idea that will definitely boost your sales. I want to prove something to you. Come over in the morning and bring with you, in your car, all of your suits that have any brown or tan in them. Also, bring all your brown socks, brown belts, brown ties, and brown shoes.”
“Why? What’s the idea?”
“You’ll see. Just bring everything brown that you have.”
The next day, Bob arrived with his car filled with all things brown. David helped Bob take all his brown clothes, shoes, belts, and ties to the far northwest corner of the barnyard. After they placed everything on the ground, David poured gasoline on the pile and set it ablaze.
“What are you doing? Those are perfe
ctly good suits. A lot of those suits were nearly new.” Bob was flabbergasted.
“I’m making a complete Jew out of you so you’ll get more sales,” shouted David above the roaring flames.
“How does this make me a complete Jew? You’re burning half my wardrobe. You’re just wasting money.” Bob was appalled at the waste of perfectly good clothing and David’s audacity, but he said nothing more.
“Come here away from the flames and I’ll explain it to you.” David motioned to Bob to move away from the bonfire and come to the opposite corner of the barnyard. As they watched the flames, David turned to his protégé to dispense his wisdom.
“You need to understand the way a Jew thinks. You see, Bob, the color brown makes a Jew remember the Holocaust because of Hitler and his Brown Shirt thugs. So when a Jew sees brown, he wants to get away from that color, and he resents the person wearing it.”
“But the Holocaust was over sixty years ago. People alive today didn’t live through that, except for a few survivors. Besides, I didn’t have anything to do with it, so why would a Jew hold wearing brown against me?”
“It’s not personal to you, but it is personal to them. It’s the memory that clings, and it will cling for generations. The Jew sees you wearing brown and he thinks your grandfather or some relative of yours may have killed his grandfather or some relative of his. That’s unacceptable to him and he can’t forgive you.”
“But I didn’t do anything, and brown looks good on me. It matches my hair and skin color.”
“Exactly, that’s the problem. You already have a disadvantage with your hair and skin color. Maybe you should dye your hair black. And you should wear all blue suits.”
“But you told me before that my appearance was going to help me get sales just like it is. You said my blond hair and ruddy skin was eye candy for female Jew stockbrokers.”
“Yeah, I did say that, but that doesn’t matter because the Jew girl brokers can’t sell jack shit compared to the Jew male brokers. Women just think with their pussies anyway. Forget the women and concentrate on the men. You’ll get more sales. There are some other things you need to change as well. Get rid of that German car you have and get a Cadillac.”
“What’s wrong with car model I drive?”
“It’s made in Germany. The same company that manufactured your car used Jews as slave labor during World War Two. They made the German army’s trucks and the slaves were used to build the concentration camps. No respectable Jew drives a German-made car.”
“But my sales come from out of town. I drive American Japanese rental cars when I’m out of town.”
“Doesn’t matter. Some salesmen come here to be entertained. They’ll see you have that German car and they’ll tell other salesmen you’re not Jewish enough. Word gets around.”
“Aren’t you getting paranoid here? No one who works in a German car factory today had anything to do with World War Two.”
“Oh yes, they did! They had parents and grandparents who worked for that car company. It’s in the car’s culture. Cars have ancestry, just like people.”
“Cars don’t have culture, just motors and wheels. You’re in a private war with ghosts of the past. It’s time to live and let live.”
“Don’t argue with me. Get rid of that fucking German car. Now wait a minute. I have to do something before we leave here.” David opened his fly and walked close to the smoldering remnants of the fire. Then he urinated upon the embers, sending up a column of wretched smoke stench.
“Did you have to do that?” Bob was appalled.
“Yeah, I had to do that. I had to give those fucking Germans some payback for the Holocaust. And you needed to have it impressed upon your doubting mind that some of us have deeply rooted hatred for what happened in Nazi Germany. You need to know that there are those among us who will never forget it.”
“And does that mean you’ll never forgive it either? Have you ever considered that maybe the entire tribe is suffering from some kind of collective Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the temple sackings in Jerusalem, the Russian pogroms, and the Holocaust? It seems like a never-ending cycle. Can’t you break out of it?” Bob was uneasy with the depth of David’s revenge feelings.
“No, I don’t want to break out of it. I can forgive those who had no part in it, those who came after the criminals, but it is hard for me to be forgiving when I smell the air and it tastes of anti-Semitism. I’ll never break out of it. How can I when I know there are people who want to kill me?” David looked at Bob as if he were peering into his soul. I’ll wait to see Bob’s reaction to my comments about the Holocaust. What will he say or do? My experience with many gentiles, or even Reformed Jews, is that they’ll tell me I’m being overly sensitive, or they’ll tell me that the Holocaust was a long time ago and I need to forget it and move on. That means they feel like I’m just manipulating them and they really don’t give a shit about Jews getting murdered. I’ll see if I elicited sympathy from Bob or if he reacts as if he thinks I’m just manipulating him.
“I am terribly sorry, David. I didn’t understand how deep these feelings were and how they’ll continue into perpetuity. I will always be respectful and try to do better.”
Later that day, Bob got rid of his German car and bought a Cadillac. David was pleased. He gave Bob a passing grade on his latest test.
Bob again went forth to slay the dragon of poor performance, wearing only blue suits, black shoes, and non-brown ties, but he refused to dye his hair black. He no longer wasted time trying to catch insect sales representatives; he cultivated only the salesman at the top of the food chain, the eagles of the business. Fund sales drew even with redemptions and, like a stabilized submarine, the company avoided sinking below its crush depth. That’s when the asset base declines, fixed administrative costs engulf generated returns, and the ratio of expenses to assets skyrocketed.
Once again David succeeded in wringing out all the effort possible from his leading sales marketer. Just as he encouraged Marty to be a highly accomplished whore, he encouraged Bob to be the most effective salesman possible. David congratulated himself on his ability as a manager to extract the fullest measure of talent from key executives. While he molded the home office to his image, Bob resumed flying across the country and pounding the pavement.
There was renewed confidence in Bob’s effort. He discovered something within himself that was not there before he became a Jew: he had greater self-confidence and deeper insights into human nature. He studied Torah with the interpretations of Rabbis Plaut and Rashi. He attended services in his reformed temple. He discovered a beautiful, enchanting, soulful religion with endless nuances and a religious people immersed in unique oneness with God. The services were joyous, adoring, and baleful with emotional mysterious outpourings. In time, what began as an academic challenge became uplifting discovery, awakening within him a sense of privilege, wonder, and peace of soul. His confidence was restored.
Bob improved to sales superman. He cast away pedestrian tactics of befriending, patronizing, and playing mind games to overcome objections. He changed his approach to direct and forceful, demanding sales and leading his sales network like a courageous general leading troops into battle. His credo became ‘Competence, Confidence, Courage, and Conviction triumph over Fear, Ignorance, and Superstition.’ He demanded results. Salesmen received inspiration and marching orders, quotas, challenges to top their prior heights. Bob went to firms demanding time with their sales forces. He was respected, believed, and a one-man force to be reckoned with.
Sales poured in. Growth resumed. The loyal network flowed money, despite lackluster investment results. Sales from Jew salesmen leaped from five percent to fifty-five percent. The focus on eagles paid off.
David complimented the improved sales during a lunch meeting. When Bob attributed the improvement to his heightened self-assurance, David seized upon the opening. “I’m glad you attribute your improved results to what you learned about yourself when you became a Je
w. I’d like to suggest you could realize even further improvement if you went to an Orthodox rabbi and trained to join an Orthodox congregation. It would likely require another year or two of study, but now that you’ve passed the first hurdle of becoming a Reformed Jew, the next hurdle should be a lot easier for you.”
“But I already get sales from Orthodox Jews and Conservative Jews. I like the people in my congregation. I don’t see why I need to do this.”
“Try to see it this way. Some Orthodox Jews don’t see Reformed Jews as genuine Jews, so they won’t accept you as an honest-with-God Jew. You’ll never get business from them. Dad got a lot of business from them for the individually managed advisory business. Dad belonged to Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox congregations. He joined them all.”
“Well, that was great for him, but I can’t help but wonder if he really knew where his heart was. He also had a gentile shiksa,” Bob said, referring to Susan.
“Let’s just say that Marvin was a widely loved man of the whole community who had ecumenical leanings.”
“Maybe in the future, David, but I’m all over the country right now. With performance down, I need to hustle to keep us growing. I have a lot of balls in the air.” Bob needed to lighten the subject. “By the way, do you know how to tell if a Jew is Reformed or Orthodox?’
“No. How?”
“Well, you go to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on Shabbat Saturday. You stand in the elevator. Another Jew gets in the elevator with you and pushes the button to go to his floor. He’s a Reformed. He did unnecessary work on Shabbat. More get in. They ask the Reformed to push a button for their floor for them. They won’t do any work on Shabbat. They are Orthodox. Now what do the Orthodox do when they want to leave their floor to go down to the lobby? Do they push the down button, or do they wait for a Reformed to happen along and push it for them, thereby risking that they will miss services? And what do they do if there are no Reformed Jews on their floor, or none going down to the lobby for the next three hours? Do they break a mitzvah so they won’t miss services, thus breaking another mitzvah, a Ten Commandments mitzvah to honor the Sabbath?”
When The Butterflies Come Page 24
