There is no such thing as a self made millionaire, even though you may hear the phrase from time to time. They are the proverbial snipes that boy scouts hunt to keep busy while their troop masters laugh and point their flashlights into the darkness.
Money is intrinsically a human thing. One does not make money by oneself. One either forcefully takes or works out a deal with another to acquire money. One such deal is becoming employed in which an employee pays attention and is subsequently paid in accordance to some pre-arranged agreed on terms.
It is impossible to make money without dealing with other people. Someone has to give you the money, you cannot make it yourself. They had it before you and when they gave it to you it became yours.
One who claims to be self made is a narcissist. This type of person remains unaware that they are attempting to take credit for all of the work that other people have done to help them out along the way. When you get into millionaire land, there were a lot of people along the way helping out. The richer you are, the more people helped you get there and the more people who are willing to help you stay there if you know how to tell the difference.
I will never be a self made millionaire. I have at one point or another had millions of people working for me whether or not they knew it. As an owner of Fannie Mae, there are millions of people going to work every day so that they can live their lives and achieve the american dream of owning their own home. I support that cause and think that it is unfair to tax people on the basis that they cannot afford their home outright. This is contrary to the public opinion of Prior Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Hank Paulson. I’m afraid I’d like to agree with the man, but that would make both of us wrong. As such, I’ve decided to be right and in doing so find myself laughing in the general direction of the Federal Finance Housing Agency’s Mario Ugoletti who likely has been brought up to speed on RICO, which is a set of laws that we use in America to investigate organized crime.
The problem is that there were thousands of people making bad private label loans and they needed to consolidate the fraud so that they themselves would not get fined or prosecuted. Did they knew what they were doing was wrong? I don’t know how they couldn’t, but I’m afraid that I’m not sure if the benefit of the doubt in this case will ever be put to the test. This sort of stuff happens here or there from time to time to people who call themselves self made at the expense of others of which I am not one.
I’m not saying that I haven’t made my fair share of mistakes. I just do my best to keep my mistakes from defining me. Unfortunately in the case of Treasury and FHFA, they’ve sunk their heels into the ground and stood by their mistakes and indeed they have perpetuated the disaster that they could have at any point in time ended even still that has become the laughing stock of anyone who knows better, save the likes of Hensarling and AEI’s Peter Wallison.
I don’t pitty the fool. I pitty the man who thinks he can advance by preying on fools, because I am part Wolf and while dogs like DeMarco can’t make this Journey alone, maybe a Wolf can.