It is said that Paris Berkeley Capital’s private banking business owns a highly secured and closely monitored chateau in an undisclosed location in Normandy, France where four floors below ground level there is a candle-lit corridor that leads to a stone spiral staircase which in turn takes you further down to a large rectangular hall guarded round-the-clock by Swiss-trained security officers.
Inside this mysterious hall – know as the ‘library’ – rests a large collection of archives which collectively tell the history of investment banking, dating back to antiquity. It is even said that some of the oldest investment banking deal agreements are held within this highly secure room. They outline, in great detail, various monumental transactions ranging from the financing of the great pyramids of Egypt to the exploits of some of the most famous explorers of our past, including Hernán Cortés.
In one section of the library there is long shelf labeled ‘religion’. The remarkable thing about it is that on that very shelf is a scroll which proves that it was in fact investment banking which helped catalyse the beginning of what later became known as the monotheistic religions.
The scroll is titled The Persian and The Shepherd.
The Persian
Story has it that thousands of years ago a young, handsome Persian man of humble origins set out on a journey across the world to discover the secret to great wealth. He, above all else, desired vast riches.
Driven by a deep-seated desire to find the truth, he spent fifteen years travelling from place to place taking odd jobs wherever he could. Everywhere he went, including as far out as India and Egypt, he carefully observed the habits and idiosyncrasies of the very rich and successful. His goal was to glean as much possible from them in order to discover what was responsible for these individuals’ vast successes. He would then do the same and hopefully become a very rich man himself one day. His was a quest filled with purpose.
To his frustration, however, the Persian could not pinpoint one key, defining characteristic that accounted for all the money very rich people made. The myriad of wealthy merchants and businessmen he met differed from one another greatly. The great South Indian spice trader whose floors the Persian cleaned was a completely different man from the Arabian gold collector whose shoes he shined and the Chinese silk merchant whose harem he taught Farsi (Persian).
Alas, the Persian was no closer to understanding the secret of success than when he set out on his mission fifteen years ago.
That is, until he met the wise Shepherd of Bagdad. [READ MORE…]
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Some of us may have had the pleasure, or displeasure, of knowing people like Tom. A bullshitter of epic proportions whom everyone knows is a bullshitter, yet who carries on bullshitting without respite because with the passing of time his bullshitting knowhow has evolved and overtaken his capacity to tell fact from fiction.
