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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Cold Hard Cash





I recently had the task of counting a lot of cold hard cash. As I carried on with this task I got to thinking about the name and how it arose. The more I passed various quantities through my hands the more convinced I became that that name is a good one for cash.

Whether I was counting one thousand euros or 100 million, the effect is the same: cold hard cash gives back nothing personal. It’s a sad fact that you might be the world’s richest person. If you keep your money in a room-sized vault in which you can retire to count your money, the exercise will leave you cold. Taking wads of large bills in hand is not at all the same as stroking your partner’s skin. You could possibly hug a person-sized stack of money, but it will not hug you back.

Now, I admit that I’m even thinking like this because I don’t have any money, but in these very difficult times I’m glad that I don’t. If you’re someone who does have a lot of money, you had a lot more six months ago. Since then you have had to worry about your disappearing assets.

Perhaps you were a conservative investor and placed the bulk of your holdings in one company, which would have been a dopey thing to have done on principle, but you might have done that if the company was Lehman Bros of Wall Street. This is a company that was 152 years old before it suddenly went bankrupt. You would have lost your entire holding in one fell swoop.

There have been and continues to be a world of stories of people once wealthy now destitute. The problem is that usually when the investment market goes bad that is the very time that you need to cash in those same holdings. Everything turns to crap at the same time.

A rich man is one who is happy in his home life. He has a good woman who gives of her love without restriction, and he lays with her in long intimate hours just enjoying her humanity. If they do have a room full of money then that’s all well and good. But it’s the personal part that really matters, and that’s why the richest man on earth is very often he who has nothing more than a good woman to keep his company. Unfortunately, money is it’s own evil, so I hope that every rich man made their money from when they were both poor as church mice.


Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael