I stepped out on the penthouse floor into an open plan of traders in white oxfords determining the world’s fate. It was the dollar’s sowing and its ruthless harvest. A beauty of exotic birth offered me coffee or cold water infused with cucumber. I chose instead to read the Forbes on the coffee table, the one with Mercer on the cover. The headline: “He’s Not Talking.” Mercer made his initial money in gold in the late seventies. Inflation was high, the gold standard was gone, and people were scared. When people are scared, Mercer had purportedly told a confidant, they grow primitive in their thinking, and shiny metals reassure them. It was the financial equivalent of praying to the sun, but unlike the Sun God, gold still held currency and rose and fell with the fear level. Mercer had a feel for it. He saw extraordinary returns with gold early in his career. In the eighties he shifted to equities. He was out of the market in January of ’87, nine months before Black Monday, again harboring in gold, a move Forbes called “supernatural.”
What do You think about To Rise Again At A Decent Hour?
