I think I found Midas Mulligan

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think I found Midas Mulligan

His name is Michael Burry.

I have been reading The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis and the chapter on Michael Burry interested me. So I bopped around Google looking him up.

Burry is one of the guys who, as he said, bet against America and won. He's not even from Wall Street, either. He was in the medical profession when he started.

During the surge of subprime mortgages, he studied the numbers, asked questions, and when he saw that nothing made sense, but he was before an opportunity of a lifetime, he started hounding the big companies for "credit default swaps" on the worst possible portfolios before others caught on. He knew poor people would eventually default on their house mortgages, so he bet against the big boys that this day was coming.

He's now independently wealthy. He got rich as some of the biggest Wall Street firms were blowing up. In fact, it seems like everything Burry has touched has turned to gold. The only reason he dropped out of playing in the major leagues is he is an Aspie and doesn't communicate well with people. Social cues are just not his thing, but he learned that they are extremely important, even when you make money for others..

Here is a YouTube video called "Dr. Michael J. Burry at UCLA Economics Commencement 2012":

There's no other way--Burry had to have read Rand. He called on our financial leaders to check their premises since they are before a contradiction--just like they were with the housing bubble. Sound familiar?

Not surprisingly, he's not well like by the government since the party line is that the crash from the housing subprime loan bubble was not predictable. Even Alan Greenspan (who should know better) called him nothing but a beginner who got lucky.

But he wrote in The Wall Street Journal that it was entirely predictable because he crunched the numbers, did it, and made a fortune at it.

To this day, I don't think he understands why so many educated financial experts did not see it coming. The emotional and vain side of human nature, including the power crap, seems to bewilder him--not that it exists, but that so many experts are willing to let it trump their knowledge of facts.

His reward for calling out the government? He's been audited to Kingdom Come by the IRS and has been hounded by the government ever since.

Anyway, listen to his talk. See how much of Rand you can detect flowing through his words. It's refreshing.

I intend to learn more about this dude.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Yes. An Aspie! My Hero! Right up their with Dirac!

[Mike82ARP]

Excellent!! thanks for posting. I sent this to my FB page for my students to read. Toward the end of his speech it sure did sound like Rand.

[Peter]

Harry Binswanger, Editor of The Objectivist Forum, Vol.4, No. 1 February 1983 wrote at the very end of the issue:

A note of terminology: The phrase “students of Objectivism” was originally introduced to avoid implicitly ascribing to Ayn Rand herself the ideas of her followers and admirers. Now that Miss Rand is no longer alive, I will henceforth use the term “Objectivist” not in an honorific sense but simply to designate those who advocate the philosophy of Objectivism.

end quote

An interesting article in that same issue, “The Money-Making Personality” was originally published in the April 1963 of “Cosmopolitan” magazine, so it almost took twenty years to get it republished. In the article Rand describes two archetypes.

She wrote:

Suppose that you have observed two young men on their way through college and, on graduation day, are asked to tell which one of them will make a fortune.

Let us call them Smith and Jones. Both are intelligent, ambitious and come from the same modestly average background. But there are significant differences between them.

Smith is aggressively social and very popular; he belongs to many campus groups and is usually their leader. Jones is quiet, reserved; he does not join group activities; he is usually noticed, but neither liked nor disliked; some people resent him for no apparent reason.

Smith has a wide variety of interests, but is always available for one more undertaking. Jones has chosen an undertaking – the pursuit of some special task or study outside the college curriculum – to which he devotes all of his spare time.

Smith adjusts himself to people easily, but finds it harder to adjust himself to changing circumstances. Jones adjusts himself to circumstances, but is inflexible in regard to people.

Smiths scholastic grades are uniformly excellent. Jones’s grades are irregular: he rates “A plus” in some subjects and “C” in others.

Smith’s image in people’s minds is one of sunny cheerfulness. Jones image is grimly earnest. But some rare, fleeting signs seem to indicate that in the privacy of their inner worlds their rolls are reversed: it is Jones who is serenely cheerful, and Smith who is driven by some grimly nameless dread.

Which one would you choose as the future fortune - maker?

end quote

Don’t you love Ayn’s use of semi – colons? I still have a hard time not putting about six per typed page. Of course, Jones is the money maker; Smith is the “money appropriator.”

Rand goes on to write:

Behind his usually grim, expressionless face, the Money – Maker is committed to his work with the passion of a lover, the fire of a crusader, the dedication of a saint and the endurance of a martyr. As a rule, his creased forehead and his balance sheets are the only evidence of it he can allow the world to see.

end quote

Grim. Dedicated. Creased forehead. Undoubtedly humorless. Couldn’t a Capitalist hero also love traveling, the movies and the ladies?

She mentions George Westinghouse, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Arthur Vining Davis who ran Alcoa as three notable “Smith’s.”

I wonder how the owners of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and your new Midas Mulligan stack up?

Peter Taylor

[caroljane]

[ In the article Rand describes two archetypes.

She wrote:

Suppose that you have observed two young men on their way through college and, on graduation day, are asked to tell which one of them will make a fortune.

Let us call them Smith and Jones. Both are intelligent, ambitious and come from the same modestly average background. But there are significant differences between them.[/size

Smiths scholastic grades are uniformly excellent. Jones’s grades are irregular: he rates “A plus” in some subjects and “C” in others.

Smith’s image in people’s minds is one of sunny cheerfulness. Jones image is grimly earnest. But some rare, fleeting signs seem to indicate that in the privacy of their inner worlds their rolls are reversed: it is Jones who is serenely cheerful, and Smith who is driven by some grimly nameless dread.

Which one would you choose as the future fortune - maker?

end quote

Don’t you love Ayn’s use of semi – colons? I still have a hard time not putting about six per typed page. Of course, Jones is the money maker; Smith is the “money appropriator.”

Rand goes on to write:

Behind his usually grim, expressionless face, the Money – Maker is committed to his work with the passion of a lover, the fire of a crusader, the dedication of a saint and the endurance of a martyr. As a rule, his creased forehead and his balance sheets are the only evidence of it he can allow the world to see.

end quote

Grim. Dedicated. Creased forehead. Undoubtedly humorless. Couldn’t a Capitalist hero also love traveling, the movies and the ladies?

She mentions George Westinghouse, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Arthur Vining Davis who ran Alcoa as three notable “Smith’s.”

I wonder how the owners of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and your new Midas Mulligan stack up?

Peter Taylor

Jeeesus! Perhaps it is true that il faut souffrir pour etre belle. But pour etre riche , not so much. Rand loaded more freight on the mega rich and srhewd and lucky than they could morally bear/

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Couldn’t a Capitalist hero also love traveling, the movies and the ladies?

Peter,

I don't know what Rand would have thought of Richard Branson, but he sure sounds like your man.

High-end achiever. Productive as all get out. Owns an island and. presumably, a harem (albeit not confirmed). Leader and inspirer par excellence. World-changer. And he knows marketing down cold.

Michael

[Peter]

Daunce wrote:

Perhaps it is true that il faut souffrir pour etre belle . . .

end quote

Care to translate that, Creole Carol? Or is that pigeon, plume de ma tante, French?

Michael wrote:

I don't know what Rand would have thought of Richard Branson, but he sure sounds like your man.

end quote

I did a Yahoo search for Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d'Anconia and came up with eight images, one of them of Richard Branson, worthless playboy with a dream. He has a harem? Are you kidding - a harem? There are certain connotations that go with the word, “harem.” Are they on his private island of their own free will? What have you heard about the nature of his harem? Unlike, Francisco, I don’t think you will go bankrupt if you invest in one of his ventures

Charley Sheen employs two professional companions and of course Hugh Hefner always has several, ahem, aspiring actresses at the mansion. And Jimbo Wikipedia, former moderator of Atlantis, is a friend of Richard Branson.

I went to Wiki to get Francisco’s full name and here is another quote from there:

The Fishwife is one of the strikers, who earns her living by providing the fish for Hammond’s grocery market; she is described as having "dark, disheveled hair and large eyes", and is a writer. Galt says she "wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind." According to Barbara Branden in her book The Passion of Ayn Rand, "The Fishwife is Ayn's Hitchcock-like appearance in Atlas Shrugged."[6] So says too Leonard Peikoff.[7]

end quote

That last sentence of the quote is how it appears on Wikipedia. Anyone care to edit it?

Peter