BULL STREET – The art of the Con

Philosophy, How to Get Your Point Across Without Going to Jail

Do you believe anyone would want to steal another person’s very thoughts when there is not any particular monetary gain involved? Possibly, if it made that person look a little more professional in someone else’s eyes. This is done all to often in the writing of thesis, which is required for advanced college graduation. Naturally, by stealing this work-product, the thief has really not accomplished anything at all. That person has temporarily passed a class or graduated but obviously did not learn the subject well enough to do acceptable work on their own. Who gets cheated when material is lifted directly from a work that someone else has done. First, it obviously must be the person himself, and by doing what he did, he would be establishing a standard for his behavior that by and large would follow him during the rest of his life. Taking the easy way is no big trick, but it creates a mindset that is somewhat like a virus, it kind of sits in the back of the brain, and gnaws on it relentlessly. Kind of like the young man that killed his parents and then begged for clemency because he was and orphan.

However, these folks more often then not have no soul so that doesn’t count for very much but maybe we should just chalk their actions up to shoddy behavior that will set a pattern in their latter lives that will eventually cause them no end of grief.  Moreover, I personally don’t get an idea into my head until I read something that someone else has done which acts as a stimulant. It kind of gets the juices flowing and of course, it makes me think. I then either agree, or disagree with who ever wrote the material. However, that doesn’t matter much, the question is, have I taken anything that didn’t belong to me. I did take some of the writer’s thoughts but of course that was what he wanted me to have to begin with or he wouldn’t have put his musings out there for everyone to poke at.

Obviously, every writer thinks that he is doing great stuff, or at least he does once he gets out of school and no longer has to write in order to pass a class. Investment bankers like myself, don’t have to write for a living, they can act as though the somehow in contact with some mysterious being that sends them messages from above or below for that matter, which in turns gives them a great deal of innate wisdom. In that case, it is a given that instead of giving out your philosophy out to every unappreciative Tom, Dick and Harry that you know will only tell you how dumb you are or in the alternative, if they believe you are unto something good, steal what you have poured infinite time into.

Thus, I think the why to go is get a top flight public relations firm to drop a few lines in the local papers along with the financial press saying that you are indeed the second coming of Bill Gates, King Midas, or even Adnan Khasoggi for that matter. The public relations material will read something like the following: you have mastered a certain ancient form of Zen that allows you to not only read the thoughts of others before it occurs to them, but that you can foresee the following days Wall Street Journal and sometimes on a clear day you can even read it before the market closes on the previous day. In my business, that’s a lot better than writing a book no will want to read.

Moreover, you are opening your new hedge fund, designated Visionaries Unlimited. Only for a short period of time and just a few favored individuals will be allowed to invest. The fund would have to include some people that have historically been capable of foretelling future events with unseemly accuracy. Possible we could resurrect, Nostradamus, Bridie Murphy and King David as our advisory board and fill our board of directors with such accurate prognosticators as Jimmy the Greek, Wrong Way Corrigan and those folks at the Chicago Tribune accurately predicated Wendell Wilke’s unusual victory over Harry Truman but were robbed at the last minute of their hour of triumph by Chicago’s inestimable Mayor Richard Daly in 1948.  Such a story if dropped in the right places can certainly bring rain even if you can’t. If you are able to hire a few folks with names sounding like those of real people that can be quoted as swearing how well you have done for them in the marketplace, either you will soon have money being thrown at you with a swiftness that will be inconceivable or in the alternative, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will soon be camping on your doorstep along with the nice folks from the Post Office Department talking about fraud by wire.

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