The Root of All Evil
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10, King James Bible). This scripture has been dissected and analyzed for years and there is a great deal to chew on with such a broad claim. It is said to be an epistle of the Apostle Paul and is part of the New Testament and written after the death of Jesus Christ. This verse is not written to undermine the concept of money, but rather the love of and coveting of money. Despite those concepts being reasonably well established as part of the original Ten Commandments in the form of the sins of lust, it is questionable as to weather money or the accumulation of worldly goods can really be considered the cause or root of all evil rather than one of the manifestations of sin in the modern world.
As you can probably tell, I am thinking about and preparing my lectures for my upcoming course on business ethics, scheduled to start in a month and run for fourteen weeks into the Spring. Even though business ethics is not supposed to be about philosophy per se, it is hard to discuss ethics without doing some foundational work in the historical debates about right, wrong and the virtue of man. The trick will be to continuously bring it back to the business world, which is a world that revolves around the pecuniary and thus is the supposed root discussed by Apostle Paul in his advice to Timothy. This preparation comes at an interesting time and the events of the last few days are worthy of some discussion in the context of 1 Timothy 6:10.
I wrote yesterday about the death of Jimmy Cayne. While that story will only be published tomorrow (I will post this story after that), I chose to send it in advance to four friends who served with me at Bear Stearns and thereby lived the Jimmy Cayne experience with me, though somewhat less directly. Hearing about the Devil is quite different than facing the Devil in his very own lair, but these colleagues worked in an organization that was headed by that same Devil and thus I was curious about their views on my handling the subject. I sent the story to the four and got an interesting range of reactions. The range was from direct and rude, since Jimmy was known to be a rude man, all the way to kindness for the departed, which would be he usual approach when someone who wasn’t reviled passes. As one of most crass of the Wall Street leaders, Jimmy was synonymous with the money culture of Wall Street. He used his money and power spot to buy anything and everything he wanted. When the City banned cigar smoking in offices, Jimmy hired the police commissioner as a corporate advisor and voila!, he felt free to smoke his cigars (and any other substances he might choose) in his office, whenever he wanted. When the Plaza went condo, he had to buy the biggest and best one. And when he lost $1 billion to the financial crisis, his comment was that he still had a half-billion and was still rich, so who cares. Perhaps Jimmy cared.
One of the facts that all the articles about Cayne want to include is that he was the first Wall Street CEO to garner $1 billion in bank stock, only to finally sell it for $60 million once the fire sale to JP Morgan was complete. That factoid is packed with all kinds of information and contradictions that can be unpacked in so many ways. The point is that no one would likely suggest that Jimmy did what he did for any reason other than the money. But then again, maybe it was also the power, but who are we kidding, given enough money, you can pretty much assume you get power in the trade. Look at Jeffrey Epstein.
Yesterday was also an interesting day in that Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of five of the six counts of sex trafficking for which she was indicted in her workings with another Demon, Jeffrey Epstein. I have written about my meeting and dining several times with Ms. Maxwell back in 1990 before she met Epstein. What I hadn’t heard until yesterday was that she had been paid $30 million in total by Epstein to do whatever it was that she did for him. If it was just to be his friend over twenty-five years, that was a pretty good gig. If it was to be his pimp and sexual procurer it seems more or less right on the money for such services. Did Ghislaine do it for the money or did she just like the camaraderie and the action?
During my three weeks holed up in the historic Buenos Aires Plaza Hotel with Ghislaine’s father, Robert Maxwell, I got my first inside look at how the rich and powerful think and act. What I learned was that money isn’t the root as much as it might be a crutch. Captain Bob, as we all called him, had a massive inferiority complex perhaps because of his size, but more likely because of his peasant upbringing, lack of formal education and general crassness and unacceptability in British society (notice he was NOT referred to as Sir Bob, a title he sought most assiduously). Money was less the root of whatever evil he propagated and more the salve to heal those wounds. A few years later I went on to run the global private banking business for Bankers Trust, which I did for six years. That locked in my sense that money is almost never the root cause of anything. It is most often a random and somewhat serendipitous outcome that rich people try to use to paper over their inadequacies, some better than others.
My assessment is that Jeffrey Epstein is the link between Jimmy Cayne and Ghislaine Maxwell (and by familial extension, her dear old dad, Captain Bob) and that despite the money swirling around all four of them, all it did was lend profile to their perverse activities. I will go so far as to suggest that Jeffrey, Jimmy and Ghislaine were in the room together more than once. What they might have been doing is beyond my imagination, but I will bet that it was a true bonfire of the vanities (apologies to Tom Wolfe). There wasn’t a true pedigree among them, nor an academic degree. What was in that room was a full range of gaping wounds that could only be healed by gold gilding (sound familiar Mr. Trump?) That says to me that the root of all evil (that room had its full capacity of evil) lies deep within the psyche of the alpha dogs who want the short cuts to fame and fortune.