Altucher: “READ THIS BOOK NOW!”
If you want to believe the world is a simulation, which I desperately do, then you have to read the book, Supermoney, written by Adam Smith, in 1973.
First off, the name Adam Smith, is a pseudonym. The real Adam Smith was the godfather of Economics. He wrote the book,“An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations” in 1776. Not 1758 or 1782.
1776.
Of course in a simulation, the book that defines all of capitalism had to be written in the exact year the United States was born.
In Supermoney, Adam Smith (the pseudonymous), writes about the interesting quirks he encounters on the road to high finance.
Adam wants to figure out if one has to be on Wall Street to be a good investor. A friend of his tells him about “this young guy who just retired with $20 million that he made from investing.”
Adam flies to the middle of the country to visit this random investor and the investor gives him a tour of his humble hometown. “There’s a really good furniture store,” the investor points out. “I’d like to own it one day if I could but the owner would never sell.”
They had lunch and the investor explained he had shut down his hedge fund because there were no more good deals. Everything was expensive. And he was right. The US was at that point in the grips of a recession.
Of course, the young investor was a young Warren Buffett. But nobody knew Warren Buffett then. Warren Buffett didn’t know Warren Buffett then!
He was just a retired investor. Local boy done good. With $20 million. And as he was waving goodbye to Adam Smith, Smith just hoped he would figure out something to do with his life.
He was just Warren Buffett. And he did end up owning that furniture store. He bought it decades later from a 99 year old Rose Blumkin.
Rose didn’t like how Warren was running the store. So she went across the street and started a competitor and started thrashing him.
He had to buy this business. And this time he made her sign a non-compete. At age 103!
This is a simulation kind of story.
Well, the chapter simply ends and Adam Smith goes on to the next chapter. It’s about the only American who was running a bank in Switzerland. The bank went out of business.
Running a bank out of business in Switzerland is basically equivalent to drowning your babies in a bathtub.
In Switzerland, banking is religion. A bank is a church. The bank President is a Bishop. It is a mortal sin to run a bank into the ground.
So Paul Erdmann was thrown in jail. The one American to ever run a bank in Switzerland.
And while he was in jail, he daydreamed. And he thought of stories.
And then he wrote his first story, “The Crash of ‘79”. It sold millions of copies. As did his next ten books. He was the John Grishm of financial thrillers. This was in the 80s. I highly recommend all of his novels.
But in Supermoney, he’s still in jail, wondering how he could’ve run the bank better. Adam Smith tells that story. But Erdmann hadn’t yet become the John Grisham of finance.
How can a book be so prophetic to have all these stories of people who became the best in the world LATER? Simulation.
I was addicted to reading out of print finance books from the 60s and 70s.
I was so impressed after I read this that I called Pamela van Giessen who was the editor-in-chief over at Wiley and begged her to re-read the book. She did and Wiley published a new version. You can now get it at Amazon.
Supermoney isn’t just a book about finance.
It’s a glitch in the matrix. A forgotten paperback that accidentally captured superstars before they took off.
It found Warren Buffett when he was a nobody with a dream. It told the story of a failed banker before he became a bestselling author. It recorded the future before the future knew what it was.
And then it quietly moved on. No fanfare. No epiphany. Just onto the next scene in the script.
That’s what makes Supermoney feel so eerie. So oddly perfect.
Not because it explains the markets—but because it treats destiny like a footnote.
And if that doesn’t scream "simulation," what does?
READ THIS BOOK.
