Soccer Dad

How to become rich in the 00's

We all know that the way people became rich in the 1980's was to be involved in greenmail. Greenmail was a way of forcing reluctant companies to merge with you and becoming quite wealthy in the process. You'd buy something near a controlling interest in a company and threaten to acquire even more. The management, feeling your threat, would buy your shares back at an inflated price in order to assure its continued presence at the head of the corporation. Everything would be as it was before, just you'd be a little richer and the corporation a little poorer.
In the 1990's it was the IPO. You'd get some early information that a new company was going public. You'd buy lots of the stock. As the hype would push up the price of the stock you'd hold on for a few days until your investment was worth 100 times what you paid for it and then you'd sell. Eventually, demand for the stock would dissipate and it would maintain a more normal price. But the people buying the IPO would be rich regardless of whether the company was viable or not.
In he 00's the way to make a killing is to write a tell all book about the Bush administration. Write it as a former insider. Tell how the administration rejected your wise council to follow the prescriptions of ideologues. (Remember Bush v. Dukakis. Dukakis, trying to shake the "liberal" label argued that the election was about "competence" not "ideology." News that Boston Harbor had a high level of pollution or that Willie Horton an inmate out on state sanctioned furlough raped a woman, made that competence highly suspect. This is just an extension of that argument with successors to each as proxies.)
Then go onto 60 minutes where people can say how honest (and competent) you are. And how tough minded you are because you don't buy into silly, simplistic ideological prescriptions.
Then when the White House responds to deflect your charges say that the White House is out to destroy you.
Then you can watch your book sales go through the roof. That's how it's done this decade. (Kerry argues that another term of Bush would be bad for the economy. I disagree. Think of all the wonderful kiss and tell books that could be written and get promoted by a pliant media. I say re-elect Bush and help support disgruntled former appointees. After all they need Cadillacs too.)