The Greatest Business in History
The business no state will ever willingly give up
There’s an exercise I run from time to time, usually when some headline reminds me that the world isn’t quite what I thought it was at twenty.
I take a blank sheet of paper. I list, one by one, every single thing I own. And next to each one, I write the name of whoever holds the key.
The brokerage shares. The broker holds the key. Above the broker, a central custodian. Above the custodian, the regulator. Above the regulator, a state.
The apartment. The land registry holds the key, along with the jurisdiction where the property sits, and a tax or an expropriation that can change without warning.
Mutual funds. Pension plans. ETFs. Each one has a custodian. Each custodian has a state. Each state has a bad day when it needs liquidity.
The bank accounts. The keys aren’t yours. They belong to an interbank system that, in March 2013, in Cyprus, decided to seize 47.5% of every deposit over one hundred thousand euros to prop up its failing banks. They called it a bail-in. It’s in the manuals. They approved it over a weekend.
And at the end of the exercise, looking down at the list, you arrive at an uncomfortable conclusion.
You don’t own property. You hold claims on things that other people custody for you.
Then the logical question creeps in. What if I leave?
No. Your assets don’t move with you. The only thing that moves is your body.