9 The Real Game of Missing Money One of the things I learned growing up was that the fastest way for me to understand reality was to identify the actual transactions that were happening and estimate the allocation of time and resources, or, “how the money worked.” I was told as a young child that I tested as a math genius. Converting the gruesome or incomprehensible side of life into a mathematical flow seemed to my childlike mind a practical way of unpacking the mysteries of adult behavior. For many situations, it was the only way to make sense of things as I traveled back and forth between multiple cultures and places. I got a better understanding of what was happening by following transactions than if I relied on people’s description of what was happening or depended on the local and national news media. What people said they were doing and what they were actually doing were distinctly differ- ent things. Our culture lived in a state of deep denial, and it seemed to grow deeper every year. This was one of the reasons I attended Wharton—the business school at the University of Penn- sylvania—from 1976-78, receiving my MBA in the spring of 1978. Still trying to understand “how the money worked,” I joined Goldman Sachs as an intern for the summer of 1977 and then, after graduation, headed to New York and a job in investment banking on Wall Street at Dillon Read & Co., Inc. I was going to learn how the money worked and do something about it. Related Resources: Solari Report: · The Devil’s Chessboard with David Talbot · The Deep State: Part I and Part II Videos: · Dillon Read & the Aristocracy of Stock Profits https://vimeo.com/209784343 Articles: · “The Popsicle Index” https://library.solari.com/the-popsicle-index/ · “Meditations at the Crossroads” https://library.solari.com/meditation-at-the-crossroads-2/ · “My Family” https://library.solari.com/my-family/ · Catherine Austin Fitts: Resume https://home.solari.com/resume/