Greg Steinmetz - The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

31:04Maximilian married Mary of Burgundy. It's interesting. We were just talking about the jewelry business here in the office the other day, and we asked, you know, we're wondering how the engagement ring business got started. And that's because Maximilian gave Mary a diamond. And as we see now in the luxury goods market, once celebrities and rich people start giving something and making it popular, then everyone wants to be part of that. And that's what happened in the engagement ring world. And because of Fugger, Maximilien was able to raise a nice endowment and this Mary of Burgundy. Burgundy at the time was, if not the most powerful part of France, certainly as powerful as anything else.

31:58Under Mary's father, Charles the Bold, it was renowned for having the best army in all of Europe. And because Maximilian could bring some money to the table, he was able to marry into the, uh, the, uh, that family. Um, and because he, there weren't any sons that Charles the Bold had Maximilian became King of Burgundy as well as Austria. As you point out, or yeah, he was crowned in worms. He was King. What was the German word that they hailed him as. Kaiser. Is that the word you're thinking of? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a follow on from Roman times. Caesar. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's great.

32:52Hitler's whole thousand year Reich thing was the thousand year Reich with the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted from 800 to Napoleon a thousand years later. Yeah. A small man's complex dominates. As you point out, it wasn't long before he was sitting in a Flemish jail. Explain the assemblies and also the electors he now had to deal with. There was no democracy, but it wasn't sole rule either. Yeah. The Holy Roman Empire was a strange construct in that it was an empire in name only, sort of. The joke Napoleon told that it was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. there were, I don't know, a thousand city-states and principalities and duchies and kingdoms in German-speaking Europe.

33:49The original idea was to unite all of Christian Europe under a secular equivalent of the Pope. So you had the Pope down in Rome, and you had Charlemagne, who was crowned by the Pope in the year 800 as the secular equivalent just to keep everyone together and keep the peace and resolve conflicts. Maximilian became the emperor of this thing, but the way it happened was by an election among seven electors, four of whom were bishops, three of whom were secular rulers. They were all from different parts of Germany. So you had an elector in Worms, you had one in Dresden, you had one in what's now the Czech Republic, but it was German in those days.

34:45And you had the Habsburgs. And it just, it made things easier to keep electing Habsburgs to this post. But in the election where Maximilian became emperor, there were others who wanted it because they saw an opportunity to make more money for themselves. If they could turn this strange thing of being Holy Roman emperor into being an actual emperor with all the powers that that entailed. So there was an election where you had Henry VIII put his hat in the ring. You had Maximilian put his hat in the ring. And there was one other. Do you remember who that was? No, it was France. It was Charles. Yeah, France.

35:33Yeah, France is the first in France. And they all wanted it. And it became a contest to who could bribe the electors the most. And because of Fugger, Maximilian was able to put up the most money, and he seized the day and won the election. He understood the power of precious resources. Did it become a winner-take-all business from here on out from Maximilian and the Habsburg dynasty? Yeah, well, he was extremely ambitious, and he thought that God was on his side. So he kept fighting these little wars, mostly in Italy. Didn't get very far. The Pope was able to keep him out of Rome. The Duke of Milan was able to hold him back for a while.

36:27And he never really achieved his territorial ambition in Europe. He was never able to wrest that much power from the other big monarchs in Germany, the other electors. And in some ways, being emperor was a ceremonial title. He could try to claim that he had more authority than the others, but when push came to shove, he really didn't. Although the people, the peasants work in the fields, and they thought that he was divine and would come up and touch him, thinking that he had magic healing powers and all that stuff. but again what what his his best successes were with marriages and how he was able to get France for or Burgundy for himself and how he was able to get Spain for his son yeah to your point and Bill's point earlier on World War I I think of it as like World War I was actually a family split where you had cousins falling on one side of the line or the other ultimately and that maybe that's why family starts with an F.

37:42So to another F, let's go back to Fugger. You make the case he was an intellectual long before there was such a group in, call it the Renaissance time, or what we now know as kind of college-educated intellectualism in America. But you point out now that that's mainstream, he was also a fervent Catholic who believed that God had a plan for him, and God had blessed him to do what he did. In other words, there was a purpose. He was there on earth doing what he was doing. That is not mainstream today. So I guess, you know, this mix of pragmatism and business and providence seems like a big driver for him individually.

38:23In other words, that's, he could go out with purpose because he was trying to solve something and he had God on his side. Well, yeah, who knows, who knows how far skepticism went in those days. There were so many unknowns. You had the plague in the 14th century. Life was very fragile. It was completely uncontrollable. You couldn't explain things. everyone, almost everyone, at least said that they were believers. What Fugger really believed, I don't know, but he certainly acted as if he believed there was a good chance that there was of God. And you see that most in the way he prepared for the afterlife.

39:22He knew that he was violating commandments. He knew that he was, by lending money, that he was in violation of not just the usury ban, however Rope might interpret it, but also the words of the New Testament. So when he wrote his will, he was very clear that he wanted to give money to the church. He wanted to make sure that people were praying for him after he died. And he was just doing everything he could to atone for his sins. Like a lot of rich people, he was able to rationalize what he was doing and probably did think that he was doing, thought that he was doing the Lord's work by making money for himself.

40:07He might have taken the billionaire's pledge, you might say, right? Yeah. He didn't have children of his own, which is interesting. Let's pivot to your, you used a very interesting term in explaining him. What is vitamin B to a German? Because I had never heard that term as an American. It's a German expression. Vitamin B means, it's the German word for relationships, and in those days where you really had to rely on trust much more than you do today because you have contracts you have rule of law trust was a big deal in those days and connections are what made the world go around and you know they still do but even more so in those days without without the proper introductions you could get nowhere by the way um fuger would be the last guy i'd ever want to be sitting across the table from playing a game of Texas Hold 'em poker with.

41:06Because you explained wonderfully, he gets involved in a copper cartel with his Hungarian assets. And then can you explain the strange twist in the plot that follows? Yeah. The copper mines in Hungary and Slovakia were the biggest around. But he was sort of at the height of his powers just as the Reformation was getting started. And again, not because he wanted it to happen, but he played a key role in making the Reformation happen. And the peasants saw an opportunity to seize power from the monarchs because the monarchs were all aligned with Rome. And because of Luther and the way he publicized the inequities, it was plain to everyone, well, wait a minute, why are we listening to mass that's in Latin?

42:05Why are we paying all this money to Rome? Who's to say that the priests are the only ones who can interpret the Bible? And they seem to be inconsistent. They seem to be actually doing things that the Bible says you shouldn't be doing enough of this. And there were rebellions that spread out all over Germany and also in Hungary. So Fugger had to defend his assets in Hungary. And that wasn't so easy because the peasants had enough resources to take over the mines, to hold Fugger's people in Hungary hostage. And Fugger had to fight back pretty hard and spent the latter years of his life negotiating to get back his territory and his mines in Hungary.

42:57There were rival politicians who aligned with the peasants and took over these properties. And Fugger wanted either restitution or he wanted to get his stuff back. And he finally did, just at the end of his life. Prior to that, you also explained in that copper cartel, he had joined it and then turned around and in kind of a Rockefeller cut to kill fashion, he chopped the legs off of everybody in the cartel by underpricing everyone and taking them out of business. Which, again, that's why I mentioned earlier, he's a tough guy to play cards with because one minute he's your ally and if he sees an opportunity to ruin you, he would take it.

43:41Yeah. When you're playing poker, you know what the rules are. And you enter into that agreement when you sit down at the table. And so people who did business with Fugger knew that, well, this arrangement is only going to last as long as it's in Fugger's interest. A cartel is only as good as the willingness of the participants to play along and not slash prices. Fugger saw an opportunity. He was liquid enough that he could do that. And he made the calculation that he could wipe out the others. And he was correct in that calculation. He's a very smart guy that way. Well, he left himself an out and nobody else did.

44:29Yeah, he had the double entry accounting. Fugger married at age 39. speaking of alliances to a younger woman. Fugger married for logical reasons, money and status. Augsburg limited party size. How did Fugger deal with this? Oh, the size of weddings and all that? Yes, I love this. Yeah. Well, you know, that anecdote, I forget exactly what happened. Maybe you can refresh me. Because I know he did have a big party and he brought in oysters. He had a wedding in January because the oysters would stay fresh. Correct. Yeah, I remember that in your book. But I think there was a certain limit. I don't remember the number in your book.

45:08And so I think the town had said, here's our limit on party size. And so he threw a massive wedding in comparison and just paid the tax. Just paid the tax. But yeah, you see that today too, right? Okay, if the fine's only$1 ,000 for making noise after midnight, there's plenty of people who don't bat an eye. Well, and I also think back to the pandemic. If they said, hey, it's going to be$1 ,000 if you throw an unsanctioned party, well, you just pay the$1 ,000 and throw a wonderful big party. Yeah, you throw a$50 ,000 party and what's$1 ,000? Exactly. Jewels became an interest for Fugger. Explain the Three Brothers jewel and its historical significance.

45:46Well, Fugger got a hold of one of the most interesting pieces of jewelry in the world. And he kept a sort of his rainy day account was jewelry. People would use jewelry as a store of value. They would use silver plate, which whatever it would be, silverware, drinking vessels, whatever it is that you could make out of silver. You just have this stuff lying around as a way to have some somewhat liquid assets always at your disposal. Jewelry was one of those because, as it is today, it was portable, very valuable. That jewel somehow ended up belonging to Queen Elizabeth I in London. One of the most famous paintings of her shows her wearing this particular piece of jewelry.

46:50And it just got passed on through generation through one monarchy after another had this thing. Fugger and other financiers were not just affecting Europe. Explain how their investments were reaching to the New World and other continents. Well, Maximilian I and his son, Charles, Charles married into the family of Ferdinand and Isabella. And, you know, as we know, Ferdinand and Isabella were the ones that bankrolled Columbus in 1492. and put the Spaniards in South America. Charles married one of their daughters, and so he inherited Spain. I mean, not Spain, South America. And Fugger was involved a little bit with some of the transatlantic trade that was just in its infancy.

47:51He was also involved, and he did this secretly. He was involved with Portugal, which was Spain's great rival. Portugal, as we know, Magellan was Portuguese. Portugal paid for Magellan's around the world journey, all of this stuff. And Fugger was the one who secretly bankrolled this adventure, thinking, okay, I'm going to not only have commercial dealings with the Habsburgs, make a lot of money off them, but I'm going to hedge my bets a little bit in case Portugal ends up being the winner in South America. And the Pope famously drew a line through South America, which granted the Eastern portion to the Portuguese.

48:38That's Brazil. And that's why they speak Portuguese in Brazil. And the rest of it went to Spain. This was all happening during Fugger's time. Fugger sent copper and silver to Portugal. What did they send back? Well, the Portuguese got spices from India. And that's what made that Portugal a little country, but they were very powerful. This was the heyday of the Portuguese empire. It's funny, just yesterday, I got a note from my agent and that we sold the Portuguese rights to the book, this book. and we had already sold the Brazilian rights and it got published in Brazil, but apparently the Portuguese is different enough in Portugal.

49:22So they wanted their own translation. That's funny. It also proves that Fugger proved a long time ago that Germans love their spicy curry. Well, if you've been to Berlin, you know that, right? Correct. Currywurst, yeah. Exactly. So forced unsecured lending on Fugger was no way to bargain, right? No one was going to show up to your discussion earlier about the poker table and tell Fugger to lend, and you have no other option. I'm going to quote your book here. Quote, they fail to understand that it is for the common good that honorable, brave, and honest companies are in the realm. And Fugger is obviously saying this.

50:01For it is not disreputable, but rather it is a wonderful jewel that such companies are in the kingdom. End quote. He ended the letter with a vague threat. Quote, reasonable people know this and would be wise to consider. end quote. So Fugger is saying this in a backhanded way to Maximilian at the time. Doesn't this sound like any of the political rhetoric of our day as well? It was kind of, you know, you're going to be forced to do this as a rich person in society. It would, you know, between him and the king, it was really kind of a soak the rich. You're going to have to do this whether you like it.

50:37But Fugger, you know, had options. Switzerland was not that far away as a tax haven even then. And again, that's true today. So how do you look at this idea? And I actually really thought of it in almost an estate planning context. You know, you could die, pay 45 % of your quote unquote taxable estate here in the United States and whatever you pay to your state, if any, or you could end up in the Bahamas, aka the Western hemispheres, Switzerland. Isn't this identical? It's just the same problem, completely manifest in a different era. Yeah. Rich people have choices, right? They can go wherever they want.

51:17And if someone promises them a more favorable tax regime and the assets can be relocated, yeah, sure. Sure. It's identical. But this point about some of that stuff we were just reading about. That to me was, that's the importance of Fugger. He was the first commoner who was able to stand up to power and say, we have a contract here, you have to pay up. And the thing that made Fugger was that he had leverage over his borrowers that no other banker before him ever had. And the sovereigns would look down on him because he was a commoner. He didn't have the hand of God looking over them like the emperor thought that he did and the electors did.

52:16He didn't have the divine sanction. And yet he was able to have power over them. And it's been like that ever since, where those who have the money, you talked about Argentina and sovereign debt before. The creditors have a lot of power. You talked about Abraham Lincoln. What was the big concern about financing during the Civil War? What would happen to the faith and credit of the U.S. government if they couldn't pay back on those bonds after the war? Or this sort of thinking, the ability of someone with a contract to get a sovereign to pay, force the sovereign to pay, just did not exist before Fugger.

53:05He was the first one to really stand up and make it work. And that opened up the doors for others and boldened others to loan to sovereigns. So Fugger was a banker with unlimited liability. Explain how his banking operation worked. Oh, well, he got deposits just like banks do today. Rich people would give them money in return for interest. And he would lend the money out, use it to not just make loans, but to do what would now be private equity deals with mines and other adventures, trading spices, trading other commodities, trading textiles. And then he would pay his depositors interest on it.

53:58And he always paid. And he did not have a shortage of people who wanted to come to him and give them their money. same as today, right? If you have money, what are you going to do with it? You got to give it to someone. And Fugger had the trust of his depositors and he made a good return for them. Cardinal Macau died. How did this cause a run on Fugger and what was the solution? Well, he was one of Fugger's big depositors. And when he died, there was an assumption that that his money, because he was a cardinal, wouldn't stay in the family, right? There was no family. He didn't officially have children, although I'm sure he did have some, but they weren't heirs.

54:49And there is the assumption that this money would just flow to Rome, and Rome was not going to keep it with Fugger. So there was a run on the bank, and Fugger, in a stunt that we still see today, pretended that there was nothing wrong, pretended that things were never better. He hosted a party, very lavish party, to show how rich he was, to remind people. He went around from town to town in southern Germany, dressed in his finest clothes, on his best horses, with 13 horses leading his coach, throwing coins to the peasants who were following after his coach. He just wanted to show, even though he was facing the gravest crisis of his career, he wanted to show that he was very rich and powerful and create the impression, at least, that there was nothing to worry about.

55:58And by doing this, and then by working out a deal with the Pope so that the Pope would keep the money with the Fugers, he was able to get out of this jam. That was the most precarious moment in Fugers' career. And he was able to fake his way out of trouble. Greg, by random chance at 630 in the morning, Monday morning after the Friday that Ivan Boski was arrested, I was at Milken's trading floor with the guy that ran half the retail for Drexel Burnham. And Milken was making all his calls, you know, get Erwin Jacobs on the line, get Carl Icahn. He was making every attempt to make it look like it was business as usual, just like you're describing, whereas the 30 men, I think it was almost all men, surrounding him the way it was all centered, him in the middle with them all around.

56:55The music had stopped. You could hear a pin drop in there. I mean, they weren't saying anything. And so very analogous situation. As we invest abroad for our investors, We think strong insider ownership is important to deal with the inside baseball of places that you can't know. Explain how Zink was Fugger's strong insider in Rome with the Vatican. Frank Curzio, Jr.: Fugger, through his Augsburg connections, got to be friendly with a very corrupt lobbyist, as it were, who worked the halls of the Vatican to Fugger's benefit. But when they came up with the indulgence scheme that Luther vilified, it was Zink who negotiated the terms of how that transaction would work, where they would split the money between the Vatican and Fugger.

58:00And Zink, yeah, he was the bag man. He was the lobbyist. Uh, he was the German guy who had the ear of, of the papal officials and, you know, Fugger was willing to bribe. He was willing to do whatever it took to, to get what he wanted. And, uh, zinc was the guy who made it happen in Rome. Well, and, and, uh, sounds like that one guy from game of Thrones or, or, or past Glencore partners. I think the other thing that it made me think a lot about is, you know, the interaction, which was they go to the peasants and you kind of touch on this. I think we're going to come back to this in just a second.

58:40But they go to the peasants and say, this is for St. Peter or St. Peter's Basilica. They were going to rebuild it from its. I think you mentioned it was just wooden. It was nothing. And so it was all under the heading of like, let's put the apostle in a great resting place. That was a small use of the money. and then the profits were split between the Pope and Fugger from there. Yeah. And the Pope really wanted to show his wealth, show his power. Nowadays, you would pay influencers or you would run ads. Or blast off to the moon. Yeah, do something like that. But in those days, you would do it by building something very large that was visible, that people would talk about, that people would travel to see.

59:28uh whoever had the biggest building had the most power or perceived power and so the pope wanted to build this this giant complex in rome he needed though he needed a lot of money to to do it um fuger had had an issue with rome in that one of the electors you know those seven men who decided who would be Holy Roman Emperor, borrowed a bunch of money to bribe people to make himself an elector. He had to pay Fugger back. And in order for Fugger's scheme to enable this guy to pay him back was to raise money with this indulgence program, the Pope signed off on it in return for running his own indulgence program for St.

1:00:19Peter's.

1:00:23And Fugger's people and some huckster priests went around throughout the German countryside and told this story about how if you give money to Rome for this project for St. Peter's, you will reduce your time in purgatory. What the promoters here weren't saying is, well, half of this money would also go to pay back Fugger for the bribes that were paid to make this one guy an elector. But the program had some success. It raised a lot of money. Fugger's people were with the hucksters every step of the way, counting the money, making sure it got to where it would be, keeping the records. And this went on for several months and raised a lot of money.

1:01:14That made both the Pope and Fugger happy and St. Peter's got built. Discuss the idea of usury and why it was an issue in Germany in the early 16th century. Well, in the New Testament, there's a line that says, you know, lend and expect nothing in return. The idea that you could make money from money defied logic for some people because you're not giving someone something that has any tangible value. If you give someone a dollar, if they give you back a dollar, that should be enough. Just like if I give you my car and you give me back another car, that's identical. Now, that's an even split. But in the case of loaning money, I give you a dollar and then you pay me back$1.10.

1:02:11That didn't seem right to a lot of people. And the church didn't like this because the church wasn't all evil. There were some things that they did that were very good, and one was that they tried to protect people from getting ripped off, and this was one way that they did it. Money changers were common, and there were people who charged very high interest rates, and they would ruin their borrowers if the borrower wouldn't pay back. So it was in Rome's interest to try to protect the peasants, and one way of doing that was to outlaw usury. Now, the fact is, borrowing is what makes the world go around.

1:02:58And despite prohibitions from Rome and fears of being excommunicated and all that, money lending was prevalent. and Fugger didn't like the idea that, okay, I'm loaning money, I'm collecting interest, but the Bible is pretty clear that I shouldn't be doing this. It would be really nice for my eternal salvation if I could get the Pope to sanction this. And he worked with the Pope and did favors for the Pope, loaned money to the Pope, essentially bribed the Pope, And the Pope agreed to legalize money lending. And the definition of usury changed. And it was because of these decisions that usury became, or I shouldn't use the word usury, because nowadays usury means loaning at a confiscatory rate.

1:03:58Then it just meant receiving any sort of interest. The Pope signed off on it. That was Poblio. Poblio correctly. He correctly, I think you quoted him in your book. He tied the issue of usury to the risk of the person lending the money. In other words, if you're not taking risk and you're charging, to your point just a second ago, what would be considered confiscatory rates based on the risk you're taking, that is usury. In other words, there's no connection between the risk and the reward versus he talked about the risk. it's strange that you know he was a Medici he was corrupt and yet he was very practical in his approach to the issue of usury well I think you know there were biblical scholars who would look for loopholes and he had good lawyers and they were able to come up with this solution so at whatever Vatican council was that they they devised this idea that you're just talking about Okay, if someone might lose money, then it's okay.

1:05:03How much of the usury debate was actually just class warfare? Well, it certainly morphed into that. There were peasants who were in debt, who lost everything. and by rebelling against the rich, they were hoping that they could expunge their debts and maybe even take power away from those in charge. What made the book sort of interesting from a writing standpoint is I was able to follow this narrative arc beginning from when Fugger had nothing to the point where he become the richest person on earth to the point where he spent the latter part of his life having to defend it. And he has to defend it against what was up to that point, the biggest mass revolutionary effort in the history of man, which was the German peasants revolt, which happened right around the end of Fugger's lifetime.

1:06:16The reason that this was a large revolt rather than something that was just isolated to a single town, a single jurisdiction is, you know, we know about Gutenberg and the printing press. Because of the printing press, the ideas of Martin Luther were able to spread across Europe. The revolutionary ideas of Luther provoked the peasants to rise up against the papacy and their allies, number one being Fugger. So Fugger spent the last portion of his life, as mentioned, trying to hold onto his property in Hungary. Fugger actually had to fortify his home, his palace in Augsburg. Fugger controlled a few little towns around Augsburg.

1:07:12The peasants marched on these towns, tried to take them over, but with superior weaponry and the ability to bribe people and leave them alone, Fugger was able to hold off the peasants. But it got pretty dangerous for Fugger at the end there, but he did manage to survive. Greg, is it possible to make an analogy between indulgences as a way to find salvation and making ESG or climate-oriented investments? Well, yeah, but by the way, one was peasants getting salvation then. Today, it's wealthy people looking down on the rest of society for salvation today, some could argue. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of signifying going on, right?

1:08:02So, yeah, sure. That's one of the things that really came home to me in this book is that technology changes, but human nature doesn't change. The more things change, the more they stay the same, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they were pragmatists, though. They found a common enemy. Teach our listeners about their common enemy. Well, Luther was concerned. He saw that he created a monster, and Luther wanted his own version of Reformation to come into being. The peasants had even more radical ideas than Luther, and there were priests that had views that were even farther to the left than Luther's own.

1:08:52Luther wanted to make sure that Lutheranism prevailed rather than something even more radical. So Luther actually advocated a military force against the peasants to put down those who weren't listening to him but were listening to rival priests. So yeah, Fugger and Luther were aligned when the Peasants' Revolt reached its height. Because of that, the peasants did fail. It was essentially a communist revolution that was going on in Germany, where the peasants wanted to take all the assets of the state and all the rich people distributed amongst themselves and live happily ever after. Luther didn't want that to happen, and Fugger didn't want that to happen, and the emperor didn't want that to happen.

1:09:36because it because that'll always work out wonderfully well um as we all uh can joke about um let's see this might be my favorite line from the book so i have to mention this as kind of our last part um so you did a wonderful job so we go through the election of maximilian as holy roman emperor and then it comes to the point of his son charles and you know he's going through this whole process with the electors and you're back to the you know you talked about the bid him up process that came with that. And I think it was Maximilian told Charles, quote, if you wish to gain mankind, you must play at a high stake, end quote.

1:10:16That is incredible line. I mean, you could just see that rolling right off the tongue of a movie. But it also spoke to how important Maximilian knew that the price of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire was that you needed to pay. Yeah. What's strange about that, being a Holy Roman Empire really didn't do a lot for you. It was, if you could get the people to believe that you were divine and had authority over everyone else on earth, then you could do something with it. But there was too much resistance to that. But to even get to step up and try to make that argument require that you paid and paid and paid.

1:11:03So despite all the sanctimonious talk, at the end of the day, everything came down to money. Let's see, Greg. There's things that we didn't talk about even in our notes here. I was looking back. We didn't talk about how King Francis pretty much ended Switzerland as a warring nation in your book, which I thought was a very interesting little tidbit. which is why they only, you know, and also some of the reasons why they guard the Vatican obviously came from Fugger originally. There's just really great storylines that are very practical for today's society and how we look at things. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about that you do think needs to be mentioned about Fugger, his time, or what he saw?

1:11:43Well, you know, we mentioned double entry bookkeeping, but I think that it's kind of boring, but it was also fundamental to how Fugger was so successful in that unlike the others who were trying to do the same thing that he did, he kept very good records. And whether he was trading textiles or trading copper or silver or whatever, he created the first consolidated balance sheet for everything he did. So he knew every day what his net worth was based on the values that were being paid for his stuff. No one else was doing that. And that gave Fugger the conviction to loan. He knew how liquid he was at all times.

1:12:33He knew how much in the black he was. He knew how levered he could be. And so not only was he a great negotiator and understood the power of engineering and political connections and all that, but he also knew the numbers better than anyone else on earth. And that's why we're able, while I'm able to make the claim that Fugger was the richest man who ever lived, is because we know exactly how much money he had. And if we take that net worth figure from his financial statements at the time of the year that he died, and then adjust that up for inflation, but also do this calculation that is the common way to judge relative wealth through the ages, which is divide the wealth of an individual by the prevailing GDP, you come up with the fact that Fugger in today's dollars would be worth something like$400 billion, I think.

1:13:37And that would put him atop Rockefeller as the richest of all time. Well, yeah, as Buffett says, we play a relative game, to your point. Greg, thank you so much for joining us again. For our listeners, if you want to think about the path to success and wealth in business and investing, you need to go buy a copy of Greg's book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived. Jacob Fugger explains the pragmatism and risk needed for the unknown future that we all must deal with. He also teaches us about the legacy we can leave, as you learn from his legacy to today, and the effect that we can have on the world, even to our discussion that we had prior with you, Greg, on American Rascal.

1:14:19For our audience, if you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, like Greg's, email podcast at smeedcap.com. That's podcast at smeedcap.com. You can also send your suggestions to us on Twitter. Our handle is at smeedcap. Thank you for joining us for the Book With Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode. Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products at SmeadCap.com or by calling your financial advisor.