Unpacking financial mechanisms through real stories.
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Kanye West went from a multi-billionaire to not being able to use Apple Pay. Adidas put a $75 million hold on four of his accounts.
In the video below, he explains how it happened.
He said he moved $140 million into JPMorgan. He said he was trying to buy his own bank. Then Adidas sent a $275 million bill for marketing funds they had agreed on.
He said he told them he was the marketing. Give him the marketing fund. They froze the money instead.
He said if this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone. Not for stealing anything. Not for hurting anyone. For saying the wrong idea out loud.
He went from having billions in the account to not being able to pay for dinner. The partnership that made the money also controlled whether he could touch it.
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David Meltzer made $34 million in one year. A few years later he lost over $100 million.
Real estate doubled. Everything he owned doubled with it. Then 2008 came. He had a $40 million line of credit at a private bank. He walked in needing $5 million. The bank told him the line was capped at $1 million. He had to reapply. In 2008 that was not happening.
He never asked for help. He thought the line was the line. The bank did not. The economy that paid him $30 million in one year took it back faster than he could borrow against it.
He made it back. He says he would have had about 10 times as much if he had asked someone who understood financing.
Was the $100 million the cost of not asking, or proof that a man who makes $34 million in a year can still go broke the day the bank says the line is not what he thought?
He built 35 software companies. His biggest exit was $670 million.
In the video below, he says where he started.
He was an Army Ranger. He says that was a commitment to poverty. Combat in the Gulf War, 1991. Then software. He did not come from money. He grew up on a farm at the end of a dirt road. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. No water.
You make your money when you exit, he says. Not in the year. In the sale.
He is 67. He says he has about 10 Christmases left.
Was the $670 million the reward for 35 companies, or proof that a man who started with no water can still end up counting the Christmases he has left?
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Colonel Sanders sold KFC for $2 million. Years later the same company sold for $285 million. He stayed on the payroll.
In the video below, a reporter asks him if he feels left out.
He sold it at 73. He had nobody to take it over. The contract made him the quality controller and the face.
He walked into the kitchens and said what he thought. The gravy was wallpaper paste. The new crispy chicken was a damn fried doughball stuck on some chicken. A franchisee sued him for libel. The franchisee lost.
When he opened his own restaurant with his wife, the company sued him. He sued them back for $122 million. They settled and paid him $1 million.
His face stayed on every bucket. His opinion of what was inside it did not.
They wanted his face. They did not want his voice.
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Britney Spears' father paid himself $16,000 a month from her money, $2,000 more than he allowed her, her lawyer said. At 39, she finally got her own ATM card.
In the video below, days after his control ended, she lists what freedom looks like: her car keys, being independent.
The conservatorship began in 2008, when she was 26. Under it, she kept recording and touring for another decade.
A 2021 filing by her lawyer said her father took a 1.5 percent cut of the gross from her Las Vegas residency, at least $2.1 million.
$16,000 a month for him. Roughly $14,000 allotted to her. Both from her money.
In June 2021 she told a Los Angeles judge: "All I want is to own my money."
His side said the arrangement protected her. He wrote that it "helped Ms. Spears get through a major life crisis."
In September 2021, a judge suspended him. In November, the conservatorship ended. Court documents later showed he had made about $6.3 million from it.
He was paid to manage her money. She needed his approval to spend it.
Was the conservatorship protection, or was he simply paid to keep control of the money she earned?
Jerry Lewis left his six sons nothing. Not a dollar of an estate estimated at $50 million.
It all went to his second wife and the daughter they adopted. He put it in writing:
"I have intentionally excluded Gary, Ronald, Anthony, Christopher, Scott, and Joseph and their descendants as beneficiaries of my estate. It is my intention that they receive no benefits."
The will was signed in 2012. He died in 2017, at 91. The six names were the children from his first marriage, to Patti Palmer. They had been married 38 years.
His son Anthony told Inside Edition he already knew he would get nothing. The part that cut was the grandchildren. They were named too. Three of the five surviving brothers were not even invited to the funeral. The ones who were still got nothing.
Anthony had sued his father years earlier on his mother's behalf. He said the choice was let her go on the street, or take his dad to court. The will was the answer.
In the video, he says the will was a dagger in his heart. Watch him, then decide. A father who raised millions for other people's children, or a man who made sure his own would never touch his?
Keep this part. A will does not care who you raised. It only cares whose name is on it.
OkMan retweeted
Scotty Moore made just over $8,000 in 1956 playing guitar for Elvis Presley. Elvis became a millionaire.
In the video below, Moore recalls the night in 1968 when Elvis traded him an acoustic for his electric guitar. It was the last time they played together.
In 1954, Moore and bassist Bill Black played on Elvis's first record. Elvis took a double share of every fee, Moore and Black one each. Moore was also his first manager.
Then Colonel Tom Parker took over the career for 25 percent of Elvis's earnings. The band went on salary, $200 a week on the road, $100 at home and a $1,000 Christmas bonus.
Moore said they asked for more for a year and a half and got one raise of $25. He said Parker told them they had to be ready to quit to get a raise from Elvis.
In September 1957, they quit. "I don't believe Scotty and I could raise more than 50 bucks between us," Black told reporters. Elvis told the Memphis paper they had never asked him for a raise, and if they had, they would have got it.
When Elvis moved to Las Vegas in 1969, he hired a new band. Moore put his guitar away for nearly 25 years.
$200 a week. 25 percent.
Parker kept his commission. Moore kept his salary.
"We couldn't go talk to Elvis and talk about anything," Moore said in 1997.
Was Elvis a young star who let Parker run everything, or did he simply decide the men from his first record could be replaced?
OkMan retweeted
Johnny Depp made roughly $650 million from films. His former managers said he was spending $30,000 a month on wine. He called that number insulting.
In the video below, he explains why.
He said it was not $30,000 a month on wine. He said it was far more.
He said it was not $3 million to shoot Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon. He said it was $5 million. The extra cost came from wanting the flight path to go higher than the Statue of Liberty.
His managers also listed an $18 million yacht, a failed record label, private planes, security, and a staff of 40. Depp did not dispute most of the list. He only corrected the two numbers he thought were too low.
He said it was his money. If he wanted to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, that was his thing.
The managers said he spent $2 million a month. Depp said the wine number alone was already wrong.
The money left. The corrections stayed.
Masayoshi Son lost $70 billion. It is the largest personal loss ever recorded.
In the video below, he is asked how it felt.
A year earlier his net worth had been rising by about $10 billion a week. For three days he was richer than Bill Gates. He says he had not even told anyone. Then the stock started falling.
SoftBank had poured money into internet companies at the top of the market. In six months the share price dropped 99%. The company nearly went bankrupt. He later called it the greatest loss any person had ever taken.
He did not talk about the number. He talked about surviving it.
What the clip does not say is what he did next. In 2000, while the stock was still on the floor, he put about $20 million into Alibaba. Jack Ma had no business plan and almost no revenue. That stake later became worth tens of billions and pulled him back.
He is a billionaire again. The 99% did not come back. The Alibaba check is the reason people still ask him for money.
Was the $70 billion the price of betting the whole company on the internet, or proof that a man who can lose that much and sit there calmly was never playing with money he could not replace?
OkMan retweeted
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick lost most of their money to Bernie Madoff. Estimates put the loss around $30–40 million.
In the video below, he talks about what happened next.
He said they had most of their money in Madoff. He said if something is too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
He said when it happened they looked at each other and said that sucks. Then they rolled up their sleeves and got back to work. Their kids were healthy. They could still both work.
He said there were people who got hit much harder. Old people. People whose retirement funds were completely gone.
He said they got a portion of some money back. The rest was never real. It was a number on a piece of paper.
The money disappeared. The ability to make more did not.
In August 1990 Donald Trump owed roughly $3 billion. The banks had just restructured his debt.
In the video below, Barbara Walters asks him about being on the verge of bankruptcy. He corrects her.
He said the deal he worked out with the banks was a great victory. He said the country was not in a recession. It was in a depression. You go with the punches.
The Taj Mahal had just opened. It was already barely breaking even. His other two casinos were down. The banks could have forced him into bankruptcy. They chose to restructure instead.
He kept saying the assets were fine and the press was the problem.
The man had just been restructured and still called it a win.
Nicolas Cage owed about $6 million after the real estate market crashed. He never filed for bankruptcy.
In the video below, he explains how he got out of it.
He said he was overinvested in real estate. Castles in Germany and England, a mansion in New Orleans, a private island. The market crashed and he could not get out in time.
He said it was not because he spent $80 on an octopus. He said he had a pride thing. He wanted to work his way through it.
He moved to Las Vegas and started making three or four movies a year. Some of them were crummy. He said work was his guardian angel. Even if the movie was bad, he still cared.
He paid them all back. It took years.
The houses stayed on the market longer than he expected. The work did not.
OkMan retweeted
In 1990 Donald Trump owed $3.4 billion. He was personally liable for $800 million of it.
In the video below, he sits in Trump Tower and speaks with total confidence while his empire is on the verge of collapse.
The Taj Mahal casino had just opened with massive junk bond debt. Revenues were already falling short. Contractors weren’t getting paid. Regulators were warning of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization.
Yet Trump didn’t flinch. He talked big picture, taxes on Japan, and rebuilding America like nothing was wrong.
A year later the Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. Then Trump Castle and Trump Plaza followed. The banks eventually restructured his debt because his name was still worth more alive than dead.
The man was $3.4 billion underwater and still acted like he owned the room.
Mike Tyson made more than $300 million over his career. In 2003 he filed for bankruptcy with $23 million in debt.
In the video below, he talks about where the money went.
He said he never learned how to handle money. He came from nothing and had no idea what to do with it when it arrived.
He spent $42 million on cars and motorcycles in one stretch. He gave cars to 15 women and two men. One person crashed a Rolls-Royce and told the police to keep it.
He said he was spending $240,000 a month just in walking-around money. Nearly $100,000 a month on jewelry and clothes. More than $400,000 on pigeons and cats.
He said he was just living his life. He did not think the money would run out. When it did, most of the people around him were gone.
He had so much he could do almost nothing with it. Later he had almost nothing and could do more.
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MC Hammer made roughly $33 million in two years at his peak. By 1996 he owed $13.7 million and filed for bankruptcy.
In the video below, he explains where the money went.
He said everybody knew he had 200 employees. It was not a secret. Somebody had to pay that payroll. It was not hamburgers.
He said he was calling home from the road and finding out people he grew up with were dead. Neighbors. Classmates. He started bringing them out on tour and putting them on salary so they would stop killing each other.
He said the amount of money he was generating was worth the lives to him. Ten thousand turned to twenty. Twenty turned to thirty. He was fine with that.
He said if he had to do it over again, people would tell him to keep some of the money. He said he would not trade the lives for the cash.
The payroll stayed. The money did not.
Gary Coleman made $70,000 to $80,000 a week as a teenager. By his 30s he was working as a security guard.
In the video below, he talks about the money and the lawsuit with his parents.
His parents managed his earnings. California law required 25% of his income to be set aside for his future. That money disappeared.
In 1989, at 21, he cut them off and sued his parents and his former business adviser. A judge later ruled they had taken some of his earnings and awarded him nearly $1.3 million. Six years after that he filed for bankruptcy.
He said he did not like talking about money. He hated talking about money. He just said it had been many millions.
The people who took the biggest cut were the ones who were supposed to protect it.
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Warren Buffett said the holder of a 30 year mortgage has the best deal in the world. The bank that made the loan has one of the worst.
The borrower can call off the deal ten minutes later if rates drop. The bank is stuck with it for thirty years.
One side keeps the option. The other side keeps the risk.
He said he loves the program that produces those mortgages. He thinks the country is better off because of it. He just does not want to hold any of them himself.
Berkshire, with its credit, cannot get a better rate on a 30 year loan than a qualifying homeowner.
The borrower kept the right to walk away. The bank kept the loan.
Peter Lynch sold Toys R Us. After he sold, the stock went up by roughly $2 billion in market value.
In the video below, he says that was one of the two biggest mistakes he ever made.
He did the same thing with Home Depot. The company kept growing for years after he was out.
In the stock market, he said, all you can lose is 100 percent. He had done that. The expensive mistakes were the ones where a good company kept climbing after he had already sold.
He said he had to figure out what inning he was in. With a cyclical company you wait for the bad news to turn and then you sell. With a growth company the question is different.
Walmart was public for ten years and still only in 15 percent of the country. An investor who bought then and held could have turned $10,000 into about $5 million.
His rule for selling was not a price. It was whether the reason he bought was still true.
Was the fortune in picking the right companies, or in not selling the ones that were still growing?
@HeroOkMan
OkMan retweeted
An Hermès heir tried to leave about $7 billion to his gardener. The family was not in the will.
In the video below, the fight is over a man who wanted to adopt the person who cut his grass.
Nicolas Puech owned roughly 5.7% of Hermès. Reports put that stake around $12 billion. A decade earlier he had promised it to a foundation for journalism.
Then he changed his mind. He asked a Swiss court to let him adopt his Moroccan gardener, a man in his 50s who had worked for him for years, along with the gardener's wife and children. Adoption was the route around a will the family could challenge.
The foundation said the shares had already been pledged. Puech said the stake was missing. The court refused the adoption.
The nephews were never the argument. The argument was a man with no children trying to make one on paper so the money would not go back to Hermès.
Was he paying the only people who stayed, or trying to move a family fortune to a stranger the courts would not let him call a son?