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The Solari Report – 22 Jan 2009
Michael Corleone: “My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.”
Kay Adams: “Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.”
Michael Corleone: “Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?”
— The Godfather, Part I
A true family is a group of people who invest in each other’s skills and future. Within such a family, no person is expendable.
Throughout history, financial wealth has been organized around families. Many of the powerful institutions in our society, in fact, represent intergenerational pools of capital -– for example, the Bechtel Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Glenmede Trust Company
If we are to build a strong economy, it will be made up of strong families. Either families in the traditional sense, or families that we create. Many of us are members of families that, like the Corleone family in The Godfather series, have been torn apart by the manipulation of our ambition, greed, and naivete by powerful financial and business interests. Husbands and wives are turned against one another. Children and parents disappoint each other and grow apart. Sibling rivalry threatens family interests.
Most of us assume that The Godfather films — Part I, Part II, Part III — are movies about an organized crime family. The reality is that we all live inside The Godfather’s world. The Godfather series has much to teach us about navigating in our current environment:
- The double-binds that families and businesses face in the real economy
- The stresses that this places on marriages and children
- How we can reduce the risk of being manipulated and turned against one another
- The important role played by churches, foundations and tax-exempt organizations in controlling and managing intergenerational wealth
- The interconnectedness of street crime to the board rooms of global corporations to the financial markets that trade their securities
In this week’s Solari Report our focus is on “Let’s Go to the Movies.” I have prepared a special report on how The Godfather series can help you understand the risks you and your family manage today and what this means to building real wealth in your household and business.
Note: Solari Report subscribers can now listen to Catherine’s discussion of this topic via MP3 recording. You can subscribe monthly or annually here.
Resources:
Not in the same heavy-hitter league as the movies mentioned here already, but the Brit TV series “Yes Prime Minister” (and its earlier incarnation “Yes Minister”). Very funny, very clever. Just type those names into YouTube search box. I particularly recommend the bitter-sweet The Whiskey Priest
‘Knuckledraggers’ is the slang depreciating term that CIA types call the operatives who must really do some of the hard things the CIA types think up. Term comes from concept sort of, “Anyone who does this must be a gorilla sort with arms so giant that their knuckles drag.”
I am receiving so much help from a person who had to do some truly unspeakable things. He has the biggest heart I have ever seen. It is…., (good Lord where to find an adjective here…!!!).. ‘amazing’ or ‘startling’ or or or…, ‘XXX-something’ to compare this person’s heart and depth and the amount he really does for others with the religious or ‘new age’ types who look down on him. So when you said, “…most generous and most under-appreciated people in our country come from this category, “ all I could say to myself is ‘yes’ ‘yes’ but you must see first hand to understand.
I have been quite a fan of you, as I know we went through some of the same horrors. You have learned things that I must learn. So with this part of the thread strongly feel an inner connection and bond with you.
Michael