Let's say you invest $15 million in a fund or a company or something, and they are sending you statements that your investment has ballooned to $115 million, and then you find out the whole thing was a sham, or a ponzi scheme, or cooked books, or whatever.
How much money have you lost?
$115 million?
or
$15 million?
Cash losses versus "on paper" losses.
Perhaps you went to a bank and borrowed $20 million against your $115 million "paper" assets. Then you went and built a house in Aspen, bought and berthed a yacht in the Med, bought trophy wifey a $50,000 fur coat and spent another $1,950,000 to keep her in the style to which she is accustomed - furnishing the house, art, clothes, Hummers, Bentleys, mani's, pedi's, Jorge the pool boy and all that shit.
So I suppose now you are technically out $35 million. Your company is busted. Your real assets are being repo'd by the bank - the house is gone, the yacht, commercial buildings, equipment, the fur, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.
I wonder if trophy wifey is sticking by your side? Through good and bad, for richer for poorer, right?
I suppose things could get bad enough to throw yourself under a train. I dunno.
Sad.
It's only money.
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