Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2013, on 22 February 2013, in the first weeks of the Bárcenas scandal. The 22 million found in Switzerland, his claim of 6 million euros from two trades in 2007, and the PP’s shifting stance describe that moment. Later developments, including his imprisonment in 2013, are not reflected.
Most of us remember the fictional character Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas. In Wall Street 2 (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), we saw how Mr. Gekko started with $100 million (around the time his daughter got pregnant) and, after a few trades, turned it into $1.1 billion before she gave birth. In other words, in less than nine months. That’s nothing less than a 1,000% return, which, frankly… isn’t bad at all. Of course, for Mr. Gekko that’s a piece of cake.
I know many of you will think that’s fiction and very hard to pull off in the real world. I thought so too, until I came across Luis Bárcenas, a very modest investor with surprising potential: a stock market visionary, a financial guru, a genius, an investment wizard. Bárcenas admits he’s been a “bad boy” when it comes to paying his taxes, but says the 22 million found in Switzerland is clean money that comes from his investing skills. Skills that would leave Gordon Gekko himself in the dust. What’s more, if Benjamin Graham rose from the grave, The Intelligent Investor would probably be a very different book.
Mr. Bárcenas says that in 2007 he made 6 million euros on the stock market with just two trades. My question would be whether he managed to catch the one small rebound that year, which honestly was barely worth the trouble, or whether he took advantage of the sharp fall at the end of the year instead. A huge amount of money was made there, of course, by betting against the market, what’s known as going short or bearish. If he made his money by going short, I take it he saw the coming crisis and took positions like the investment guru he is.
These things happen. After all, if Carlos Fabra has won the lottery seven times, why shouldn’t Mr. Bárcenas make 6 million euros in two trades?
Still, if he ever decides to publish a book on how he did it, what he invested in and how, I promise to buy it.
Bárcenas is one of the most powerful men in Spain
If information is power, Mr. Bárcenas is right now one of the most powerful men in Spain, since he allegedly holds information about who gave money to the PP (the Partido Popular, Spain’s governing conservative party at the time) and who received money from it.
The Partido Popular is more cornered than ever, because whatever it does about Bárcenas, the public won’t forgive it. If Bárcenas doesn’t end up in prison, people will explode, and they’ll be able to say loud and clear that justice in this country is rotten. And if Bárcenas is jailed, he’s not the type to go down alone, so he’ll bring to light whatever he’s been keeping as his personal insurance.
Even so, the Partido Popular has handled the Bárcenas case terribly. First they defended him tooth and nail, then they fired him but he kept working for the party (a sham dismissal), then they defended him again, then nobody knew anything (“we have no record of it”), and in the end they filed a complaint against him.
And people say reality can’t outdo fiction.
Featured image: tunguska from Logroño, Spain, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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