A fascinating article from Vanity Fair about Marc Dreier. I’m not sure which is more unbelievable – that he created fictitious Solow notes or that the likes of GSO (a division of Blackstone) bought them by the tens of millions with, it seems, little to no diligence at all. Dreier used the stolen money primarily to buy lots and lots of material objects – art, a plane, houses on the beach, a yacht and seemingly all because he measured his self worth on how much money he had.
It’s a stretch to mention Buffet and Dreier in the same post but I’m also reading the fascinating – though long – book “The Snowball” about Buffet. What’s interesting is that despite endless amounts of money, Buffet has really not spent much money at all on material things. He, rather famously, still lives in the same house he bought decades ago. The one expensive thing he has bought is a private jet which is really his buying time or said another way, buying experience. Spending money is a deeply personal decision but my experience has been that spending money to make experiences and memories is far more satisfying than using money to buy unnecessary possessions.
