Chapter 437 |
Grant Darrel Rothschild.
Was it possible that this old man, who seemed to struggle even to move on his own, had been leading the Rothschilds for over half a century?
His body hadn't become this way from old age and illness. Was that why he never left the mansion and avoided meeting people?
The Rothschilds were not just a wealthy family; they were a colossal financial group. Even if he were the eldest son, they would not have entrusted the family to a child born with physical disabilities.
If so, was there another reason that could overcome such a physical impairment? For example, did he possess precognition, just like me?
He looked at me with a clear gaze and asked.
“What does it feel like to see the future?”
I asked him back.
“What about you, Lord Rothschild?”
If he had seen the same things as me, he would have invested exactly as I did in the various events that had occurred. No, being a Rothschild, he would have done much better than me.
However, I was the one who made the biggest profit in the foreign exchange market during Brexit, and I was the one who invested in the Rust Belt and made Ronald the president.
No matter how secretly he might have operated, if someone in the financial market had made as much profit as I did, it's impossible that it would have gone unnoticed.
I could feel a strong sense of longing and envy in his eyes.
“You have what I do not. Something I've searched for my whole life but could never obtain.”
He didn't hide his raw desire. Even with so little life left, could he still covet it so much?
It seemed difficult for him to even speak anymore.
“You will hear the details from this child.”
The Caucasian man wheeled him out again.
Grace Rothschild reached into a drawer under the desk. At that, a bookshelf on the wall slid open, revealing an elevator.
“Follow me.”
Seeing this, I sighed inwardly.
Why do the British love these classic tropes so much?
***
As befitting a basement, there were no windows, and a soft light glowed from the ceiling.
The sight of books lining the shelves was similar. But if the previous room was a study, this place felt more like an archive.
The quiet hum of dehumidifiers and ventilators could be heard. It seemed they were meticulously managing the temperature and humidity.
What is this place?
Before I could ask, she told me.
“This is where the history of the Rothschild family is kept.”
Are all these records left by the Rothschild ancestors?
“You don’t know what we’ve been through. Like other Jewish people, our family was persecuted and wandered for thousands of years.”
The Rothschilds made their formal appearance in history in the 18th century with Meyer Amschel Rothschild. But the family's history must go back much further than that.
I muttered, “The Diaspora.”
“So you know.”
“I’ve done a bit of reading.”
I had looked up some materials on it before.
In 135 AD, following the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, more than half of the Jewish population of Jerusalem was killed. The Roman Empire forbade Jews from entering Jerusalem, and they were forced to leave their homeland, scattering across Europe and North Africa.
Any other people would have vanished long ago.
But the Jewish people were an economic and religious community. That's why, despite being persecuted and scattered for thousands of years, they were able to preserve their culture and beliefs.
The Jews who spread throughout Europe mainly engaged in commerce and industry, maintaining close contact with one another. Then as now, information was money. Thanks to their compatriots in various regions, the Jewish people received information faster than anyone else and used it in their businesses.
As the center of the economy gradually shifted toward commerce, the Jews accumulated enormous wealth. As always, the rich were objects of both admiration and envy. And this resentment manifested in its worst possible form: the Holocaust.
“But we didn't give up. We built a nation for the Jewish people in the land where our ancestors lived and reclaimed Jerusalem.”
After World War I, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a declaration promising the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
The famous Balfour Declaration. The claim that there was a backroom deal with the Rothschild family is not merely a conspiracy theory but is, to some extent, true.
She pulled out a book.
“Would you like to see?”
“Is it alright for me to see this? I'm not part of the family.”
“Of course.”
When I opened the book, a wry smile appeared on my face.
It was filled with characters I couldn't read at all. No, I didn't even know what language it was.
“It's Hebrew.”
After the Babylonian captivity, Hebrew was almost never used in daily life, only in rituals. Modern Hebrew was essentially revived after the establishment of Israel, so if this was written in ancient Hebrew, even an Israeli would find it difficult to read.
“By the way, is it okay to handle this book so freely? It looks like it could tear if I'm not careful.”
They wouldn't actually make me pay for it, would they?
“It doesn't matter. What's important is the content within the book, not the book itself.”
They've probably digitized the contents and stored them separately.
I handed the book back to her.
“More recently, we've been writing in English and German. It's easier to read and write that way.”
“That's a good idea.”
She began to speak, her long, slender, pale fingers gliding over the books.
“There was an ancestor in the Rothschild family who possessed precognition.”
“Who was it?”
“You would know him. Meyer Amschel Rothschild.”
So that was it.
“In any field, there are people who possess abilities far superior to others. It's in the realm of talent, something that can never be caught up to with effort alone. Some are simply born with what others can never obtain, no matter how hard they try or how much they yearn for it. That's why life is unfair.”
Anyone can solve a difficult math problem if they study hard. But not everyone who studies can become a John von Neumann or an Alan Turing.
It's the same for everything in the world.
Is it because others don't try hard enough that they can't swim like Michael Phelps, or because they aren't diligent enough that they can't run like Usain Bolt?
Separate from effort, there are those who are born to do it, and those who are not.
“Unfortunately, in the past, there wasn't much one could do even with precognition. You couldn't go against the powerful just to make money.”
Political power and capital power have always been in conflict. In the past, political power generally had the upper hand. If Korea had been an absolute monarchy and Park Si-hyeong were king, I would have been beheaded long ago.
Success is often determined more by the era and environment than by one's own abilities.
The reason there are more rich people in America and Europe than in Africa isn't because white people are more diligent or intelligent, but because they have more opportunities for a good education and to earn money.
The salaries of baseball and soccer players today are hundreds of times higher than they were 100 years ago. Is that because the players' skills have improved by a factor of hundreds in that time? No, it's thanks to the growth of the leagues and the sports market, and the development of mass media. Now, you can earn hundreds of millions of dollars just by being good at throwing or kicking a ball.
If you were born 100 years earlier, such a talent would have been of little use. A skill in leatherworking or tailoring would have been more practical.
The same is true for investing.
In the past, to buy gold, you had to meet a merchant, negotiate a price, weigh it meticulously on a scale, verify its purity, and hire mercenaries to transport it safely without it being stolen. But now, you just log on to the New York Mercantile Exchange (COMEX) online and place an order.
As the flow of capital has quickened, so has the speed of corporate growth.
In the past, it took decades for a company to grow. You had to buy land, build a factory, hire people, and make and sell a product. But now, a company can grow into a unicorn in just two or three years. Uber surpassed GM and Ford without owning a single car, and Airbnb surpassed Hilton and Marriott without owning a single room.
If I had been born 50 years ago, even with the same ability, the amount of money I could have earned would be less than a tenth of what I have now.
What if I had been born 250 years ago? Could I really have built a fortune with this ability?
The future one can see is limited. To analyze it clearly, you need information. Today, anyone can easily find important information with a few keywords and clicks, but in the past, information was monopolized by a certain class and spread slowly.
“Our ancestor saw a future where the Prussian army would be defeated by Napoleon. But by the time he knew this, it was too late, and King Wilhelm didn't believe him. All he could do was hide the king's assets before the occupation. In doing so, his own family's assets were confiscated.”
Through that event, the Rothschild family gained King Wilhelm's trust and became the managers of the royal family's fortune.
Meyer Amschel Rothschild had precognition, but his descendants did not. However, with a low probability, descendants with exceptionally strong intuition were born.
The branch families founded by descendants with no ability fell into ruin, but they survived through crises and grew their assets.
“Then the current head of the family...?”
“That's right. My grandfather also has a superior intuition for sensing crises than others. That's how he has safely led the family until now.”
In modern society, as the economy has grown and finance has become more complex, crises manifest in more diverse and complicated forms than in the past.
But the result of an investment is one of two things: you make money, or you lose it.
Even without clear foresight, having better intuition than others is a tremendous advantage. In a gamble with 50-50 odds, even a 1 percent increase in your chance of winning means you'll eventually sweep up all the money.
“It sounds like a plausible novel.”
If I went out and told this story exactly as I heard it, how many people would believe me?
“But you know it's the truth, don't you?”
I looked at Grace Rothschild.
It seemed as if she was managing the family's affairs in place of the old and ailing patriarch.
At most, she couldn't have been older than twenty-three. Age doesn't necessarily equate to intelligence, but experience and wisdom are factors that cannot be ignored.
“Did you inherit that ability as well?”
She gave a playful smile.
“Well, for starters, I'm pretty, aren't I?”
Her unexpected answer made me let out an involuntary chuckle.
But it wasn't something to be dismissed as a joke. She truly possessed a doll-like beauty.
Blonde hair like spun gold and blue eyes like faceted sapphires. Her features were like a sculpture, and her skin was flawless, without a single blemish.
There were probably more than a few men who'd lost their hearts to her.
For men or women, beautiful looks are a power in and of themselves. And with the halo of the Rothschild name, even more so.
A prime example of this is the 29th U.S. President, Warren G. Harding.
Considered one of the worst presidents in American history, he showed voters none of the requisite qualities for the office, yet he was elected by an overwhelming margin.
There was only one reason: he had the handsome looks befitting a president. The American people willingly entrusted the fate of their nation to that handsome face.
“When I look at someone, I can vaguely tell whether they will be helpful or not. It's not always perfect, though.”
As the saying goes, ‘personnel is policy.’ The ability to place the right person in the right position is a remarkable talent.
Is that why she's the one meeting people on behalf of the patriarch?
“What about me? Do I seem like I'll be of use to the Rothschilds?”
“Surprisingly, I couldn't feel anything from you. That's why I was certain the moment I met you. Aren't you curious? About what that ability is, and how it came to be.”
Of course I'm curious.
“What's the answer?”
“We don't really know either.”
“...Excuse me?”
It was an anticlimactic answer.
“We've researched this ability for a long time, trying to figure it out. But we haven't discovered a single thing. You know this, don't you? You've undergone tests.”
When I was hospitalized after collapsing in San Francisco, I underwent all sorts of tests at the hospital. But there was nothing that could be considered unusual.
“Precognition isn't related to physical components like the brain or DNA. If it's related to anything, it would be the soul. All we know is that such an ability simply exists.”
But there is no way to analyze the human soul.
A few of my questions were answered, but the biggest one remained.
I asked her, “So, what's the reason you're telling me all of this?”