Read the whole story – the dessert is at the end
A Modern Robber Baron in a Cowboy Hat
J.R. “Rusty” Calhoun III wasn’t born poor, but he sure made a fortune off people who were. He wore snakeskin boots, chewed a Churchill cigar, and had a God-given talent for finding oil—and gutting companies like cattle at a rodeo. But Rusty didn’t drill holes in the ground. He drilled holes in balance sheets. He didn’t pump oil—he pumped value straight out of businesses, leaving hollow shells and broken pensions in his dust trail.
They called him a “capitalist visionary.”
The truth? He was a financial demolition expert with a billion-dollar smile.
Chapter 1: The Shell Game
Rusty’s game started simple. Find a struggling but still valuable oil exploration firm—one with good cash flow, solid land leases, and maybe just a little bad PR. Then:
- Create a shell company with no assets and a fancy name like Prospect Ventures, LLC.
- Get a loan from the bank using the target company’s own expected future earnings as collateral.
- Buy the company using that debt.
“You used their own money to buy them?”
“You’re damn right,” Rusty would grin. “Ain’t America grand?”
Chapter 2: Strip and Flip
Once the company was his, Rusty gutted it with surgical precision:
- He sold off the drilling rights to another shell company he owned.
- He auctioned the machinery and leased it back—at high interest.
- He fired half the staff and cut exploration budgets to the bone.
- Then he had his parent company charge consulting and restructuring fees so outrageous they made Enron blush.
One former employee said, “We used to pump oil. Now we just pump money… to Rusty.”
Chapter 3: The Exit Plan That Was Always the Plan
Here’s where it gets evil-genius level:
- Rusty merged the shell company and the oil firm after the deal.
- Now, the company itself was on the hook for the debt used to buy it.
- When the default came—and it always did—Rusty walked away clean.
He’d already moved the valuable parts into other shell companies. What was left—debts, lawsuits, broken promises—got flushed in bankruptcy court.
The pension fund? Gone.
The workers? Unemployed.
Rusty? On a yacht with a senator and a bottle of Scotch.
Chapter 4: How the Banks Helped (and Got Paid)
Banks didn’t care. In fact, they loved Rusty.
- They made money on origination fees, interest, and restructuring consulting.
- Then they bundled the loans into junk-rated bond packages and sold them off to pension funds, mutual funds, and ETFs.
- “We disclosed it was high risk,” they said. “We didn’t say what kind of risk.”
- When it all fails the US taxpayer bails out the bank, the last investor losses.
Rusty called it “financial pass-the-hand-grenade.”
The last one holding it? The working-class investor saving for retirement.
Epilogue:
Rusty’s still out there. Still in Texas. Still wearing those boots.
He’s not afraid of regulators—he funds them.
He doesn’t break the law—he buys the gray areas.
The oil may run dry.
The towns may shut down.
But Rusty will still be rich.
Because in his America, capitalism isn’t about building—
It’s about stripping it for parts and selling the bolts.
🏦 The Brutal Capitalist Hall of Fame
A mix of real and fictional titans who could buy your company, gut it, and sell the bones before lunch.
1. Carl Icahn – The Activist Wrecking Ball
- Famous For: TWA, Apple, and raiding just about anything that moves.
- Style: Buy in, stir chaos, cash out.
- Quote: “Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make money studying natural stupidity.”
2. Henry Kravis & George Roberts (KKR) – The LBO Godfathers
- Famous For: RJR Nabisco ($25B deal in the ‘80s).
- Style: Leveraged Buyouts (LBOs) that use debt like dynamite.
- Legacy: Turned Wall Street into a battlefield.
3. Michael Milken – The Junk Bond King
- Famous For: Inventing the junk bond market and funding the takeover boom.
- Downfall: Fraud conviction in 1989. Later, philanthropy redemption arc.
- Legacy: High-risk, high-reward financing that reshaped finance.
4. T. Boone Pickens – The Cowboy Capitalist
- Famous For: Mesa Petroleum, shareholder activism, and the Pickens Plan.
- Style: Oil wildcatter turned corporate raider turned energy reformer.
- Quote: “The older I get, the more I see a straight path where I want to go.”
5. Wilbur Ross – The King of Bankruptcy
- Famous For: Buying failing steel and coal companies for pennies, flipping for billions.
- Later Role: U.S. Commerce Secretary under Trump.
- Style: Calm, cold, and calculated. Always reading the obituary section.
6. “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap – The Grim Reaper of Wall Street
- Famous For: Mass layoffs at Scott Paper and Sunbeam.
- Style: Cut first, explain later.
- Downfall: Accusations of accounting fraud. Career ended as fast as his cuts.
7. Andrew Beal – The Recession Opportunist
- Famous For: Buying distressed assets during financial panics.
- Style: Vanishes during booms, strikes during bloodbaths.
- Nickname: “The Lone Wolf Banker.”
8. Elon Musk – The Chaos Capitalist
- Famous For: Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter/X.
- Style: Product genius meets unfiltered flamethrower.
- Legacy: Breaks the rules… and the internet.
9. Larry the Liquidator (from Other People’s Money) – Fictional, But Too Real
- Played by: Danny DeVito.
- Famous For: Gutting New England Wire & Cable.
- Quote: “I make money. You make money. And all it costs is a little piece of your soul.
- Style: Greed in a cheap suit, but with killer lines and a gleeful smirk.
Love them or hate them, these players are a force in the market. They clean up other people’s mistakes—much like sharks cleaning the ocean of the weak or careless. They’re alpha predators. You can’t take what they say at face value, and yes, many of them are ego-driven, eccentric, even narcissistic. But don’t mistake that for stupidity. When they make moves in the economy, their actions usually speak louder than their words—and often reveal the truth.
Now, if you despise them, ask yourself: Why are they allowed to operate this way?
The answer is simple—the banks and the politicians.
It’s legal. It’s encouraged. And it’s profitable—for everyone in the loop. When the music stops, it’s the taxpayer who foots the bill, thanks to bailouts courtesy of those same politicians.
I’m a capitalist. I believe in buyer beware. But let’s be clear: this system only exists because our government refuses to let the big players fail. If banks and financial firms were truly held accountable—if executives and board members were personally liable for reckless decisions—these deals wouldn’t happen. Risk has been divorced from consequence. And until that changes, the sharks will keep circling.
Many years ago, I had a customer named Marcello. At the time, he was buying commercial buildings on Brickell—one of the most prestigious office districts just south of downtown Miami. He was on his third purchase, and this one was making headlines: he paid what was then a record $14 million for the building.
I asked him, “How do you know it’s a good deal? How do you know you’ll be able to sell it for more? Isn’t $14 million too much for this place?”
Marcello was about ten years older than me, clearly wealthier—though I figured much of it was family money or someone else’s backing. Still, he had that calm, unshakable confidence that money often buys. He just smiled and said, “Let me tell you the sardine story.”
“One day, a guy comes up to you on the street and says, ‘I need the money, so I’m selling this special can of sardines. These are the world’s best sardines—but don’t eat them. They’re an investment. One day, they’ll be worth a fortune.’
So you buy it for $10—a princely sum for a can of sardines. A few years go by. You get tired of staring at this fancy tin and decide to put it up on eBay. To your surprise, someone buys it for $50.
You feel like a genius. Five times your money!
That guy sells it a year later for $100. Then one day, you run into someone selling the same exact can for $200. Curious, you ask if he wants to hear the story behind it.
He listens. And suddenly, disheartened by the fact that he paid $200 for what started as a $10 can of fish, he decides, ‘You know what? I’m finally going to taste these legendary sardines.’
He opens the can… and they’re rotten.”
Then Marcello looked at me and said, “That’s the thing. Some things are only worth something as long as no one actually opens the can.”
That story stuck with me. It’s why I stay away from overhyped stocks, too-good-to-be-true investments, and anything that only holds value if you never look too closely and I don’t eat sardines.
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