8
TALES FROMTHE FUTURE
hardly ever mentioned in the press. Heitzman strictly observed the rule,
“Never talk about money.”
Way back when, the young Heitzman’s father would give him this advice:
“Let the politicians flicker across the TV screens and the newspaper pages.
Let the presidents and governors talk with the people and give them assur-
ances that their lives will be happy. Let the visible millionaires ride around
in luxury cars surrounded by bodyguards. You, Johnny, you don’t need to do
all of that. You need to always be behind the scenes, controlling the govern-
ments and presidents, the billionaires and the destitute of various countries
by means of your power, the power of money. But they should not have any
idea who’s controlling them.
“This system is exceptionally simple. I created a monetary fund that has
many investors on paper. But in reality, it contains seventy percent of my
own capital, under various different names. On the outside, to the dim-wit-
ted masses, it looks like the fund was created to support developing coun-
tries. But in reality, I created it as a mechanism for collecting payments from
all countries.
“I’ll give you an example. An armed conflict begins between two coun-
tries, and one of them – or more likely, both of them – needs money. Let
them have it, because they’ll pay it back with interest. Social upheaval oc-
curs in some country, and once again, they need money. Let them have it.
They’ll pay it back with interest. Two political forces are fighting for power.
One of them will receive money from our agents, and once again – they’ll
pay it back with interest. Russia alone pays us three billion dollars every
year.”
When he was twenty, John Heitzman was particularly fond of spending
time with his father. One day this father, who had previously always been
strict and unsociable, called John into his office and invited him to make
himself comfortable in a chair by the fire. He himself poured John a cup of
John’s favorite coffee with cream and asked him, with unfeigned interest:
“Do you enjoy studying at the university, John?”
“I don’t always find it interesting, Dad. It seems to me that the professors
don’t always explain the laws of economics in a very clear or comprehens-
