Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
Ive Seen This Movie Before, and Know How It Ends:I Make a Billion Dollars
Ive bought a few thousand books over the years, so I know the process youre going through. Youve checked out the front and back covers, and now want to know: Is this book for real, or is this just another writer hoping to make the Big Time by impressing you with a theory?
Let me save you some time and give you the guts of this book, condensed to the most extreme level. Here goes:
1. Most people think the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. government bailout is a new situation without equal in history. The truth is that a similar event occurred in the 1980s, though on a smaller scale.
2. The last time it happened, I went from being bankrupt to a self-made billionaire by investing in assets the government was liquidating. I used none of my own moneybecause I had no money.
3. This time around, the opportunity is even bigger. Im going to ride it one more time. This book will show you how to ride your own way to enormous wealth.
There you have it. Thats the whole book. If the preceding three paragraphs do not interest you, then I suggest you save your time and put this book down. Go check out a how to get rich quick book by yet another author who wants to become famous and really wealthy, but in reality is neither. Have a nice life.
What? Youre still reading? In that case, you deserve a little more explanation of who I am, and why I am qualified to write this book.
Inc. magazine featured me on the cover as The Billionaire Nobody Knows.
My annual after-tax take-home pay in some years exceeded $100 million.
I was ranked as the 25th-wealthiest person in America, according to one magazine.
I paid cash for my own Gulfstream IV jet, and my private security detail consisted of former Secret Service agents from the presidential detail.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
You may be thinking: Bartmann. Bartmann. Where have I heard that name before? Was this guy one of those rich kids whose daddy handed him the keys to a Ferrari? Was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth?
That would not describe my upbringing. In fact, you know the baseball saying, Three strikes and youre out? I was raised with about 15 strikes already against me:
I was born next to a pig slaughterhouse.
My dad was a janitor and my mom cleaned houses.
We were evicted from two places when I was growing up, because they were declared unfit for human habitation.
I grew up with a pet dognot to be my buddy, but to keep the rats off me as I slept at night.
I lived for months at a time under a bridge viaduct and in a hayloft, and routinely ate out of Dumpsters.
I was a gang member and an alcoholic by the age of 17.
One night, in a drunken stupor, I fell down a flight of stairs and shattered part of my spine. I was told I would never walk again.
I could go on about my sordid past, but you get the idea.
I bring all of this up so you understand that I am not a distinguished professor whos cooked up a great new theory. Theyre a dime a dozen at the bookstore.
Im also not a guy who made it big sometime in the past, but under entirely different circumstances than we face today. Those people are fine subjects for history lessons, but not for getting current, profitable information.
Ill tell you exactly where I was when I decided to write this book: I was on my exercise bike in late 2008, watching the news about the $700 billion government bailout bill that had just passed.
The assistant secretary of the treasury had called a press conference, and was explaining the outlines of the rescue plan the government was unveiling. He said it was a seven-step plan.
By the third step, I could recite out loud each step before he did.
How could I possibly know what the assistant secretary was going to say before he said it?
Because I had seen this movie before, and I knew the ending. The asset disposition plan that the government was unfolding was the same plan it used in the last crisis. It worked fine once before, so they decided to dust it off and use it again.
Please stop for a moment and consider the essence of what I just explained to you:
I made a billion dollars from a standing start (okay, thats not exactly true; I was a million bucks in the hole). I did it without having the benefit of anyone showing me the ropes.
You, on the other hand, are in a much better position right now. An even bigger opportunity is presenting itself, and you have me as your guide.
What Opportunity Am I Talking About?
With one stimulus plan after another, the government is in the process of buying up banks with hundreds of billions of dollars of troubled assets. As youve heard everyone stress, the government wants to get back its couple trillion just as quickly as possible.
That means those banks will soon be dumping unheard-of amounts of assets onto the market at great discounts.
If you know what youre doing (which you will), and know where to look (which you will), you can buy bundles of these opportunities with 100 percent financing. Then you can manage the assets in such a way as to create a steady stream of cold, hard, immediate cash coming to you.
Is it beginning to dawn on you that the few bucks you just spent on this book might be the best investment of your life?
In the following chapters, I describe each aspect of this opportunity in much greater detail. You will see how the whole picture fits together. Youll have a whirlwind exposure to interesting but little-known parts of the world of finance.
The best part is youll close this book with a clear idea of the next steps you can take to make a fortune of your own.
Its time for the very first question I know is on your mind. Throughout this book, Ill stop to answer the questions that alert readers should be asking themselves. Heres the first one:
Bill, if this is such a good opportunity, why would you possibly share it with the world? Why wouldnt you just keep it to yourself?
The answer is simple: Theres plenty of money out there for both of us.
Even when I made my first billion, I was only dipping a spoon into the ocean of dough I saw before me. Years ago I passed the point where I thought that a dollar in someone elses pocket was one less dollar in mine.
Thats poverty thinking. Instead, when youve made a lot of money, you begin to see opportunity everywhere.
Trust me: Im fully capitalizing on the current situation. But even I cannot get my arms around the entire opportunity, all for myself!
How This Book Is Organized
There are specific steps for us to cover in your journey to great wealth. Theres nothing magical about any one of them.
The real magic is in applying all of them fairly quickly, while the window of opportunity is still open. You will see in Chapter 2 that this opportunity is indeed temporary. For very practical reasons, this is not something youll be able to teach your kids to do.
You should also know that you cannot take shortcuts with my system and still get maximum value out of it. You must apply the steps in order.