Who wants to be a millionaire?

I answered the phone. “Want to meet me and a couple guys for breakfast. We like your idea.”

I hadn’t spoken to Len in decades, much less floated a proposition to him. He was repeating the call he made to me almost twenty years ago, shortcutting the need to explain the purpose of the contact.

Way back when, a change in tax law, among other things, set the financial and real estate worlds on their ears. The government decided it needed to help and formed the Resolution Trust Company (RTC). Bureaucrats at the wheel – there’s only one way this can go.

There’s money to be made in an economic disaster, especially when you have the government involved. I had the germ of an idea, but knew I needed more brains and capital involved to pull it off. And, some people with the guts to roll the dice with me.

I contacted some financial gunslingers I knew. Len was the only one to show any serious interest. He brought in Howie and Jerry. Howie’s extensive knowledge of financial infrastructure would prove to be a critical success factor.

You start with the simple concepts of following the money and playing the niches. In this case, I thought paydirt was in the hotel market. Tax laws had compelled all kinds of investment in building hotels. They were practically stacked on top of each other at the interstate exits.

When the tax wind blew the other way, the owners simply tossed the keys to the banks that had made the loans. Banks wound up owning more hotel property than operators and investors. They were hemorrhaging cash.

It remained to gauge prevailing wisdom and identify the opening. You wanted to know which way most people were going, because smart money would run the other way.

So, I bought and read every financial publication I could lay hands on. The people who don’t know are always anxious to tell you. If they knew, they’d be busy churning property, not writing a column. The people who know aren’t talking. They’re too busy making real dough.

Media has proliferated with the internet, but it’s still easy to track. There’s an army of people who have nothing better to do with their lives than scour the web 24/7 for juicy tidbits of pseudothought and then parrot it in chatrooms , attempting to appear shrewd. They’ll collect all the babble for you. If you want to know what not to do, check out what these losers are espousing. Those in the know won’t be posting their analysis.

I told Len I wasn’t interested this time around. Back then, it was worth it to noodle it out and put all my chips on the line. Now, it’s a different time and I’m in a different place. And no, I haven’t figured it out and am just not publishing it.

If you have the taste for the profit and the risk, wait for the earliest announcement of what the bailout plan will be. Flowchart the movement of the money and monitor the listening posts (SEC filings, etc.) to detect where the smart money is quietly going. And, lay in a supply of Tums to wait it out and see if you read the entrails correctly.

Good luck.