We all know that, right? But sometimes we forget it and need to be reminded. So I refer you to today’s New York Times (Sat, Dec 17, 2022) to help you remember this important truth.

I start in the upper left: the remarkable story of the president of South Africa and the $600,000 he had hidden in his couch, because he thought it safer there than in his safe.

President Ramaphosa has a lot of money (still does, it appears, even after a total of about $4,000,000 was stolen from his game ranch). His net worth is closer to $500,000,000. He started out as a powerful labor leader, but became involved in owning McDonalds in South Africa, as well as owning one of the largest mobile telephone companies in Africa and Asia, a platinum mine and so much more.

But I digress. Where did the $600,000 come from? Apparently the money (in US dollars, by the way) was brought into the country by a businessman from Sudan, who originally said that it had something to do with a birthday present for his wife, and later said he used it to buy buffaloes (or maybe it was cattle) from someone – he didn’t know there was any connection with Ramaphosa. Uh huh. This is still being entangled, but – in any event – it does raise some important questions: why did Ramaphosa, after the burglary, not report it to the police (or to anyone else?) and why hasn’t he paid taxes on the funds?

And what about the Sudanese business man who brought the money into the country? Well, he’s quite a guy, too. The chairman of the board (does that mean major owner?) of Sudan’s oldest soccer (sorry, futball) team, and very close to the former (discredited) Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, he doesn’t seem to lack for funds. And he is smart enough not to live in Sudan any more, but now lives in – of course – Dubai, where apparently his lifestyle is beyond lush (he is married to a South African woman whose name – Bianca O’Donoghue – and blond hair make her seem an unlikely wife for Sudanese Hazim Mustafa Mohamed Ibrahim – but again I digress. And I leave these two love birds to each other).

At any rate, Ibrahim and Ramaphosa share one trait – fabulous wealth. And money makes the world go round. (One last thing – if you are wondering where Ramaphosa has his game farm, it’s in Phala Phala – which is near Bella Bella, but far from Walla Walla)

I move to the next column. Well, it’s about Elon Musk, who is teetering, perhaps, but still worth about $165,000,000,000 according to Forbes, and is the world’s second richest man as of today. We don’t have to discuss Musk; we all already know too much about him. And will be finding out more. And we all realize that he certainly believes – quite correctly, it appears – that money makes the world go round.

But, to disgress a minute, lest us not forget one thing: a billion dollars equals one million million dollars, so to get $165,000,000,000, take 1 million and multiply it by 165 million. You get the idea?

Musk takes up three columns. The fourth column is about the World Cup. Well, OK, this column is not about the influence of money on the World Cup, but the influence of the World Cup on diplomacy in general. But remember, the recent articles, have been about hidden payments made to EU officials by folks from Qatar – the home of the World Cup this year. and even this article does give some hints at World Cup economics. Did you know that British footballer David Beckham was paid to tout the World Cup this year? Apparently so – to the tune of $12,000,000. (Kinda reminds me of Brett Favre scooping up money from the poor people of Jackson MS.) And as to Beckham, whom did he watch the England-Wales game with? Rep. Ilhan Omar. Fascinating, to be sure.

Below the fold, there’s an article on Ticketmaster. It does talk about the Taylor Swift fiasco, where their computers crashed when too many people wanted to see her (I have never even heard her, but at least I have heard of her), and tickets were being scalped at “markups of tens of thousands of dollars”. Apparently, Ticketmaster now has had a second problem, concerning a Mexico City concert of Bad Bunny (“one of the world’s hottest pop stars”, they say), where people paid close to $1,000 for tickets that the box office scanners falsely said were counterfeit.

Now, you don’t have to be as rich as Musk, or even as rich as Ramaphosa or Ibrahim, to pay $10,000 or $1,000 for a ticket, but – gee – the facts that concerts with tickets going for prices like this sell out does tell you something about how much money is floating around somewhere, no?

Finally, the front page has the required story about the FTX scandal, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who apparently has seen his net wroth plummet to zero from $26,500,000,000 overnight. But this article concentrates not on B-F, but on Ryan Salame (the “e” is silent in Salame), another kid-executive of FTX, whose net worth has also disappeared apparently. A lot has been written about the political contributions of Bankman-Fried to Democrats – this article talks about the mega-contributions Salame has made to Republicans. I must admit to being bored with the executives of FTX – so I just ran through this article. Too quickly.

Yes, there is one more first page story – Russia destroying Ukraine. But that article is too hard to read. I’ll stick to following the money.

(Are my facts here all correct? I strive for 80% accuracy.)