Then there is the curious class of people who seldom spend their own money at all. These are the gentlemen of leverage, the borrowers of other men's patience, who have understood that capital, like a horse, is best ridden and not owned. For such a man, money stops being the limiting factor somewhere around the third refinancing. And here the comedy turns quietly into tragedy, or perhaps the reverse. Having freed himself from the scarcity of coin, he runs straight into the older scarcities that no instrument can securitise: time, health and the strange, perishable faculty of enjoyment.
Step back far enough and the private drama of the purse gives way to something grander and more insect-like. The world economy is a vast hive, or rather a confederation of hives, each humming at its own pitch. Some are dense with honey and frantic with guards. Others are lean, industrious and largely ignored. Between them flow the great invisible rivers: cotton that becomes a shirt in one country, a label in a second and a markdown in a third; oil that leaves a desert as wealth and comes home as a motorway; copper pulled from one continent's hills to carry the conversations of another. Watch the traffic closely and a hierarchy of motion appears. Capital travels first class, without a passport, at the speed of a keystroke. Goods travel second, in steel boxes, with paperwork, tariffs and the occasional delay at a customs house staffed by a man who has not been happy since 1994. People travel last, and with the greatest suspicion of all. A billion dollars may cross a border before breakfast. The man who earned a small fraction of it may wait eleven years for a visa interview.
Beekeepers know that the guards at a hive's entrance examine each arrival by scent. A stranger who comes with empty legs is driven off. A stranger who comes heavy with nectar is often, after a moment's diplomatic hesitation, let in. Nations, for all their constitutions and anthems, are not so different. The investor visa, the golden passport, the "talent" category: these are simply the scent of nectar, formally certified. Wealth is the one accent that every border understands.
