handclap24

I'm just finishing a busy week visiting the best châteaux of the Loire. Touring these insanely extravagant palaces--and considering the division of economic classes of that time--it occurred to me that most of them were built by bankers and financiers from the courts of the great kings. The parallels between these "hedge-fund managers of the 17th century" and their counterparts today, given the recent political discourse in our country, was fun to ponder.

I had a particularly thrilling experience climbing through the attic of one of these guys and popping out on his rooftop, where I could survey his garden. This was about a century before a "big correction" occurred. Because, back then, there was no political way to reign in these fat cats, the correction was done quite violently. Here's Vaux-le-Vicomte, the home of Louis XIV's finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet.