November 25, 2024
Gordon Gray: Filthy Lucre Financial Bubbles and Scams 

There is a long history of money taken under fraudulent purposes.  The term, “Filthy Lucre,” (money earned immorally or dishonestly) comes from Paul’s Epistle to Titus in the New Testament.  Why do people fall for such schemes?  The author Yuval Harari states that “Money has value only because we believe it has value.” Money is, therefore, a matter of shared belief and trust.  The writer Jacob Goldstein asks: “The thing that makes money money is trust…but one of the perpetual questions that still hovers over money is: Who can we trust?”  “Filthy Lucre: Financial Scams and Bubbles” will introduce a few instances, both historical and current, where trust was misplaced. 

This is interesting:

Born in the Yukon Territory and spending much of his childhood living on a boat on Canada’s west coast, Gordon Gray received a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles. After a decade working in broadcasting and college teaching, he changed careers to become an accountant (CGA, CPA). and a sessional instructor with UBC Continuing Studies. His enthusiasm for a new career in accounting arose when he and his wife Kathleen were living in Sointula, a small island fishing village near Port Hardy.  Needing a job one summer, he took a position as a shoreworker with a local fishing company, where his job was to unload salmon from fish boats, two at a time, 10-12 hours per day.  While his pay cheques helped, he and his wife buy materials for the house they built, a summer spent up to his waist in fish convinced him that accounting might be far more exciting than he had imagined.  He still has his fish boots, the boots are still covered with scales, and he has since recounted his fish story to many, many accounting students.

After more than two decades in business education, Gordon took early retirement and returned to university at SFU to study languages and humanities.  He received an MA in Humanities in 2013 for his thesis on the 12th-century English ecclesiastic and diplomat, John of Salisbury.

Following a two-year retirement sabbatical in Paris, he is now an independent scholar of the history of philosophy and teaches regularly in SFU’s Program 55+.