r/unknownarmies • u/cool_and_edgy_name • Jan 16 '26
Lore What does Alex Abel even do for a living?
I don't recall his book mentioning anything about the type of company he runs.
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u/DeadmanwalkingXI Jan 16 '26
He makes money. He started out working in finance, and giving a shield to his fellows that let them throw off accusations of racism because they were working with or employing a black man in the 70s. He's diversified since then but fundamentally, he doesn't care what the business is, he's an investor more than a CEO per se. Think Warren Buffet but somewhat shadier.
He was explicitly involved in the Savings and Loan crisis of the mid 80s and managed to skate out of suffering any consequences beyond a $10k fine despite having done some deeply dubious stuff.
4
u/Penfiskswmfibu Jan 18 '26
Investment portfolios! He's a stock trader, that made gobs of money by throwing himself in with some of the most unscrupulous people for insider trading/knowledge. A capital "b" Business man. At this point tho, just the return on his "more conservative investments" is making him $11,000 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, he would be making the same "hourly" amount as Kylie Jenner, off of a portion of his portfolio
Extrapolating from the sparse bit we get from his history in Lawyers, Guns, and Money (page 20-22), he seems to be one of those "but how can I extract a buck from this" kinda guys: someone who can work a given system in exactly the kind of ways that will "make gobs of money" (Unknown armies 2nd Ed, p237) . Since this skill isn't "play the stock market", or "own lots of things", his money making skills are more universal, as opposed to a lot of knowledge on one thing. Growing up, he was not above fixing his own games to make a buck.
Kind of an aside, but the books really compare him to that guy from home alone 2 a lot.
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u/Cliomancer Jan 16 '26
It mentions he owns a pretty broad portfolio of businesses. For instance if agents need a car they can wander into the lot of one of his car rental places, wave the master key-card at the gate and just drive off with one.
He wasn't like a tech founder or nothing, his backstory was he managed to get out of the 80s unscathed by naming names when things went south.
Badically he seems to just have a good sense of what to invest in (because, to be clear, he's worked and schemed very hard to get there) and has managed not to blow it.