One day, two rogues appeared at the castle gates and the guards demanded to know who they were. Finally, they called themselves ‘weavers’ after hedging and avoiding questions as to their trade.
They said they could weave the king an elaborate portfolio of clothes from which he would derive pleasure and on which he could claim tax deductions on the interest of the ‘loans’ he’d taken to invest in the weavers’ wondrously complicated products.
Verily, they told him, the most wondrous aspect of these beautiful colours and elaborate patterns was that the magnificent clothes would be invisible to everyone unfit for the office he held, or who was extraordinarily simple in character, or who was in the kingdom’s taxation office.
So the emperor gave large sums of money to the weavers to begin work. They set up their looms and worked busily, though in reality they did nothing at all – except to send the king’s money offshore, over the seas and far away.
They sent messages to the king, saying their returns to him would have a low correlation to the equity and bond indices against which his wardrobe was measured. They assured him their creations would have a positive return in rising or falling markets.
Soon the emperor wanted to see his cloth but he was uncertain because he remembered that a simpleton, or one unfit for his office, or an official from his tax office could not see the manufacture.
He knew he was none of these, however, he sent his faithful old minister to the looms. The minister thought “I cannot see any thread on the looms” but he said nothing.
The impostors named the colours and patterns while the minister listened so he could repeat their words to the emperor.
The whole city spoke of the splendid cloth, so now the emperor himself went to see it. “How is this? I cannot see anything,” thought the emperor. “Am I a simpleton, or am I unfit to be an emperor, or am I a tax gatherer?”
So, he admired the cloth and commanded that complex clothes be made for him from this splendid material for the procession next week.
The rogues worked, cutting the air with their scissors, sewing with needles that had no thread – all the while busily sending the king’s fortune to distant lands in which they had vaults of treasures, hidden by legal structures.
At dawn on the day of the procession they cried: “The emperor’s new clothes are ready!”
The emperor took off all his old clothes – which now looked very tired and simple – and the rogues fitted his new gown before he walked in the procession.
All the people cried out, “Oh, how beautiful are our emperor’s new clothes.”
Then a voice from the Asic family piped up. “But the emperor has no clothes on, and the ‘tailors’ have fled off-shore,” said Greg Medcraft Asic.
There was silence, but gradually some people began to whisper “the king has nothing on”.
The emperor was vexed for he knew the people were right, but the procession must go on. So the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever to appear to be holding up a train, although in reality, there was no train to hold.
And they all lived unhappily – and poorly – ever after.
