Hunger that Devours

Before Richard Whitney ever disgraced himself and the New York Stock Exchange, he was its golden boy.

Born into wealth in 1888 and educated at Groton and Harvard, Whitney belonged to that class of East Coast aristocracy who seemed preordained for success. He carried himself like it. He dressed impeccably. He spoke with certainty. And when he walked the marble halls of Wall Street, he radiated the type of quiet power that made others defer.

In 1930, just months after the stock market crash of '29, Whitney was named president of the NYSE. He was a reassuring figure during uncertain times—gravel-voiced, confident, and polished. At the height of the panic, he’d famously strode onto the floor of the Exchange and placed a large order for U.S. Steel well above market price, single-handedly helping to steady a freefalling market. The public saw him as a symbol of market stability. Wall Street saw him as a savior.

But behind the marble walls, Whitney was unraveling.

He had married into the even wealthier Vanderbilt family, and he worked tirelessly to maintain a lifestyle befitting that name. Townhouses, horses, clubs, staff, art—there was no such thing as enough. And while he earned a substantial income as a bond broker, it wasn’t nearly enough to support his appetite for prestige.

So he borrowed. Then he embezzled.

He skimmed funds from the New York Yacht Club, from his father-in-law’s estate, and from customers of his firm. Eventually, in one of the more brazen moves, he stole over $800,000 in bonds from the New York Stock Exchange’s own Gratuity Fund—a fund meant to support widows and orphans of deceased members.

In March 1938, the truth came crashing down. Whitney was arrested, convicted of embezzlement, and sentenced to five to ten years in Sing Sing prison. The newspapers, which once lauded him as the face of Wall Street's rectitude, now plastered his name alongside the word "thief." He served just over three years before being released for good behavior. Afterward, he lived quietly, managing a dairy farm in Massachusetts—his old life gone, his name permanently stained.

His undoing wasn’t a bad bet or a sudden market turn. It was hunger. The kind that doesn't know how to stop.

Which brings us to another man, one not born on Wall Street, but in the pages of myth.

His name was Erysichthon.

In the ancient Greek telling, Erysichthon was a Thessalian prince cursed by the gods for his arrogance. When he needed wood to build a feast hall, he set his sights on a grove sacred to Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. Warnings were issued. The locals begged him to reconsider. But Erysichthon laughed and took an axe to the oldest, largest oak in the grove.

As the blade bit into the sacred tree, blood spurted from its bark. The priests wailed. Demeter seethed.

So she cursed him.

The punishment was simple: hunger. Not ordinary hunger, but a divine, insatiable hunger. No matter how much he ate, he starved. No matter how much food he devoured, his belly roared louder. He bankrupted himself buying food. He sold his lands, his house, his belongings. At last, he sold his daughter into slavery for a handful of coins, just to buy one more meal. But even that couldn’t fill him.

And still, the hunger gnawed.

In the end, driven mad and destitute, he consumed himself.

It’s easy to dismiss mythology as fantasy. But stories like Erysichthon’s survive precisely because they still echo. Richard Whitney never lifted an axe against a sacred oak, but he did violate something sacred—trust. And he did so not out of desperation, but out of the same kind of ravenous craving for status, appearance, and more. Always more.

That craving, left unchecked, is corrosive.

In both stories, we see the same arc: someone who already has more than most, but cannot abide the idea of limits. And so they reach, and stretch, and take—until there’s nothing left.

The financial lesson is as old as these stories. Spending beyond your means doesn’t just jeopardize your future—it distorts your present. It creates a life built on illusion, propped up by debt, deception, or denial. The tragic irony? The more we chase, the less we appreciate. The fuller our plates, the emptier we feel.

True contentment rarely comes from getting more. It comes from needing less.