During my sixth (or seventh... hell, I lost count, but it's still awesome) binge of this show, toward the end, I couldn't help but think of this.
According to the unofficial Breaking Bad timeline and accompanying plot synopsis, Walt and Todd cook in Vamonos Pest houses for roughly three months, working with Declan and Lydia. There are a few items of note here:
• During the first house-cook, Walt & Jesse's ~50 pounds bring $1.379 million after the dealers got their cut. If that cut is 30%, that means the gross take of the cook is that same $40,000 per pound price-point for Walt's product, and they grossed $2 million for that first batch
• If Walt is getting exactly that same amount when cooking with Todd -- it is later revealed to be about $80 million -- and without any extra costs for Todd, the Vamonos Pest guys, Lydia's cut to handle logistics with the Czech Republic (she negotiated 30%), and still producing a 50-pound batch per cook, it would take at least 40 cooks in the 3 months to get to that level
• Since that number (40) is unrealistic to cover all of the additional fees, let's call it 65 -- that's enough to handle Lydia's 30% deal and also pay Todd & the Vamonos guys
• This isn't the point of this post, but let's see what those numbers look like. 65 cooks @ 50 pounds per cook @ $40K/pound gross = $130,000,000. Lydia clears $39 million, and while I'm sure a good chunk of that goes to the various players in her line of work (freight forwarders, Czech dealers, etc.), I'm sure she kept at least $10 million for herself. Todd & the bug guys also keep about $10 million for their own efforts, which is kinda ridiculous for three months worth of work
• Regarding that timeline, if they're going to cook 65 batches in 3 months (13 weeks), that's 5 batches per week, which means the Vamonos guys must have really started ramping up their own bug extermination business simply to provide enough locations for Walt & Todd to do their business. Walt probably had multiple sets of equipment so he could have two or three houses with in-progress batches at once, bouncing around from house to house until they're all finished. Insert whatever other assumptions you'd like here.
Now that all of that is established, which may be worth discussing in more detail by itself, I wanted to bring up Jesse's slave duties with the Nazis, and how much money they were sitting on by the time Walt reappears in Albuquerque.
First, they took most of Walt's money. Seven barrels with $80 million total = about $11-12 million per. They left one Barrel for Walt, meaning they likely collected about $68 million in the desert.
On top of that, they had Jesse cooking for them, and while he only had one cook site, I'm willing to bet they weren't very kind to him, keeping him cooking basically 24/7, largely so Todd could satisfy his crush on ol' Lydia, but I'm sure the money was a nice bonus, too.
According to that same timeline, Jesse was enslaved by Uncle Jack & Co. for about one week shy of six months, so about 25 weeks. Even if Jesse was "only" producing two 50-pound batches per week (a conservative estimate), that's still 2,500 pounds, with the Nazis keeping every penny after Lydia's 30% cut. That comes out to an additional $70 million. It's entirely possible that this number could be doubled if they kept Jesse working around the clock, making that closer to $140 million, on top of the ~$68 they already collected in Ozymandias. Those guys don't exactly seem like the kind who are overly concerned with laundering it or investing in T-bills, so that's over $200 million total that Jack & his guys are sitting on -- in cash -- somewhere in the outskirts of Albuquerque NM.
Sure, they spent a few bucks on additional compound security, and that crazy recliner one of the guys dies on, but it's all a relative drop in the bucket to the amount of cash on hand. Meanwhile, Lydia would have grossed another $30-60 million for herself, so after her costs, she's likely worth $20-30 million because of this venture before she enjoys her final packet of Stevia.
My question/reason for bringing this up: holy shit, is this accurate?! Do these numbers add up? Plenty of assumptions were taken, but after watching this show a half-dozen times, I'd like to think those assumptions are pretty reliable, based on how everything plays out and ties together. The total numbers are never brought up, and besides Jack's "You want your money, right? Huh? You wanna know where it is? You pull that trigger, you'll never -- ", there isn't really any mention of the gigantic amount of exactly how much money has been collected and is sitting somewhere at Jack's compound.
Also, potentially very related: it could possibly be one angle that the upcoming BB movie addresses. I'm still convinced that Jesse is broken -- mentally, emotionally, physically, etc. -- and doesn't have much time left after his escape before he does something rash, but maybe returning to the Nazi compound and collecting 9-figures to give to Kaylee Ehrmantraut, the family of Drew Sharp, some college scholarship fund named after Gale (the Rocket Man Endowment Fund?), his narcotics anonymous group, or whatever else he pleases. If it was out in the open, surely the cops would seize it when they appeared at the end of the series, but if they made Jesse bury it nearby, Walt-style, there's a chance it's still sitting out there by the time the movie rolls around.
Your thoughts?
Submitted February 26, 2019 at 09:30AM by strooticus https://ift.tt/2VfpKcO
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