Unpleasant for Miscavige, I am sure. But a few other factors come to mind:
1) It wasn't "hard" cash for him. It's easy money, provided by hard working cult automatons (aka "parishioners").
2) The cash component of the settlement won't cost Miscavige anything personally. He is well insulated by the cult's war chest and the payment won't even register as a blip on his personal financial radar.
3) Even if this falling domino ultimately triggers a succession of events that topple COB's reign of terror, he can quite easily retire to another post and take with him hundreds of millions of dollars. Now he wouldn't do that literally under his own name--but he would establish himself as the trustee and/or financial manager of the reserves--from which he could continue to embezzle funds and financial benefits, as he has always done.
I don't mean to paint a dark vision of Miscavige being in a win-win situation--because he is certainly not. His entire faux persona and worldwide reputation is at stake. He is rapidly becoming the laughing stock of world religions and this latest episode has irreversibly plummeted him into cult clown ignominy. That is very likely the most gruesome nightmare of all for a thug impostor who has strutted on the stage for decades, stealing the applause of adoring crowds for things he never did.
I think it is pretty easy to conclude that Miscavige's life has officially become a living nightmare. But I don't think it will deprive him of the means of living a jet set lifestyle, unless the US government steps in and begins freezing accounts in an effort to bring justice to the thirty year inurement feast that his gluttonous appetite has been feeding on, unfettered.
If I had to predict where this all leads to, I would invoke Hubbard's dire prediction that "
…the world (
of Miscavige)
has at best five more years." I sense that Ray Jeffrey is just warming up to the task of a glorious Class Action Lawsuit brought on behalf of all former (defrauded) members.
Go Ray! We luv ya!
Go Mosey!