It's more than merely characteristic of the level of Mudcat discourse, Jerome. It is absolutely typical of it.

You are correct about how zealously rich people guard their fortunes.

I think, though, that Bob's most likely motivation for recording this album is probably just that it's a project he felt like doing, regardless. If his organization wanted to cash in quickly on a new recording, there are about 50,000 hours of unreleased live performance recordings and other stuff like in the vaults from the past 50 years which they could release at any time, with no work at all to be done by Mr Dylan....and that would probably sell a lot more copies than "Shadows in the Night" will.

Still, anything is possible...