“Thank you. Put him on, please.”
“Mr. President! Rosalie told me you called!” the judge bellowed. He was not the sort to moderate his voice merely for the telephone.
The President switched to the speaker phone and put the handset in its cradle. “I’m cramming for the G8 conference,” he said.
“That will relieve the voters, sir,” the judge said. “People worrying about employment and meetin’ the mortgage are going to be encouraged as all hell when they turn on their televisions and see the President talking to the French economic minister about the price of brie.”
The President smiled, leaned back in his chair, and was about to put one foot up on the corner of his desk when he remembered that this massive and colossally ugly item was made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, God alone knew why, and had been a gift of Queen Victoria, the reasons for which seemed pretty damned obscure, too, but that this meant the desk was therefore a valuable antique that did not deserve to have his heel marks on it. He reluctantly put his shoe back on the floor. I am a prisoner of history, he thought. Damn Jackie Kennedy anyway. He spun his chair about to face the tall windows and the Rose Garden.
“My views on the price of brie,” he said, “are going to be taken more seriously if they come from the representative of the strongest economy in the world.”
“Ah,” the judge said. “So you reckon this is an inconvenient time for Wall Street to have the jitters.”
“That is correct.”
“And your economic advisors tell you that they can’t be absolutely positive about it, but it looks as if the market has entered an uncertain period.”
“Correct…”
“And that while they can’t be definite about it, because the indicators are as yet unclear, it may be possible that the bull market is due for a correction.”
“Something like that.”
“And that the last thing you want, hoss, is for Dow Jones to drop four or five hundred points when you are talking to the French economic minister about the price of brie, because that would blow your credibility to hell and gone.”
“I think that is about the gist.” The President nodded. “Judge, you have a remarkable ability for summing up.”
“And therefore, sir, you want me to talk to Sam.”
“If you could. He is your friend.”
“Lots of people are my friends, Mr. President,” the judge said.
The President smiled his brilliant telegenic smile—even though there was no one to see it, the smile was still an essential part of his repertoire—and put the tiniest trace of syrup into his voice. “If the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board could be said to have a friend,” he said, “that friend is you.” There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the judge spoke. “Have you talked to him yourself, Mr. President?”
“I have.”
“And what has he told you?”
“He said that the bull market might be due for a correction, and that he was monitoring the situation and would act, if necessary, at the appropriate time. But that a mere downturn in stock prices was not a case, strictly speaking, for intervention.”
“I take it, sir, that you pointed out the importance of the economic summit?”
“I did my best. He suggested, first, that this unsettled period in the markets might end before the conference begins, and might in fact end in a big upswing. Also, he said that it would be better for the conference if plans were made on a basis of actual conditions and not, as he put it, false optimism.”
“Damn,” the judge said. “Sam’s really being a hardass, isn’t he?” The problem was, the President knew, that there was little for a president to shine at anymore. The Cold War was over and foreign policy had come down to mediating agreements between various competing ethnic groups that the electorate hadn’t heard of and didn’t care about. The arrogant blown-dry busybodies in Congress had ignored, watered down, or eviscerated every domestic policy initiative undertaken by the Executive Branch. For over twenty years, in every administration, every budget sent by the President to Congress had been declared dead on arrival. They couldn’t decide on their own what to do, jerked this way and that by lobbyists and opinion polls, but they were certain they didn’t want the President doing anything, either.
So like it or not, the President’s job now came down to two things: he had to be seen to make money for people, and he had to be seen to be caring. He had to go to meetings like the G8 summit and return with promises of jobs and increased prosperity. And he had to be able to listen to people who were in the midst of hard times, and he had to look concerned. The people wanted a president who Cared, and so the President spent a lot of time, in day care centers or drug rehabilitation clinics or veterans’ hospitals, doing his job of Caring. There were no more issues, there were no more real conflicts in politics, it had all become soap opera. The President had to pretend to everyone that the soap opera mattered. And, as his press secretary Stan Burdett always remarked, it was no good Caring if he weren’t seen to be Caring, and no good making money for people if he weren’t making money for everyone, and furthermore seen to be doing it.
The President just wished he could appoint a Cabinet Secretary for Caring and have done with it.
“I’m not asking for much,” the President said. “What’s wrong with boosting investor confidence?” The judge thought silently for a long moment. “Mr. President,” he said, “I’ll talk to Sam about it.”
“He’s always been a loyal Party man,” the President said. Until, he did not need to add, Sam had been made the nation’s chief banker, at which point he had given up politics for a Higher Calling, rolling the bones and gazing at chicken entrails in the name of the High God of Interest Rates.
“True,” the judge said. “Very true.” His voice boomed out. “Sir, I’ll do as you ask.”
“Thank you, Judge.”
“You’re very welcome, Mr. President.”
“How about some golf next week?”
“You’re very kind, sir. I would like that very much.”
The President smiled. “I’ll have my flunky call your flunky.”
The President snapped off the speaker phone, picked up the briefing book, and leaned back in his chair. He had been raised on the history of presidential greatness. Franklin Roosevelt fighting the Depression and Hitler, Lincoln freeing the slaves and seeing the country through its greatest crisis, Jack Kennedy staring down the Soviets over Cuba, Lyndon Johnson creating programs to eradicate poverty and establish civil rights.
And now the President couldn’t even ask the chairman of the Federal for a favor, but had to get a friend to ask it for him.
A prisoner of history, he thought again.
He considered putting his feet up on the desk, but refrained.
Once the slide began, the market fell faster than even Charlie had anticipated. Charlie and TPS, even with all their money committed to Charlie’s positions, weren’t big enough to shift market prices very far, but once big traders like Salomon and Morgan Stanley started moving into short positions, the balance changed. Once the smart money moved, the stupid money trotted after—too late, as usual—and the really smart money tried to make profit out of both.
Charlie began to wonder how many beta-test versions of Carpe Diem were out there. He stayed at his desk for the entire trading day, fueled by pots of coffee and takeout food brought in by his secretary. He traded constantly, making hedges, shoring up his position. He was afraid to take a pee break for fear that he’d miss something and lose money.