Eddy's Current (42 page)

So Alejandro Perez, Jr., found himself in a job few others in his country wanted, in a town few in the world respected. Alex was not dejected or even discouraged by the lack of respect for the U.S. The U.S. was his country. It was a land he believed in and dedicated his life to. The position of Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was a job he was honored to hold—even on this day. He was proud to represent the United States in that position. His patriotism seemed to grow stronger with each blow taken by the U.S. He had come a long way since his boyhood days working the farm fields for Dean Rodgers.

Criticism came at Perez and his country from the world over. America was held in disdain by many in the world and, by association, so was Alex. He never wavered. Work was tough now, though. Each day was harder than the one before. Constituents were outraged, foreign governmental leaders were on the attack, Peterson had solidified his power, and few any longer viewed the U.S. as a respected world leader, much less a distinct power.

“Alex, you are one of the most powerful men in the world now. You know that you can get this spending bill passed even though we’re in a depression. You can do it. Every farmer in America is watching. If you don’t somehow get this thing passed, you will probably be a much less powerful man come election day. That’s as plain as I can make it,” Jonathan Strickland, an old–time farm lobbyist from Nebraska said to Alex.

Strickland knew that if he was to remain a powerful and rich lobbyist he had better convince Congressman Perez to pass a farmer’s relief bill. Nearly every independent farmer in the country was bankrupt at this point. With inflation predicted to be forty–two percent in 2026, Strickland also knew that he would be out of work soon if he didn’t show farmers that he had muscle left for them in Washington.

Alex and Kathy soon realized that Alex had been set up by many of his fellow democrats, especially Wallens. By the end of his first month as Speaker, Perez was as depressed as a public servant could get. The seventh major economic collapse in eighteen years — this one given the title “The Great Economic Collapse” — had finally forced the world to deal with the debt crisis. Peterson was right about one thing: The world was living in bankruptcy and had been for nearly two decades.

America had tried, under a bill sponsored by Congressman Schuman of Ohio, to cancel substantially all of its outstanding debt. Farmers who owned T-bills protested, though, many of whom purchased their investments with farm credits received throughout the years from the government. Foreign governments protested—the same governments who for years had been receiving foreign aid and reduced import taxes on goods shipped to the U.S. Welfare recipients took to the streets and burned and looted stores and homes in protest. Much of Washington, D.C., was in flames, as were many other major U.S. cities. The Army patrolled the streets of D.C. just to keep it calm enough for the government to function.

Investors and bankers scoffed at the idea of losing the value of all U.S. government investments. These were sound investments, they said. All that’s needed is to keep the numbers moving a while longer. Shift them from column to column in the journals used to keep track of them. Pile the debt a little higher. Print more money. It will all work sooner or later—just keep the interest payments flowing a little longer until we can work the next deal; just six more months, the talking heads said.

But that was all nonsense because it was too late, and Congressman Perez knew it. Time had come today. It was over. Banks closed by the hundreds. Many of those that didn’t close were looted and burned, either by angry depositors or by those who now had nothing and therefore nothing to lose. The tab was due. The government could not pay. The people went mad.

Wallens spent most of his time fiddling, waiting—traveling the world or lounging pool–side at his friends’ private clubs in south Florida, and getting to know Peterson and the boys. Wallens knew how to keep his options open.

Jonathan Strickland was not finished. Life as a lobbyist taught him never to give up until the point was made, until the money was in the bank. Give a little, get a little, press hard, take influential people to dinner, sponsor lavish trips for them—it would all work in your favor, or so it had in the past. He pressed hard for more money until Perez finally blew up at him.

“Don’t you understand, Jon, there is no more money as we know it. It’s all gone. We’ve got to start over. We tried to cancel the debt; we tried printing money; nothing works. The game has ended and there are no winners.”

“I don’t buy into that, Alex. Farmers are the backbone of this country and I’m asking for twelve billion dollars to support the backbone of the country. If we don’t have money for anything else, we should have it for the farmers. How are they going to produce food for all of the people who have no money to pay them? Think about it. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Outside Perez’s office sat lobbyists representing every conceivable interest, each ready to make a case for a constituency. Perez found himself under increasing pressure to provide answers to the huge economic problems facing his nation. A politician with a conscience, Perez was convinced that America’s problems were a result of its government trying to do too much for its citizens. He believed in his heart that increased government intervention could only make a terrible situation intolerable.

Lobbyists were beating down his door, there was stratospheric government and personal debt, and everyone was grabbing for another piece of the pie, except now the pie had finally been divided and mortgaged until there was nothing left to divvy up. Not even additional debt would help. Creating a new pie would not help; doing so would only diminish the value of the current, nearly worthless pie.

Senator Edward Milton of New Jersey was Alex Perez’s closest friend. In spite of their age difference — Alex, forty–three; Senator Milton, seventy–seven — they were as close as two friends could be.

Milton was raised in a wealthy family in New Jersey. His pedigree could be traced in the northeastern U.S. back to the mid–1600's, and even earlier than that to Great Britain. Senator Milton was a direct descendant of James Charles Stuart. Yes, that James. Milton was not embarrassed about his genealogy, but he kept quiet about it. He was taught by his mother and father that he was not to rely on connections and pedigree to get through life. Milton feared that people would believe that he felt that his family’s history provided him with some right or privilege in the modern world that was above that which he could earn himself.

Milton’s father had worked hard to build the family fortune without sacrificing his family in the process. His mother taught him to care for others first hand—not by teaching him from books or through lecturing or by attending the right social fund raisers. She taught him to care by taking him to orphanages, homeless shelters and church soup kitchens. Milton remembered that once, well into his thirties, his mother showed up at his door and took him to an AIDS clinic to assist her in her volunteer duties there.

He learned to care by learning to do for others. He changed diapers for babies who were infected with HIV, spoon fed mentally ill indigent patients and sat at the bedside of dying cancer victims. As a boy he was required to give twenty five percent of his weekly allowance to his church and another twenty five percent to the Abandoned Baby Care Center, a community clinic where society’s tiniest victims were cared for.

Milton’s parents refused to serve as bigwig board members or fund raisers for nonprofit organizations, and Milton was taught by them that he should shun such service in favor of volunteering his services “in the trenches” of nonprofit organizations. His parents made it clear to him that they had no interest in raising the next social “star,” and that they had every interest in raising a person who cared deeply and who must work hard to relieve the suffering of others.

Politics was not a vocation to be used to provide or perpetuate wealth and prestige, Milton had been taught. For Milton, politics was a profession through which the politician, the servant, could help others. Milton had a true social conscience yet he believed that excessive social concern on the part of government would eventually bring misery on the people who were to benefit from it. He was experiencing this truth first hand.

It now seemed to him that the only way to stop the pervasive suffering, rioting, and outright social anarchy was to give less, to ask people to be victorious over their circumstances with far less government assistance doing so. The government had nothing more to give. The promises had to stop because fulfillment was not possible. The promises could only cause more expectation which would cause more dejection which would cause more seething anger, which would bring about even more intense social unrest. The U.S. government could not continue to give. The numbers could no longer be manipulated. The game was over. The Senator knew this, just as he believed it thirty–five years earlier when he was first elected to the senate. He kept a copy of a short story he found printed in a magazine in 2012, written by “An Anonymous Poet.”

Times were easier then. The federal debt was slightly under a trillion, and the annual deficit was 200 billion. These were numbers that were easily juggled by the professional number–jugglers of that day. Today’s number–jugglers lack what it takes to work with the numbers the way those of old did. There’s no excuse for it, really. The only difference between today’s numbers and yesterday’s is a few extra zeros. Math is math. Apply the formula and the results should be easily achieved, regardless of the size of the numbers.

Those were different days, though—days when a politician could literally promise everything to everyone and somehow deliver while keeping the resulting bookkeeping entries from eating him alive. Each American received a piece of the pie so the numbers really didn’t matter. The poor were fed, the elderly were cared for, the sick were treated, farmers got subsidies, the middle class received tax cuts, people were being helped. The tab could wait. And so it did.

Number–jugglers earned their keep in those days. They were very important to society. They earned more than kindergarten teachers, police officers, factory workers, clergy, and more than poets and artists. Without them it would have been impossible to go on. Who would have been able to justify the programs if the tab actually came due? Who would get re–elected if the people thought, even for an instant, that it all had to be paid back someday?

These people earned their money alright. They were responsible for an impossible task—the task of defeating the laws of mathematics. They won, you know. They defeated the laws of arithmetic. Theirs was creative work, much more creative than, say, a writer or a poet or an artist. Much more exhausting as well. Creativity was important in those days and those with a talent for defeating the laws of math were most coveted for their creative genius.

Each time the numbers appeared to go in the wrong direction, these professionals simply changed the acceptable way of viewing numbers and, like magic, the numbers went the other way, or the sum changed, or the product was different. Whatever was needed, they provided. Amazing stuff to the unenlightened, but simple to those who possessed the talent. Just as a poem is simple for a talented poet to compose, so, too, was it simple for the number–jugglers to defeat the laws of mathematics.

America needed these professionals and waited daily for their essays. They were sought after by network news producers and print reporters for their professional opinions and their projections of future balanced budgets. Seemed that each time a government budget — local, state or federal — was to be out of balance, these wizards saved the day by projecting the impossible. And, in the event that the projections were off, which happened quite often, the number–jugglers went to work even harder, defying mathematics again and again, creating entirely new algorithms. A minus B equaled whatever they wanted it to equal. Their power was limitless. They could do the impossible, and they did.

Mathematicians were jealous of them. Mathematicians claimed that something was wrong, that the numbers were not adding up the way the number–jugglers said. Human nature will not change. Professionals have never liked it when success in their own field is realized by a non–professional. Mathematicians were no different.

Perhaps mathematicians were jealous of the Juggler–of–the–Year award which was given annually to the most outstanding number–juggler. What a prestigious and coveted prize! Jugglers applied from the world over, from every conceivable walk of life: the business world, non–profit, governmental. Less prestigious, but still coveted, was the Juggler–of–the–Month award. Juggler–of–the–Month award recipients earned an average 75 percent more than non–Juggler–of–the–Month jugglers. These distinguished honors were never once awarded to a mathematician. And it was nearly impossible for a non–government juggler to win the monthly or annual award. U.S. government jugglers walked away with almost every Juggler–of–the–Month and Juggler–of–the–Year award ever given. Challenge builds talent.

Things are different today. Today’s number–jugglers just don’t have what it takes to defeat the laws of mathematics the way the old-timers did. Perhaps it is a lack of formal education, or maybe a relaxing of professional standards. God only knows where the world is headed when a profession goes as far backwards as the number–jugglers have in recent years. It’s time we woke up to the fact that we need to throw the bums out; we need new number–jugglers who are properly educated and disciplined, as their predecessors of the 1980s and 1990s were. Where have our standards gone! God help us to get back to those old standards.

Those were the days.

Senator Milton was like most others who held political office in that he had just enough power to be blamed for the succession of economic collapses of the past twenty years, but not nearly enough power to correct them, especially now that Peterson was taking over. Neither Milton nor any other U.S. politician held any real power now. Most power was now vested in Peterson.