Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin (16 page)

“Just as I thought,” I said. “You don’t know either.”

So a lot of people are faking it. Even so, if you employ the same sentence in four or five straight conversations about the president’s new economic plan, they tend to become suspicious. Some smart-aleck might say, “That’s what you said last time” or “What’s all that ‘component’ talk about?” or even “Are you faking it again?”

Which means that I’m back to my old problem of how to discuss the president’s new economic plan in a way that does not reveal that I have no understanding of economics whatsoever. Sometimes I think of going back and taking all of those economics courses that I avoided so assiduously in college—although I suspect that they are being taught by people who are unintelligible in an impressive way.

Sometimes, I dream of meeting someone who both understands economics and can explain it in simple terms to an oaf like me. I ask him what he thinks of the president’s new economic plan. He says that the question is what’s going to happen when the deficit-reduction component begins to bite. I agree (“that’s a good point”). Then I ask him where all the money went during the Great Depression. He tells me.

1993

“If you really want to know why the financial system nearly collapsed in the fall of 2008, I can tell you in one simple sentence.”

The statement came from a man sitting three or four stools away from me in a sparsely populated Midtown bar, where I was waiting for a friend. “But I have to buy you a drink to hear it?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I can buy my own drinks. My 401(k) is intact. I got out of the market eight or ten years ago, when I saw what was happening.”

He did indeed look capable of buying his own drinks—one of which, a dry martini, straight up, was on the bar in front of him. He was a well-preserved, gray-haired man of about retirement age, dressed in the same sort of clothes he must have worn on some Ivy League campus in the late fifties or early sixties—a tweed jacket, gray pants, a blue button-down shirt, and a club tie that, seen from a distance, seemed adorned with tiny Brussels sprouts.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

“The financial system nearly collapsed,” he said, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.” He took a sip of his martini, and stared straight at the row of bottles behind the bar, as if the conversation was now over.

“But weren’t there smart guys on Wall Street in the first place?” I asked.

He looked at me the way a mathematics teacher might look at a child who, despite heroic efforts by the teacher, seemed incapable of learning the most rudimentary principles of long division. “You are either a lot younger than you look or you don’t have much of a memory,” he said. “One of the speakers at my twenty-fifth reunion said that, according to a survey he had done of those attending, income was now precisely in inverse proportion to academic standing in the
class, and that was partly because everyone in the lower third of the class had become a Wall Street millionaire.”

I reflected on my own college class, of roughly the same era. The top student had been appointed a federal appeals court judge—earning, by Wall Street standards, tip money. A lot of the people with similarly impressive academic records became professors. I could picture the future titans of Wall Street dozing in the back rows of some gut course like Geology 101, popularly known as Rocks for Jocks.

“That actually sounds more or less accurate,” I said.

“Of course it’s accurate,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong: The guys from the lower third of the class who went to Wall Street had a lot of nice qualities. Most of them were pleasant enough. They made a good impression. And now we realize that by the standards that came later, they weren’t really greedy. They just wanted a nice house in Greenwich and maybe a sailboat. A lot of them were from families that had always been on Wall Street, so they were accustomed to nice houses in Greenwich. They didn’t feel the need to leverage the entire business so they could make the sort of money that easily supports the second oceangoing yacht.”

“So what happened?”

“I told you what happened. Smart guys started going to Wall Street.”

“Why?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said, making a practiced gesture with his eyebrows that caused the bartender to get started mixing another martini.

“Two things happened. One is that the amount of money that could be made on Wall Street with hedge fund and private equity operations became just mind-blowing. At the same time, college was getting so expensive that people from reasonably prosperous families were graduating with huge debts. So even the smart guys went to Wall Street, maybe telling themselves that in a few years they’d have so much money they could then become professors or legal-services lawyers or whatever they’d wanted to be in the first place. That’s when you started reading stories about the percentage of the graduating class of Harvard College who planned to go into the financial industry or go to business school so they could then go into the financial
industry. That’s when you started reading about these geniuses from MIT and Caltech who, instead of going to graduate school in physics, went to Wall Street to calculate arbitrage odds.”

“But you still haven’t told me how that brought on the financial crisis.”

“Did you ever hear the word ‘derivatives’?” he said. “Do you think
our
guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn’t have done the math.”

“Why do I get the feeling that there’s one more step in this scenario?” I said.

“Because there is,” he said. “When the smart guys started this business of securitizing things that didn’t even exist in the first place, who was running the firms they worked for? Our guys! The lower third of the class! Guys who didn’t have the foggiest notion of what a credit default swap was. All our guys knew was that they were getting disgustingly rich, and they had gotten to like that. All of that easy money had eaten away at their sense of enoughness.”

“So having smart guys there almost caused Wall Street to collapse.”

“You got it,” he said. “It took you a while, but you got it.”

The theory sounded too simple to be true, but right offhand I couldn’t find any flaws in it. I found myself contemplating the sort of havoc a horde of smart guys could wreak in other industries. I saw those industries falling one by one, done in by superior intelligence. “I think I need a drink,” I said.

He nodded at my glass and made another one of those eyebrow gestures to the bartender. “Please,” he said. “Allow me.”

2009

“I don’t like the sound of those drums, dear,” Edgar said. “I think we should go back to the hotel.”

Their guide turned to face them. “You be coming with me, kind mister,” he said. “You be seeing real voodoo-economics ritual. No touristy stuff. Plenty supply-side.” The guide nudged Edgar in the ribs with his elbow, and said in a softer voice, “You be seeing swollen bureaucracy turned into nude federalism, my mister.”

“You mean
New
Federalism,” Edgar said.

“Don’t quibble, dear,” Emily said.

The guide continued down the winding dirt path toward a thick grove of trees—gnarled trees of surpassing weirdness, their limbs heavy with ticker tape.

“I simply don’t like those drums,” Edgar said. “It sounds like someone’s beating the hustings. And listen to that chant!”

In the distance, the sound of voices grew louder and louder. “Voodoo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle,” the voices droned in a rhythmic chant. “Voo-doo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle.”

“Isn’t this all simply fascinating?” Emily said, picking her way around a pile of discarded water and sewer grants. “I hope the ceremony’s not too bloody, though. Thelma and Harry said that when they went last year, the sorceress just used some leftovers from the hot-lunch program for the gris-gris. Some people at their hotel said they heard that she could change two helpings of broccoli into an aircraft carrier.”

“Voo-doo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle,” the voices chanted. “Voo-doo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle.”

“I don’t like it, I tell you,” Edgar said. “It gives me the creeps. And why does our guide look so much like an oil-company lobbyist?”

The guide turned to face them on the path, his eyes darting from side to side, his lips curled in a slight smile. “You be seeing real stuff, my fine sir,” he said. “You be seeing too, my kind young lady. Magic! White magic! Lily-white magic! You be seeing less make more, and machine tools depreciate lightning fast before your eyes, quickquick.”

“But what’s that awful smell?” Edgar asked.

The guide began to cackle. “We be cooking the books, mister,” he said, shaking with mirth and rubbing his hands together. “Heh, heh, heh, heh. We be cooking hell out of the books. Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.”

They had reached a clearing in the grove of trees, and the chant now seemed nearly deafening. “Voo-doo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle. Voo-doo, voo-doo—trickle, trickle, trickle, trickle.”

“You be seeing now, kind mister,” the guide said. “You be seeing now poor folk bounce on safety nets. You be seeing rich folk bounce on poor folk. You be seeing this too, my kind young lady.”

The chanters had reached the clearing. They were wearing hooded robes of polyester. As they stood at the edge of the clearing, their chant changed: “Two-four-six-eight—what shall we depreciate?” Then one of the robed figures stepped out from the chorus, slowly walked toward the center of the clearing, violently twisted back in his own tracks at a grotesque angle, and fell, writhing, to the ground—presumably having displaced a vertebra or perhaps even broken his back. Edgar and Emily watched in horror as one chanter after another followed the bizarre ritual.

“They be walking the Laffer curve, kind young lady,” the guide said, noticing the look of distress on Emily’s face.

“Those poor men!” Emily cried.

“Not for you being worried, kind miss,” the guide said. “They be suffering only short-term displacement.”

“I’m not so sure I like this,” Emily whispered to Edgar. “Maybe we should just go back to that recreation area at the hotel and try to balance the budget on the backs of some American taxpayers. Thelma says it’s not that hard once you get the hang of it, except she kept slipping off the rich ones.”

Just then, a new group of chanters entered the clearing, moving in a sort of jazz rhythm. Gyrating in a way that made Emily blush, they shouted, “Trickle down, trickle down—let’s go to town and trickle down!”

“I’d like to go now, Edgar,” Emily said, but at that moment the voodoo sorceress appeared.

“There she is!” Edgar said.

“That be her, nice people,” the guide said. “Now you be seeing her stick pins into neo-Keynesian dollies, kind missus.”

“Why is she wearing an Adolfo gown?” Emily asked.

“You be watching, good people,” the guide said. “She be sacrificing
chicken and giving the back and gizzard to poor folk on strictly volunteer basis.”

The chorus now began hauling some sort of idol on wheels into the clearing.

“It’s a Trojan horse,” Edgar said.

“There be the chicken now, kind mister,” the guide said.

“That’s no chicken; that’s a Trojan horse,” Emily said, as the sorceress slit open the belly of the horse and tax breaks for the rich began to pour out.

“Nice fat chicken it be,” the guide said. “Lucky poor be getting nice fat gizzard.”

“Let’s get out of here, Edgar!” Emily said.

“Furthermore,” the guide continued, “a deregulated oil and natural gas industry assures all Americans a dependable energy supply within the framework of traditional American free enterprise.”

“Jesus Christ!” Edgar said. “He
is
an oil-company lobbyist!” Edgar grabbed Emily’s hand, and they scrambled toward the path.

“It be nice chicken,” the guide shouted after them, having quickly fallen back into his role. “Voodoo be bringing chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage.”

1982

I haven’t quite figured out how cigar smoking got taken over by Wall Street types who wear red suspenders. I haven’t figured it out partly because I don’t like to think about it. I don’t like to think about it because I’m afraid I’ll start wallowing in nostalgia for the days back in Kansas City when stogies were smoked by people like my cousin Sam, a man who played in the American Legion drum-and-bugle corps and never heard of a power breakfast.

I hasten to say that I am not bringing this up out of concern for the health of Wall Street types who wear red suspenders. I hasten to say that because they’re always quick to respond to such expressions of concern with a lot of hot air about how the New Puritans have tried to rob independent-minded (and maybe even dashing) Americans of their freedoms. If the health of Wall Street types who wear red suspenders was high on my list of worries, I would have long ago devoted some attention to studies indicating that wearing red suspenders, instead of a belt, lowers your sperm count.

My cousin Sam probably had his faults; I’m aware that people with discerning ears for music might have included the American Legion drum-and-bugle corps in this category. But if his wife, Min, ever told him to get that smelly cigar out of the house, I can’t imagine that his response would have been to start kvetching about smokers being oppressed. As I understand the customs of American Legion members in Sam’s era, the acceptable response to Min’s request would have been to go out on the porch with the cigar or to tell Min to shut her trap. The New Puritanism wouldn’t have come into it.

One way to figure this, I know, is that cigar smoking follows logically from wine drinking for people who want to demonstrate that they’ve arrived: one more habit that’s expensive and lends itself to pedantry. That view is supported by a recent advertisement for the magazine
Cigar Aficionado
, which lists among the subjects discussed in the current issue “the expensive gamble of owning thoroughbred racehorses, the mystique of a Savile Row suit, and a blind tasting of eighty-three maduros.”