Hillboot Intergalactic PLC,
Investment Bankers, Black Hole House, London EC2 thru 14
This is maybe the best address at our end of town, and a freehold island site goes with it, also a building like a giant cheesemould made of Portland stone, Grade I listed but scope for sympathetic conversion, benefiting from extensive vaults with potential as designer eaterie or nuclear shelter, first time on the market since 1734.
Mom, I never figure to find myself in the real estate game, except by mistake when we lend to the wrong guy on the wrong asset, but we bankers must move with the times, and round here the times are a-changing, I never figure to find myself shuttling between Ed and Ed and Eddie, either.
All this comes of the elections here, won by the party that sticks New in front of its name, and says no more tax and spend and elect, goodbye to the rainbow coalition and the unions too, and the leader is a guy in a sharp suit with a clever lawyer for a wife, some of their best friends work for Goldman Sachs, now who does this remind you of?
These two Eds are flacks of theirs, just a pair of college kids who come breezing in one day and pretend they are doing work experience, can I tell them how the Federal Open Market Committee works, so I say it does not work too hard, but the New York Fed publishes a comic book that explains it all in picture strips. I lend them this and they seem to be grateful.
Then the next thing I know is they call me up from the Treasury, where they share this boot closet right next door to their chief but their eyes are on the Bank of England, they say its advice is too dependent on the state of Governor Eddie's corns and what it needs is an FOMC, full of independent experts, so where do they find some?
So I ask them what goes with this job, and the answer is giving wise counsel, about once a month, but a desk in the Bank goes with it, and lunching rights, and guy in a pink morning coat to iron the blatts for you, the money is not too bad either, well, I dare say I can fit this commitment in, so I tell them no-one is more independent than your boy, or expert either, and they promise to book me a place.
Then I exercise some lunching rights of my own at the Dealmakers' Arms, where Holey owes me one, and by the time I get back my office is knee deep in messages, the two Eds work out if they pick enough experts like me Eddie's corns are in a permanent minority, so he and the bank can be independent, well, sort of, and does this go down well with the market, and ought they to tell Eddie or shall I?
Mom, I spare them the trouble, I straighten my tie and march round to make Eddie's day the guy is so pleased I expect him to burst, this is his dearest ambition, he says, and crowns his career, now he can look Hansi and Alan and Don in the face, and even when I tell him how two deputies come with it, all he says is Fine, so long as they are not called Mary-Ellen and Rupert.
I manage to detach myself and hurry back to Moorgate to check on our position, which is good and long, but sure enough the Eds are on the line again, with some more ideas about the Bank, they wish it to focus on giving wise counsel and stop doing anything else, do they tell Eddie or shall I, I tell them they can.
So they do, and the poor guy is fit to burst again, this is a good news/bad news joke that he does not appreciate, he thinks about resigning but not seriously, he says, just a tease, while he watches the headhunters circle and waits to see which bank owes him a favor, tho' his new contract has to be inflation linked.
Herbie, he asks me, what are these Eds trying to do to the Bank, we set ourselves up in two wings and now they chop one of them off, so we fly round in ever decreasing circles, and then disappear, just when we figure we get supervision sorted out they take it off our hands and relocate it in Canary Wharf or Hartlepool or some place, and Howard goes with it, ah, well, we must all make sacrifices.
I urge him to look on the bright side, for years all these supervisors are busting his budget, so now someone else can pay for them, and the money saved can go on something useful, like a new tricorne hat for the guy on the gate, and when the next bank goes bust it can be Howard's fault.
Good thinking, says Eddie, but how do we cover the costs of the building, it eats its head off already. Quite easy, I tell him, just follow Bob Alexander, he redevelops his tower as an apartment block and his banking hall as a gallery of modern art, now if he can do that with NatWest imagine the scope we have here, maybe it makes a town house for that sultan you try to sell Barings to?
It is no use, he moans, this is not my idea of independence, just a new way of doing what Ed and Ed tell us, for the few years before we dwindle away into an overbuilt branch of the euro head office, I tell you something, Hansi never puts up with all this at the Bundesbank, stick around, Herbie, while I call him up.
For the next few minutes I hear Eddie's end of the line, which is mostly Sehr gut, but then he turns round and grins and says Hansi explains it, all we have to do is torpedo the euro and if our government sinks with it, dry our eyes, Hansi is all set to make a start, says Eddie, and this gives me my chance.