I am cowering under the table by the bar with my glass of champagne when the guy under the next table downs his and heads for the door, anxious hands stretch out to drag him back to safety but he cries: No, No, the mob is in the street and I must see which way they are going, for I am their leader.
Mom, I recognize the type, there are guys like him in every market and some of them survive, at that, but such scenes are not what I look for when I come to Paris, France, for lunch. It just goes to show that there is no such thing as a free ride, another fine mess Alastair Morton gets me into.
He is the guy who digs a tunnel from England to France and invites banks all around the world to pour their money down it, which we do. The guy is most persuasive: Cough up, he says, or I smash your face in, but by now the debt mounts up and the interest dries up and some of the Japanese talk of foreclosing until he asks them what they plan to do with the world's longest submarine mushroom farm.
Me, I am easily persuaded, especially by Alastair, when he offers me what he says is a temporary reconstruction, for the rest of the century we agree to waive interest payments in favor of passes to ride, so I arrange a trial trip, out on the red eye express, a pitch for a privatization, refuel at the Terminus Brasserie and then stroll across the road and sleep all the way to the other end, which to put the French down is called Waterloo.
Well, we go bowling thru Alastair's tunnel and roll in to Paris on time, and if I am a smidgen late for old Pons at the Ministry of Transport, it is because the streets are blocked and my taxi is diverted round some bonfires, with a lot of guys milling around them keeping warm.
We talk about placing French railroad stock with mid-western investors, his plan is to fire all the staff and close all the lines, or most of them, and what is left is a marketable commodity and a cinch for the next clearance sale. Herbie, he says, I wish you a bon voyage to Waterloo, but not today, I just hear the strike spreads and no trains now operate, for some reason the cheminots are protesting my plan.
This is more bad news for Alastair but I plan to hack out to the airport and travel the old fashioned way, until Pons goes on to wish me luck, or chance. It seems his air traffic controllers decide the holiday weekends come early, and farmers send protesting cows to occupy the runways, and the Air France crews come out in sympathy with the cheminots and with themselves. It seems they are due for the slash and burn treatment in good time for privatization.
The most he can do for me is to direct me to the river, where some boats are still running. I hope to find one that takes me as far as Canary Wharf and from there I can make my way to London by myself, but all I get from the captain is a mouthful of abuse and halitosis, from which I figure I am stranded, in which case I need to be stranded in comfort.
I wind up at this neat little old hotel plumb next to the US embassy and put a call thru to Moorgate, where I do not get the sympathy I figure I deserve, or the credibility either. Poor you, our girl just says, all on your own at the Crillon, tut tut, I do hope you can make some useful contacts.
At that I try, starting with the Banque de France. I plan to look in on Jean Claude and have a word with him about this notion that the franc is just a D-mark with a classier accent, or maybe an ost-mark, so they trade one for one into a monopoly currency for Europe, and I hear the latest guys to threaten all out strikes are the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Foreign Exchange Dealers.
But when I call his office all I get is a recorded announcement, kinda terse and clipped, I decode it with my phrase book and it seems to mean the central bank is out on strike. Mom, I never figure such a thing is possible, next we see Alan Greenspan on a picket line, but if slash and burn tactics get this far it may explain why so many more guys now seem to be out on the streets slashing and burning.
Then luckily I bump into a guy from the embassy who looks in on the hotel bar for a quick factfinder, he explains to me how this monopoly currency idea is where the trouble starts. If France is to meet the timetable for the merger, its economy needs to converge, which for openers means not having all these guys hanging around on the public payroll or on early pensions. If you think France has unemployment now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
So I ask what our policy is about this and he says it is for the Europeans to get their act together for once in a while and not just rely on Uncle Sam and his marines to do the work for them. So we like it when they make an effort but we wish they do not hit on this one, after all, if a single market needs a single currency we merge the Canadian dollar with the peso.
By this time, the noise outside is getting louder, with thumps and bangs and yells of A bas le franc and Emu à la lanterne, and cobblestones start coming thru the window till the barman puts the shutters up. I am listening for the sirens of the riot police and the sharp crack of nightsticks on skulls, but I figure the police are in the public sector, so they may be on strike.