I see quite a lot of Ken these days, he is a kinda rolypoly jokey guy in British politics who draws the short straw and becomes finance minister, only since it is the Brits they fit him out a tin box and call him Chancellor and this is all part of immemorial tradition, like a crisis for the pound.
His guy Steve tells me Ken is hooked on the City, meaning the end of London where the markets are, someone tells him this is a great export industry, tho’ when I first arrive the old hands put it kinda differently, Herbie, they tell me, we just shovel money around the world and hang onto what sticks to the shovel.
Anyhow, says Steve, Ken figures what it needs now is a panel, some right thinking guys who can put their heads together with him and help make it mightier yet, so calls are going out to round up the usual suspects, and some unusual ones too, our panel must show how truly international this financial center is, so we ask nice Mr T from Nomura who is everyone’s favourite Japanese, and by the way, Herbie, you’re tapped.
On the day we all roll along to what turns out to be an intimate little panel, as panels go, just Ken and Eddie and the mayor and some spare ministers and Win and Mr T and me and the guy from Citi and a small crowd of extras, Ken gives us all a big hello, he says he hopes we pull this act together, the next time he flies all the way to Brazil to beat up business for us he does not wish to be told he is too late and the Duke of Kent leaves yesterday, it is not worth it (Ken says) just for the cheroots.
I see no harm in all this but everybody else does, spontaneous combustion sets in and umbrage is generated in industrial quantities, anyone who does not get an invitation wishes to know why and Holey Buckett says the Stock Exchange’s board are puce with fury, they figure this panel is somewhere they can park their chief executive, and now they have to think of something else, like ambushing him on the 22nd floor and pushing him out of the window.
Everybody with an invitation is suspicious, too, they figure is this all part of a sinister plot for Ken to tell them what to do, or worse still he may take their toys away and give them to the boy next door, this guy Michael makes a pitch for City Hall to lead the export effort, for one thing, he says, we have the money, well, of course they have, they take it off the rest of us and if we do not pay they put us in the slammer.
We get this far when a disembodied voice starts booming at us, this makes me jump but Steve explains it speaks for some outfit called British Invisibles, out of sight, out of mind, murmurs Steve, while the voice asks how dare Michael try to horn in, and at this the fight becomes general, until finally Ken bangs for order and complains how the grinding of axes quite deafens him.
I feel for the guy, he tries to give us all a leg up and get bitten in the butt for his pains, so I pass a note and urge him to adjourn the meeting, have the Treasury put out a statement claiming we are only here to talk about information technology, and next time round lock everybody in and keep them out of lunch until they promise to behave, to guys like these, I say, lunch is the great healer and missing out on it is the ultimate deterrent.
Afterwards he thanks me, he says this is the kind of advice he needs more of, and do I care to come on his panel of special advisers, or seven wise men, he is one short, they are something he inherits from his predecessor along with a £50 billion deficit, the idea is where you get seven economists you get eight opinions, which means that they feud with each other and take the heat off the Treasury, I just sit thru their advice (he says) and let them get on with it, but maybe you can do better.
Mom, I can only try, I knock out some learned notes on the significance of steeper yield curves, worldwide, and Holey gets some analyst to have his computer draw a graph for me, but I wonder why I bother, when this panel meets I cannot get a word in edgeways, it becomes a straight shootout between two angry monetarists, naturally they do not agree what money is or what the numbers mean, no monetarists do.
This does not stop them agreeing how Ken gets it wrong, in opposite directions, Tim from Lombard Street says Ken is a reckless money printer and must take his foot off the accelerator now, before he skids off the circuit in the year 2000, but Patrick from Liverpool tells him to take his foot off the brake, and shave 200 basis points off the discount rate or move over and make way for someone who can.
They go hammer and tongs and call each other menaces and crypto-Keynesians and bananas, and evil geniuses of the last disaster or the last but one, until Ken scrawls a note to me and asks what I think, and I scrawl back saying if he splits the difference they tell him that he gets it right, but I figure he does best to leave them to it and take off on the next fact-finder.
Sometimes, he explains to me over a sundowner, I am tempted to take some of Patrick’s advice, starting with the last bit, but Zimbabwe is a great place for finding facts, Bob Mugabe has the knack, none of this nonsense about holding referendums, and at election time everybody else is too polite to run against him, now, Herbie, advise me, how do we fix that back home, Mom, I am not sure but I offer to find out who advises Bob Mugabe, much love from
Your advisory son
Herbie is advised by Christopher Fildes
