THE MOORGATE SAGA
Dear Mrs Schicklgruber, gee, Mom, I never figure I call you this, but I hope the two of you are just as happy as two clams at high tide, and I sure congratulate our former president, old Mr Schicklgruber, somehow I still call him that tho’ the word is how this wonder drug from Pfizer makes him young again.
Like you say, a new life begins here, that condominium at West Palm Beach sounds just the home for you, a truly tasteful location with neighbours to match, I am thrilled you and he plan to keep on his holiday bunker at Punta del Este, so handy for all his old classmates, I figure at this year’s reunion the rafters come off.
Mom, I do see you have to keep this one a secret, even from me, you may recall I figure the president never hands over, on account at 106 he is long past the age of retiring, tho’ by now he must roll up a handsome pension plan, quite apart from any gold he may bring with him in that submarine way back in 1945.
I hear the board is as much fazed as anyone, at first all the betting is on your new nephew by marriage, Harvey Q. Schicklgruber III.V, the Last National’s head honcho of strategic planning, you may even get to meet him if he ever passes thru West Palm Beach on his way to the Virgin Islands or to play polo.
Then suddenly the market moves against him, word in the Last Chance Saloon is he has trouble with this intern, he takes an interest in her career but she misunderstands him, and when he sends her a $10 gift token from a firm of dry cleaners she just wraps it in tissue and keeps it as a souvenir, some of our directors figure this is unbecoming in a president, even of a bank.
So the debate rambles on and the martini hour approaches and with it the moment of truth, when the vote tends to go to the guy with the least known against him, it appears some director wakes up and recalls how the bank has this experienced vice president who heads the international division out in London, for as long as anybody can remember.
No one at head office can figure out what he does there, but his expenses are quite something, the accounts department no longer believes he exists, they yearn to bring him back and have a look at him, and the only way to do this is to make him president, so why do we not agree to this and then adjourn across the street, somewhere in the world it must be twelve o’clock.
Well, now, Mom, howsabout that, I have to pinch myself, your boy’s career crowned at last, I sure hope you are proud.
Mom, it seems only yesterday I fall off Pan Am’s 707 and ride tall into town and locate this main drag called Moorgate and hang up our shingle round the corner here at Hangman’s Alley, we are only the 87th US bank to open in London and only the third that week, the first thing we do is to install a telex machine, and the first word we get back from head office is ARE THERE ANY DOLLARS ON YOUR END IF SO WIRE THEM BACK.
This Euromoney is the lure that draws us all over like so many pilgrim fathers with reverse thrust, the regulators back home drive the business offshore and we have to come here and chase after it, and before our eyes a market is born, I sometimes figure how lucky we are to be present at the creation.
All we can do is to boldly go into the unknown, I hire a versatile girl and an experienced foreign exchange dealer and we start from there, she is the more help of the two and maybe the more experienced, she designs the first ever Technicolor tombstone, for Fructomechanical, and dreams up a league table we come top of.
So we learn by experience, there is this German banker called Herr Statt who teaches a whole class of us, he goes bust in the lunch hour, which our dealer considers unsporting, and other banks report murderous losses, owing (they say) to unauthorized trading, meaning (I say) no one authorizes the guy to get it wrong.
Also at this time I start earning frequent flyer status at the IMF, I figure I look in again on my way to head office, I long ago forecast one day the whole scene drifts away down the Potomac and out to sea, bankers and all, like the orchestra in A Day at the Races when Harpo cuts the mooring ropes, and if it happens this time I want to be there.
I suppose Michel does not authorize his guys to bet the farm on Russia, but our market becomes a more dangerous place, it has losses roaming round the world like a pack of lost dogs, just waiting for their owners to recognize them, which is why our submerging markets fund is long of gold and short of GKOs, and bank stocks, too.
So maybe this is your boy’s cue to ride into the sunset, I figure how in banking, as in life, survival may not be the objective but can be an achievement, here in Moorgate I achieve that, which is more than a whole carload of competitors who figure themselves smarter, and besides, I have work to do back at the ranch, starting in accounts, where I need to approve my expenses.
Harvey asks for the posting to London, he wishes to put clear blue water between him and Miss Whosis, and I owe this to the family, I do not want him hanging around and explaining how I only get the job because I am the previous president’s stepson, and still have the diary he brings with him in 1945, and my Mom looks after her boy and reminds her new husband of this.
Anyway, as president I appoint myself global financial strategic co-ordinator in chief, which means air tickets when I want them and involvement when I feel like it, or when Harvey blows it, but farewell for now from Moorgate from
Your presidential son
That’s all, folks, from Herbie and Christopher Fildes
