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INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

It is customary when publishing a book through a recognized publisher to arrange a series of speaking engagements at which well known personalities whose principal skill is keeping their image alive interview the author about his book so that people who for the most part do not read can be instructed not to read it by someone who knows nothing about it because he or she has not read it but has relied upon the briefing of an assistant who learned long ago that reading a paragraph or two of anything puts his or her knowledge of the contents light years ahead of anyone likely to watch or listen to the boss even by accident. Normally, this does not detract from the entertainment value of the interview, of course, since viewers and listeners normally want only to be reminded that this author may have written a book but he is no smarter than they are and not nearly as savvy or photogenic as the interviewer.

After I finished the book I looked for an agent in the hope of landing a publishing contract. As I explain in the book, this was not necessarily crazy since I was in a position to drop the name of a close boyhood friend who is among the five or six, ten at worst, best selling writers in the whole country. Unfortunately, Mike died on Election Day, the same day I sent my cheerful proposal to his agent. I was not surprised when she failed to contact me, either about my proposal or the condolence note I sent immediately by overnight mail. It was too bad about Mike, who was a good guy forty eight years ago and I have no doubt still was until now despite his enormous success and his unfortunate illness. Of course, he had no reason to think I could write a best selling book, although I like to think it would not have surprised him. Chances are he would have told Lynn, ‘read a chapter or two and find out for yourself.’

Of course, things do not work this way. If they did work this way there probably would be no need for my book. One of the problems confronted in the book is the inability of anyone who is not a public personality to get any idea he might have noticed at all in a country transfixed by the ideas of Larry LetsDance and Jack Dynamo and WhatAboutBob and Larry Summerweight and AlanGreekspeak and Phil Fuumcup, which ideas have generated the horrendous mess in which the country now finds itself.

Anyhow, here I am, serving as my own agent and publisher. I recognize most readers who still exist are more comfortable buying a book after they know something about it which I suppose is why those critics in the media still have work. Whether all of them will have it after the chazzerai comes down which I suspect is coming, who can say? A good deal of fairly senseless economic activity goes on these days which we soon may be unable to afford. By the way for you non-economists, economic activity means things somebody gets paid for selling, doing, pretending to do, promising to do. There, now you have your PhD in economics. Put it on your resume. Tell people you got it at the IOFM University. They will not have heard of it since it does not exist, but most of them will be too embarrassed to admit that. After they read the book they will know what IOFM is. I’ll tell you now: it’s an acronym like the government is using to squander seven hundred odd billion under the Rubble Assets Program and more soon under new programs germinating in lobbyist brains as I write this and you read it. This acronym stands for ITS ONLY MONEY. The ‘F’ is silent in polite society. They couldn’t figure out how to pronounce the I; a well known public dufus thought pronouncing it “I” sounded too selfish. Who? Read the book. Want me to read it to you? That’s part of the problem, too.


But I digress. For the interview I wanted someone whom I considered fair and literate, which shortened the list of potential interviewers considerably. I finally settled on Brian, the Book TV Guy who for fifteen years or so has never allowed his last name to be used on the air even though he runs the station. Not only is this Brian one of perhaps four reasonably honest people appearing regularly on television, but perhaps just as importantly he is in public television which is so broke it is unlikely to hire Covet and Burrowing or someone of their ilk force me to stop using his public image in this one sentence. Covet is quite expensive; there, let them sue me for saying that; truth is a defense. As for the real Brian, if you take the trouble to come down here and interview me I will take you to lunch with the cameras rolling and answer any question you care to ask that is not improperly personal, insulting or idiotic. Let me warn you, however: everything I know is in the book. I’m empty. Don’t expect anything else.

All right, here is the interview: the parties are identified. I am ME, the interviewer is IB. I stands for Imaginary.
 

IB: Why are you making jokes, throwing around words no one understands, speaking Yiddish, at a serious time like this?

ME: What would you do? You know the Emperor has no clothes; you are not a recognized important figure; you want to send a message. I couldn’t think of anything else.

IB: Do you really expect people to read your book?

ME: No, but I couldn’t resist trying to help. Besides if stock brokers have no trouble getting wealthy people business men dentists philanthropists you name it send them thousands, millions, billions, by saying I have this strategy make steady returns no one else can do it, we have this stock soon to make huge deal maybe triple, you would think at least four or five of them would want at least to begin to understand why everything they are told about markets non stop by financial industries network shmendriks is exact opposite of truth. No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have wasted all those golf days.

IB: Enough with the Yiddish. If I can’t understand you how can you make readers understand?

ME: Look: I’m not even Jewish. The Yiddish words are a device. There are marvelous Yiddish dictionaries on line. That’s where I found these words. If I used English equivalents my neighbors would stop playing golf with me and cover their children’s ears when I walked by. Besides, these words are only for emphasis; it isn’t necessary to know what they mean. If I say we’re being shtupped do you really need a dictionary?

IB: It could be said you are crying fire in a public theater, making people unnecessarily afraid, just in order to sell books, that you are subversive, unpatriotic.


ME: Yes; if anyone notices this site they will say all those things and worse. Fire in a theatre; that’s rich; Congress is the theatre; last October, last week it gave greatest performances since Booth; which Booth, maybe both? Not saying we should shoot them. Dealing with Congress like a meat processing plant; imagine two bosses watching guy dispatching all those animals one by one with his hammer: bang, bang, bang, seven eight hours every day, day after day, every morning guy comes to work humming, hums all day long, shift ends, walks out carrying his lunch pail, still humming, profit margins go down line speeds up faster guy keeps on humming, he doesn’t speed up; one supervisor says to another ‘you hired Barry Manilow, guy we need is Barry Bonds.’ The guy you would need to take care of Congress would need hand eye coordination like Barry, have to be a lot younger than Barry, otherwise I would recommend Barry; understand he’s not working.

Subversive? I am not a Communist. I am far less a Communist than these trombeniks who sold you Rescue, Tarp, whatever they now call it, less collectivist than Ayn Rand, Hayek, anyone who has ever lived. I believe nobody should be running things, Not even the Vassar class of 196_ although based upon the admittedly small sample I knew forty years ago it would certainly be a dramatic improvement to replace the entire Congress with all of them.

Look, the problem is we have allowed too much freedom to David Rockefeller, Walter Wriston, Dick Foldem, WhatAboutBob, Mike Milken, Charlie Keating, Ken Lay, Bernie Cornfeld, Bernie Ebbers, Bernie MadeOff, Jeff Skilling, Hank GreenNoLonger, SnowMan, Jack Dynamo and other celebrity executives, tycoons, confidence men (choose your own characterization, better use pencil) and less and less every day every month every year to anyone else. Did you ever notice how guys in this celebrity executive business move seamlessly from the cover of Fortune and Business Week to the prison farm in Chatagoochie? Did you ever think that perhaps the ones still at large have done more damage without even getting caught doing anything illegal and perhaps not even doing anything illegal either, than the ones now safely locked up or out on work release or wasting away or arguably deceased or definitely dead and buried?

IB: It is difficult to take your criticism seriously when you ridicule all the people who are approaching this problem every day with what appears to be good intentions and impeccable credentials. What is your point, for example, in making out the candidates of both parties to be caricatures from a theatre of the absurd?

ME: Well, you said it, not me. Look, we had a choice of two. Did the right guy win? Who knows? It seems to me the right guy would be asking right now for help, for unconventional ideas about this mess. Why not just put one guy carrying coffee on the post election victory tour by the fax machine, by the Microsoft Outlook? Only job look at everything comes in. Might be like that guy with the steers. Okay, use two guys. Think there’s anything more important to the country right now than this? Do you realize the only candidate it was even possible to send a fax or email to was Ralph? I didn’t even know Ralph was running again until Friday before the last debate involving him and four guys no one ever heard of. I sent him my idea; maybe he got it, maybe guy manning his email inbox deleted it.

Here is the problem in a sentence: important people think no one has a single valid idea unless he is already a darling of the established power structure: Wall Street; Washington; Fortune 500 Monopolists, Monopoly Media; Respectable Education Factories. This country includes two hundred seventy million people last time I counted. Why didn’t one candidate or the other establish a suggestion box? Because candidates cannot evaluate what a person says, they only want to know who he ‘is’; a candidate is nothing more and most are a good deal less than a person determined to get anointed himself. He thinks: get anointed, then I’ll waste some time getting up to speed on reality; meanwhile, just what the hell am I going to say next in that press conference tomorrow?


IB: How did you come to write about this problem?

ME; Well, I have had an unusual adult life. Won’t bore you with the details, let’s say I had a conventionally enviable education and then spent forty years in a series of Damon Runyon stories, had some luck, good and bad, ultimately good, finally learned to take care of business, found myself free to do what I wanted which turned out to be gambling in financial markets, studying golf, trying for the nth time to be a good husband. I also found myself living in Florida which is fine for some people but I was glad to get away. I began playing golf again instead of just studying it but am now starting to get old, can’t play every day, who can, started writing books, wrote two, not bad, no reason to publish, nobody reads, publishing conglomerates want books by Kathy Lee; Fred Exley already said only things needed saying about Frank next two hundred years. So, there I am writing third or fourth unpublished novel (no doubt some German conglomerate will want rights to others once people start buying this one; gotta figure out what to do with Euros already been to Italy, France, no reason to do that again). This book I was writing about one hundred pages give or take, story about college golfer gives up playing can’t stand crawling around course five hours watching guys make themselves human transit testing four mile per hour breezes, one day he just quits. Well, he’s a real college student, not just a golfer: inquiring mind, economics, history, literature, pussy chaser too, meets this girl: big girl beautiful girl same size he is one hundred seventy pounds former gymnast javelin thrower someplace in Balkans, Montenegro, Macedonia, mathematics major basketball scholarship stops playing that wants to play golf so she can make money Jake teaches her she learns fast, absurdly fast, really hits ball three hundred thirty yards not two sixty like those girls really hit it, well perhaps you can see where this is going. Maybe you care, maybe not. It doesn’t matter because that part of the book is not important.

Meanwhile, I’m watching the markets, trying to trade them, making some money no need to tell you how much, that’s none of anyone’s business; the important thing is that as difficult to believe as this might be for any sanely grounded adult, big business in general and finance in particular is from the standpoint of our major celebrity players nothing more than a game which they fully intend to win and consequences be damned . All you need to know about Wall Street, Nancy, if you are listening, is this: they sell you the future and they keep the present. That’s it. Just like the Church. Now you understand the CDS market. What Wall Street did is they convinced those guarding the treasure in all these oligopolistic monopolistic gargantuan goliaths of finance and industry known as public corporations to place bets with the banks and in some cases with each other about what was probably not going to happen in the financial markets over time. This was called risk management. They placed these bets to lower interest rates, manufacture earnings, smooth earnings, enable Wall Street analyst con game to keep going just like in the Nineties; people haven’t wised up since then plus always new people haven’t been burned. Wall Street bankers took the bets, laid some of them off, unfortunately from their point of view not all of them. These Bankers grabbed ridiculous commissions by accepting risks viewed as statistically insignificant by people having no understanding of rare events. Enter first black swan: Bear Stearns, then Lehman Brothers, AIG, GoldMenSacK, LivingstoneStanley, Watchagot, CityNoSex Group. Pretty soon we have a whole flock of black swans crapping all over Larry LetsDance, Jim OCD, Jeff IsNotHim, who knows who’s next? The story put out for public consumption is that no one could have known how all this might happen, not even WhatAboutBob; it was just bad luck, a change in accounting conventions, nobody’s fault. Yeah, sure. By the way, who made all the money these banks lost and where is it?

Understand about trading? Here’s how it works: imagine small neighborhood everybody has kids, make it easy one kid per house one dog per kid. Dogs loyal kids not so loyal, kids get tired own dog want different dog. Smart kid figures out he arrange all these dog trades make a quarter each one there is no limit how much money he can make, provided game keeps going on. If these bankers had just been trading dogs like they used to trade shares of WorldCon, Enron, EyesToo, let me look got some more this drek somewhere, we would not have a problem in the world. That drek is just equity. No one cares. It does not affect the credit markets which regulate the industrial process. That drek does not even affect the reputation of Jim OCD who has now reincarnated himself as an entertainer after being one of the leading lemming drivers around the turn of the Century.


This CDS game was created by the GreekSpeak CauseIcan WhatAboutBob Sumerweight BenCasey SnowMan forget who else doesn’t really matter bull market credit bubble which is now seriously losing air. Did you think I was going to blame it on either Democrats or Republicans? Fooled you. I am not Karl RomeWasntBurnedInADay or that ridiculous James CarWontRunUnlessIStartIt either. What will happen next? Ask WhatAboutBob; nobody knows more about trading than him.

We now have an estimated 45 to 60 trillion in these credit derivatives overhanging the markets. Now this number is only estimated. It could be ten or God forbid one hundred times that much. No one knows. NO ONE KNOWS. Thanks to our surviving accounting firms, our bank regulators, our securities regulators, our high flying establishment economists playing with equations and with themselves nonstop and writing drivel which you can read for yourself in places like the Harvard Alumni Magazine for September October, the New York Review of Books any week, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Washington Post any day for nearly thirty years, it is impossible for anyone to know how much hot money looking for safety how much trader generated megamoney untaxed celebrity compensation inheritor usury enhanced billions have poisoned the financial atmosphere, or for anyone looking at a balance sheet to know how much exposure any corporation has to this credit swap drek which is called toxic waste. A few years ago Warren called these things weapons of financial mass destruction. Well those of you familiar with the name Leo Szilard will understand me when I say the chain reaction may have begun.

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IB : Why should anyone read your book?

ME: Suppose it has one good idea? Most people could use one good idea. You have one? Tell me.

Anyone in America who stands to see his wealth affected by all this should be asking himself right now how did this happen and what should be done about it? He should probably not be asking the guys being asked nightly on the news who are without exception either people who cashed in on this bubble on the way up or people with no real knowledge of anything who have figured out how to mine a little niche in the system. Want names? Read the book.

IB; There is a good deal of bad language in your book. I admit it is quite funny and unexpected in a number of places but is this really necessary?

ME: I’m afraid so. Were I to have written this book straight I expect perhaps seventeen people would get past the fourth page of the part which may be important. Today, you have to get people’s attention first. Larry LetsDance screams. I swear in Yiddish. Two of our greatest comedians were Lenny Bruce and George Carlin and they did little except swear. A comedian is someone who tells important truths in a way that makes people pay attention. They laugh when they hear what he says; sometimes years later realize what he meant. I may not have much time, have to make people laugh a lot, soon.

IB: You suggest some pretty unsavory things about well respected influential people; aren’t you afraid of retribution?

ME: Well, I’m not looking forward to it, but this is still America. If politicians want respect shouldn’t they have to earn it? When big shots parade on TV talking nonsense what are we supposed to say, yes Boss? Part of me wants to put the book in a time capsule for seventy-five years, but at least they can’t fire me; I haven’t had a job since 1976. Now, as for your implied question: I don’t see why they would kill me. Guys: it’s all in the book! Discredit me? No one knows I exist except this broad I have to support until I die. It isn’t about me; it’s about them. But they will just ignore me. Have Larry go into his little war dance about nay saying negativists. These guys are not ordinarily violent, not deep thinkers either. They know most people won’t bother to learn anything isn’t about somebody sleeping with somebody else. This book is not about what is called scandal.

IB: So what is the book about?

ME: The only part anyone should care about, the part everyone who cares about his future, our future, could do worse things than think about, is in the last two hundred pages. It is an attempt by three unlikely men to influence the St Vitus Dance known as the financial crisis; it’s a takeoff on what I actually did attempt to do to influence it, including emails and faxes to Senators, Congressmen mainstream media outlets, university professors, other well known, well respected personages, conventional thinkers. It attempts to unravel what is really going on; I believe it does; contains a few choice blurbs on well known public figures, what is known in the world of probability as lucky fools, most of whom are clearly charlatans others sure giving good imitation fooled me. The point of the book is to make reader see we are not powerless just ignorant and passive, but ignorance and passivity destroy our legitimate power. The solution is not choosing between Senators and Congressmen, candidates these farcockteh parties give us. The solution is forcing these draycups to represent us instead of just themselves. But you have to understand these financial issues. It isn’t about just falling in line with Ralph, saving trees, buying shitty little cars. It’s complicated; sorry.


IB: So you have a solution to this Mortgage Problem?

ME: This is not about mortgages. That’s just a caper. This is about financial tsunami. Can’t solve this by having Nancy Princess and Barney Fumble open taxpayer pocketbook in exchange for letting their pals in on the action. Oh no. This is serious.

IB: So you are trying to scare us. How do we know you are telling the truth?

ME: Well, you could ask Larry LetsDance, Warren Wisebird, Larry Linseed. Don’t think they’d tell you whole truth; one of them might. Tell you what though: turn off the sound on that business network, watch those reporters sweat. Watch commercial paper, see how much the Fed has to chow down; watch the rate on credit swaps, yield curve, currencies. That guy Rick used to war a smock now has the blue suit he seems honest: watches all the numbers doesn’t just blow smoke. Watched him say after Warren told America he’s buying stocks, he didn’t think Warren was risking his family’s future. Now and then guest host comes in and lays out little piece of truth, watch those cheerleaders try to shout him down. See how many stations in your neighborhood have gas. See if prices going up or down and how fast. Everything look all right sit tight save your fourteen ninety-five.


IB: For all anyone knows you could be a short seller trying to cash in on fear.

ME: Sure, if I ran a billion dollar hedge fund. I don’t. I run what is mine: I’m trying to understand commodities, buy and sell futures, one two contracts at a time, try to go to bed flat. Not telling you I know everything, right now I’m short March bonds at 120; might be supporting that short quite a while. Had it to do over would have gone long but markets are tough, for everybody. Real problem is anybody today has money must gamble in them to get any return on his dough at all. That’s another consequence of this globalization idiocy. Of course, one is still better off having money than not having money. Last thing I want to suggest is that things should be made better for me. I am not Steve FlatTax seeking tax benefits for inheritors wouldn’t know investment if one came up and bit him on the ass. Real problem with this insanity is its effect on working people: starvation wages, credit card usury, nothing to buy but drek, only way to own a home take on mortgage you can never pay off unless you win the lottery or poker world series.

As for my personal hedge fund, I now own about twelve stocks, eight of them since year two thousand, pretty much all dogs except for ones I recently started buying, pretty obvious choices, I would tell you which ones but SEC probably come shut down this site, say I was committing fraud. It was too busy to investigate Bernie MadeOff instead made him national treasure head of NASDAQ something panel; that guy died before he confessed there probably would be a statue of him on steps of SubTreasury building already, some Governor would have pulled down the one of whoever’s there now. I haven’t been on Wall Street myself since Ninety-seven, just visiting then wearing tennis shoes show my wife greatest concentration of intelligent idiots in entire history of human race. Anybody need some WCOM, ITWO, OWC, want the whole list? Sell you everything I bought before October 1 for $10,000 right now, won’t even check the quotes. Did buy a couple of other stocks recently, including this big dinosaur on its ass, don’t think they’ll let it go broke. Japanese keiretsu means financial behemoth probably swoop in like with LivingstoneStanley; these guys rather have outpost in America or an extra hundred trillion yen? Of course I may be wrong about that. Last time I was short: Lehman Brothers 2006, lost a bundle on way up, couldn’t believe those guys fooled anybody. Thing about stock market: timing is everything, being right two years early just as painful as being wrong.

IB: Even if things are unsettled right now why is that any reason to think you have the answers?

ME: I’m not saying I have the answers. I have the reasons. I understand why most of what they are now doing is only intended to protect the guys continuing to cash in and how it is making what they call the systemic risk even greater and will impoverish ordinary people middle class people working people even more and faster too than they have been systematically degraded during the past thirty years. I suggest a few changes to slow down this freight train to national bankruptcy and try to explode the nonsense of the respectable fair and balanced well spoken suits who refuse to give up the floor even though every single thing they do only makes the problem worse. There are obvious alternatives that make sense, that are fair to those who have worked an entire lifetime to build wealth. Not a whole lot of them, I don’t even claim to be one. They have freeloaders on the bottom and finaglers on top. This has been building since at least 1971. It isn’t going to be cured by staying the course, biting the bullet, cutting back, being confident, waving flags. All that will do is give the momzers made this mess time to get out at the expense of those they hold in with their nonstop respectable flagrantly fraudulent kockamayme doubletalk.

IB: You haven’t told us your credentials.

ME: You think it matters if I went to Harvard? I did; if I went to Dartmouth like Hank TrustMe and Jeff IsNotHIm? I did that too. Feel better now? Why should it matter who I am if what I say rings true? Haven’t you heard enough nonsense yet from guys with credentials?

IB: So what can we do?

ME: First understand what they are doing, next demand that they stop. These guys still pretend to respect a republican form of government, what more than a few of them refer to as a democracy, which has not existed since several hundred years before Christ and only did then in a place the size of Cleveland, Ohio, or smaller.

IB: Anything else you want to say?

ME: No. I can’t think of anything more important and I don’t have to say less important things to kill time between commercials. When you finish reading the book, send it to the President Elect; he is going to need some laughs. Half the time I really don’t care if anybody buys the book or not. The way this on demand publishing works I may lose fifty cents each copy have to make it up on volume. What mattered was writing it. My conscience is clear. How’s yours?

 

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Copyright  ©  2009 by Jake I. Chase 
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