Joseph Delaney: Business as Usual, During Altercations

Illustration by Darryl Elliott

John Sumpter carefully scraped the last fleck of lather from his face, turned on the tap and rinsed his razor. When it sparkled he risked a glance into the mirror and studied the face he saw there, wondering if someday in the far future it might appear on a stamp or a coin.

He had been president for four whole days now. Not one instant of the time had been peaceful and nothing had happened in that interval to make him think that would ever change. Never an optimist where politics was concerned he had not expected the job to be a bed of roses, but in his wildest dreams he had never imagined things would get this bad.

The day before yesterday the stock market had crashed, plunging a thousand points in a single day. Most of that was recovered in the next session, thanks mostly to intervention by foreign investors looking for bargains, but the part that scared Sumpter was that the dip produced greater losses than the entire equity market had been worth in 1929.

The conditions which had caused this were still operating, of course, and were almost certain to generate more fluctuations. Something had to be done about this right away. That was why the first item on today’s agenda was a breakfast meeting with the secretary of the treasury and the chairman of federal reserve board. He wasn’t looking forward to that.

Sumpter took a towel and carefully wiped his face, splashed on stinging after-shave lotion, and walked into the bedroom where his wife still slumbered. There he donned the shirt and tie she had selected for him the night before, slid into his jacket and tiptoed out of the room.

When he entered the dining room all conversation abruptly ceased. Coffee cups clinked down into waiting saucers as the others greeted him. He took his seat at the head of the table and an ancient steward whose name he had not yet learned poured a cup of coffee for him.

For a minute or two, while dishes were passed to him and he made his selection there was relative silence, but then, with these chores out of the way, and the waiters having melted back into the woodwork, the working part of the meeting began.

“We’ll get a breather on the market situation, Mr. President,” Sam Baribeau was saying. The secretary of the treasury was a career man, held over from the last administration because his ideas, while not popular with Sumpter’s predecessor, were practical and orthodox. “We’re getting good support from the European central banks, and there’s a lot of cash moving in from the oil producing countries. These people have to support the dollar to protect what they already have invested. But,” he added grimly, “things won’t get any better until we do something about the drug deficit.”

All the faces at the table dropped at that suggestion. This was the factor that had swept Sumpter’s splinter party into power in the first place. The public had finally realized that the dollar drain across the southern border made the trade deficit with Japan look puny, and was, in fact, the major reason why every American company with the ability to do so was going multinational.

There were so many expatriate dollars floating around outside the national borders that if they were to suddenly reenter the domestic economy they would create untold havoc. The dollar was stretched to its limits worldwide. It had been forced to cover the economies of countries like Peru and Bolivia, where it had driven the local currencies off the street.

The dollar was being used to do things against the national interests of the United States. Outsiders were gaining control over it, manipulating it. That was a critical part of the problem Baribeau had just broached.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Walter Holloway’s message was just as grim. He lowered his coffee cup and added, “We can’t keep interest rates artificially low forever, Mr. President. If they start going up it’ll pull a lot of that cash in. Inflation will rise again. The process will feed on itself and pretty soon there won’t be anything we can do to stop it. We have to act now.”

“What I’d really appreciate from you guys,” Sumpter replied glumly, “is some good news. Surely we can do something?”

Baribeau and Holloway looked at one another, then as if by silent agreement, Baribeau became the spokesman. “Basically, we have two alternatives, Mr. President. Both of them are bad. The first one is to repudiate the expatriate dollars outright. The primary effect of that would be the immediate collapse of most of the economies of South and Central America, including Mexico’s. There will be substantial ripple effects in other economies, mainly those of the Pacific Rim, because you never can only do one thing. In the worst scenario there might be worldwide depression.

“It’s way too late to avoid any of this completely. The best we can do is stretch these effects out some so they’ll just produce misery instead of catastrophe. The way we do that is to quietly redesign and reissue the currency. Then we can start an exchange program and we’ll be better able to control what comes back in.”

“I like that a little better than your first suggestion. How long would this take?”

“We could be ready in a month, Mr. President,” Baribeau replied. “We’ve had the design changes in the works for some time anyhow. For treasury it just means moving up the schedule. Walt would be in a better position to comment than me.”

Holloway obliged. “Domestic exchange will be no problem, Mr. President. We can go as soon as we’re stocked. There’ll be a little more paperwork for the banks, of course, and they’ll grumble, but the IRS should have a real picnic.”

“It’ll be a nasty surprise for the bad guys,” Sumpter chuckled.

“Only the small timers, Mr. President. Within hours after you order it every important crook on Earth will know the details of the switch, and that’s a conservative estimate.”

Sumpter’s jaw went slack. The other two gazed at him in frank disbelief at his naivete. He made it worse by asking, “How?”

It was a moment or two before embarrassment forced Baribeau to attempt an answer. Even then, his effort to do it diplomatically was almost ruined. “When it comes to understanding how government works, Mr. President, you’re at a disadvantage. Most of our presidents have been lawyers. Those that weren’t lawyers were career politicians, or at least experienced in the cut-throat world of big business, big military, or some other well organized discipline. You’re the first scientist that ever made it, and scientists don’t do very well as herd animals.

“In science, it’s the cream that rises to the top. In politics it’s the scum. To be a successful politician you have to be good at four things: lying, cheating, stealing, and conniving. Scientists have too much faith in the rules to make really good liars, too much fear of exposure to make good cheaters, too little opportunity to steal to get good at it, and they’re too individualistic to be successful at conniving.

“Of the four, conniving with the bureaucrats is the most important, because it’s the bureaucrats, not the politicians, who really run things. Nobody elects them, nobody can outlast them, and getting one fired is like pulling the back teeth out of an elephant.

“You asked how they’ll know about the switch. They’ll know because some bureaucrat will tell them. The bad guys own more crooked bureaucrats than they do crooked politicians, Mr. President. Bureaucrats are a better investment because they’re around longer, have more power and don’t have to account to anybody.” At this point, Baribeau took pity on Sumpter and let up a little. “But we’ll still hurt the big boys some, Mr. President.”