The Social Climber's Handbook by Molly Jong-Fast

Author:Molly Jong-Fast [Jong-Fast, Molly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-52633-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER Seven

September 25, 2008

Dow closes up 196.89 points to 11,022.06

S&P closes up 23.31 points to 1,209.18

Dick had been personally shorting Washington Mutual on and off for the last five years. Basically, shorting is a way of aggressively betting against a stock. Occasionally the stock had taken off like a rocket and he had been squeezed out of the short, which had made him insanely, well, insane. But Dick was obsessed with his WaMu short. He had always hated the bank. He had always felt it was horribly run, appallingly managed, and ridiculously leveraged. And worst of all, it loaned people money they could never repay and then booked as profits the interest payments that they weren’t paying. Of course, tucking decaying assets into level 3 capital, hiding debt or putting it on the balance sheet as an asset, well, that was something Dick had some experience with.

But Dick had never ever believed that the government would let WaMu fail. After all, Countrywide (ticker symbol CFC), which he liked to think of as the WORST BANK EVER, had been allowed to survive. With a little encouragement from the government, Bank of America bought Countrywide for about $4.1 billion more than it was worth (but that was probably because of the intense-tanning friendship formed between Angelo Mozilo, the orange CEO of Countrywide, and Ken Lewis, the slightly less orange CEO of Bank of America).

Dick was still having the crazy dreams, and that night of September 24, 2008, was no different: same crazy dream. It was dark and he was lying in bed, lying there staring at the ceiling, when he looked over, thinking he might see his lovely and slightly terrifying wife. Instead, though, he looked up to find his mistress and she was decapitated, so it was just her neck talking to him. It was a nice neck but it would have looked infinitely better with a head on it.

“Why don’t you have a head?”

“Stupid question,” the neck said.

“Okay, so what can you tell me? Since you obviously can’t answer the simplest question.” Dick wondered why things had taken such a decidedly hostile tone so quickly. “Why have you come, you Ghost of Christmas Past?”

“Oh, witty, witty, witty. Smart and charming, are you single? Wait, I already know the answer to that question. You know, I never would have had an affair with you if I had known your crazy wife was going to stick me into Mount Sinai’s crematorium.”

“Ain’t that the truth, sister? I’m right there with you.” Dick was shocked that he used the words ain’t and sister. It was a very dreamlike moment.

“Oh, my God, you are such an asshole.”

“Why are you really here?”

“Because I think we have a problem.”

“Really? Just one?”

The neck tried to frown. “Sir Kingly is running a Ponzi scheme.”

Dick looked at the neck and without flinching said, “Not possible.”

“Yes, possible. Have you ever looked at his statements? Have you ever looked at his K-1s? Have you ever looked at his myriad SEC complaints? Have

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