Read by Peter Noble
Adam Smith on capitalism, Marx’s spectre of communism, Tobin and his tax. Oh, their names alone bring an undeniably handsome smile to my face. You know the one. The one that enhances my dimples and makes my eyes sparkle. Yes, these old things. Some still say they’re as beautiful as the ocean, but twice as deep. But come, I digress.
Anyway, a full introduction seems unnecessary. You’ll remember me by now. Jonathan P. E. Bucket. Matriculation 1995. Double first Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University College, Oxford. Yes, that’s right, the Economics Enigma, as the world affectionately called me. Why, until my heyday economists barely dared to predict such cataclysmic crises, such devilish disasters, such tumultuous turmoil. (I should probably mention that I also have an accredited qualification in creative writing.) Oh, it was a dream, a delightful dream. Yes, yes I can feel them: the dimples are showing again aren’t they?
So, where to begin? Pegatha, I suppose I should start with Pegatha. It was the second lecture of our Economics Masters when I first heard her gravelly voice. She attacked the lecturer on his preposterous views that heterogeneous production goods can be included in a mathematically trackable inter-temporal equilibrium construction. Dear Pegatha was so engaging that my daydream about Modigliani and Miller’s life cycle theory of consumption came to an unsatisfactory halt. (Spend now, save later! Good chap, Modders!)
Being the perfect economist, Pegatha had no interpersonal skills and insisted on focusing on people’s hairline when engaging in conversation, whilst awkwardly invading their personal space. But then, Boom! By God, when you threw a little budget deficit into the discussion, well it was like dynamite.
I followed her out of the lecture hall on that second day and just went in for the kill.
“Micro or macro, gun to your head, which would you choose?”
Her eyes lit up, her breath quickened and her hand was clammy as I shook it in mine. I don’t mind admitting that I could practically see her cerebral cortex pulsing as she considered my proposition.
“Mocha frappuccino?” was my killer follow-up. She nodded, instantly charmed.
It was one of those conversations. You know the ones. By the end we knew everything that mattered about each other: from our GCSE results, 10 A*s, 1A (general studies) to our respective views on the sustainability of the Post Office’s new 3% savings account.
But it was when she talked about how sub-prime mortgages were being securitised as CDOs and spun into… Oh, ‘my bad’, you probably aren’t quite following. Well anyway, it was when Pegatha broached the topic of CDOs. That was the moment, right there. Wednesday 14th April 1999. I fell head over heels into a topsy-turvy, head spinning, body jolting, ideal romance novel kind of love. Collateralised Debt Obligations. I had imagined my life complete before those little babies came along.
The next day I told my professor that I would be devoting my Masters to understanding every nook and cranny of my beloved CDOs. He tried to deter me, “I can’t say I fully support an in-depth study of this subject. It’s just really, well really rather dull.” But I felt like I imagine Keynes did when he started penning The General Theory. Sorry, sorry … in terms that the layman will understand, like when E. L. James knew she was onto something with Fifty Shades. I felt sexy. I felt invincible.
***
Two years later I knew more about CDOs and the US sub-prime mortgage market than anyone would allow themselves to dream possible. I still discussed some of the more simplistic related concepts with Pegatha. And there’s no denying that it did, on occasion, become rather irksome when she changed the subject, typically to some micro-level drivel. How could I possibly contribute to such tedium when some of life’s fundamental questions on CDOs lay flirting next to us?
My CDOs were all-consuming. So consuming that I hadn’t noticed my love for Pegatha which crept up on me slowly and then one Thursday morning startled me with a sharp tap on the right shoulder: “Jonathan, dear God, I’ve put in my time listening to your bullshit,” she said whilst staring at my forehead before pinning my shoulders onto our favoured library table, jumping on top and kissing me squarely on the lips.
It was wet, awkward and left me with an unsightly cold sore.
***
But I suppose it’s true that all good things happen in threes: my Masters, Pegatha and then global economic Armageddon.
My world was shaken up like a snow globe and I watched with aching dimples at the turmoil which floated down and surrounded me. CDOs, Northern Rock, mortgage defaults, AIG, the sub-prime market, Lehmans.
I had never been happier.
It was all the rage, people couldn’t get enough. Lorraine Kelly did an idiot’s guide to securitisation. (Or so I’m told.) And my mother’s weekly calls became daily: “Just how will all this impact house prices in Tunbridge Wells?” “Sheila from the bridge club must be embarrassed that both her boys are in banking. The rumour doing the rounds is that one of them’s even involved in this short-selling business, although Sheila doesn’t like to talk about it.”
I have to steady myself just remembering the finger-tingling excitement. Imagine every Christmas present you’ve ever wanted, goddammit and birthday too, being bought for you with free next day delivery in one click of a 30 day Amazon Prime trial button.
I didn’t know that it was possible to be, well, so interesting. My parents had asked the standard questions previously of course, with that tilt of the head, and those half-glazed eyes: “I know you’ve told us before darling, but what do you do again?”
“My sweet spot is sub-prime mortgages, how they were securitised as CDOs, and spun into SNRDIs and all within the HNOB mezz debt space,” I would explain, as simply as I could. My father’s mind wandered to Afghanistan, Obama or some other fashionable story. My mother confronted her concerns head on:
“That’s all very well dear, but girls just aren’t interested in your demand curves. And the ones that are? Well they’re often quite … well, they’re odd aren’t they Jonathan darling?”
But that all changed from ’08.
Those golden days were like something out of one of those economics science fiction thrillers that you just can’t put down. (Yes, I know, there’s a real gap in the market for them at the moment.) I mean, you fantasise about these things: the redundancies, the doom and gloom, unemployment soaring, interest rates plummeting, the economy in a coma, but to actually experience it? It was mind-blowing.
***
It all stemmed from my seminal paper published in August 2005. You know the one. I had predicted the whole goddam beautiful thing. Robert Peston knew all about me, tracked me down and overnight the two of us were everywhere. We were the Maverick and Goose of economics. (And truth be told, I was Maverick.) ITV, the Beeb, Channel 4, Fox news, CNN: I was headline news. I often say that my only real rival would have been that octopus predictor, but he had spread his net too thinly with the whole football focus.
“And leading economist, Jonathan P. E. Bucket, is here to give us his views on today’s business news,” was my typical lead-in, followed by my preferred shot from the right. I tended to then stare at the camera with a heavy silence before adopting my infamously re-assuring and confident tone to explain the latest developments to the masses. In short sentences that they would understand.
I was coined the ‘Economics Enigma’ of the modern age. Oh and by gosh did worldwide fame and adoration have its perks. I could sense people looking over, hear their whispers. “It’s that bloke off the telly”…”Look, there, three ‘o’ clock, the business guy”… “those dimples…” I am told I was even a contender for Rear of The Year. (Whilst I have obviously never wasted time googling myself I do believe that the competition in 2008 was particularly strong.) I strutted around like a magnificent peacock, with my knowledge of CDOs splayed out for the public to admire.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, being propositioned became all part of a day’s work. Yes, yes, of course it was awkward: I hadn’t been wittingly approached by a woman since, well I can’t immediately recall an example other than Pegatha. But I didn’t have eyes for anyone else, as I reassured Pegatha on each of the numerous occasions that a member of the fairer sex tried her luck. When I did engage in conversation with any of them, it was only so that Pegatha and I could have a good old giggle afterwards at her simplistic views on matters such as the latest round of quantitative easing.
Oh, Pegatha. She was as divine a soul mate as one could hope for. Don’t get me wrong, we were physically compatible too. Well, as long as I kept the oral antivirals to hand. But it was our meeting of minds that this world will never see again. The glorious hours we whiled away at our favoured library table ‘chewing the fat’ about, well, about anything and everything, although we did often focus on subjects that were directly relevant to CDOs. Of course from time to time we would stray and discuss the big boys and their theories. I would watch in awe as her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed and her face took on a brooding intensity that even my love for the famous economists fell short of. ‘You economist groupie you,’ I used to tease.
The truth is that, aside from with my craft, I had never been in love before. I suppose it was when Pegatha and I had the occasional conversation about the weather, the latest film releases or our preferred Farrow and Ball shades and I found them, well sometimes interesting. I genuinely wanted to know whether she preferred ‘Elephant’s Breath’ or ‘Skimming Stone’. That’s when I knew she was ‘the One’. The One I’d marry, the One I’d have children with, the One I’d allow to read my world-class economics papers before anyone else.
La Dolce Vita: life was indeed beautiful.
***
And then the skies caved in. It was the icy winter of ‘09. Oh the drama! The bit in a bestseller which nails readers to their seats and makes all other literary agents green with envy for not having seen the author’s potential.
It started with the green shoots.
“Green shoots? There is no green, we’re like pigs in a shitty swamp!” I explained to the fickle public.
But gone were the heady summer days of redundant bankers staggering from glass towers to their Porsches with cardboard boxes that wouldn’t fit in the boot.
“We are still in the throes of a quadruple recession. 10.9% of you will lose your jobs this afternoon. 25.8% of you will be homeless next month. And there’s a 24.5% chance that you won’t even be able to shop in Waitrose this time next year!”
I tried to convince the masses. But nothing worked for me, the calls dried up.
I had predicted everything in the past decade but failed to imagine that CDOs could simply stop being sexy.
I should have known it would all unravel from there.
The devil crept up on me with his side parting, lop-sided glasses and braces. Eric the Eurozone Maverick. I watched as he took my place next to Peston on the Beeb, as he stole my column in the Guardian. Even Lorraine interviewed him. How I grimaced as he patronisingly tried to convince the masses that a Greek exit became interesting if he called it a Grexit.
And then Pegatha left me.
There was no “It’s not you, it’s me.” She didn’t still “love me but was no longer in love with me.” It was a simple “You’re just not the economist I hoped you’d be.” And that was the last time she addressed my hairline and turned her back on our favoured library table.
Shortly afterwards Eric the Eurozone Maverick appeared on CNN with a cold sore on the top right-hand side of his mouth.
I now spend my time fantasising about things turning around, about the glory days of unemployment, stagnation, depression, food banks, house repossessions ...
Oh, you get the picture? OK, well that’s it really, my memoirs in a nutshell. All of the other avenues seem to have dried up, you know, presenting Countdown, going down the workout DVD route or perhaps I’m a Celebrity. And sadly it’s not the right season for Christmas lights.
But my memoirs … well, someone said I should come and pitch the idea to you. And if my base case predictions are correct then with a bit of luck the UK will be in the darkest of depressions by 2022. It will be truly awful and give us plenty of material for Volume 2. I can feel my dimples showing, hang on, I might take a quick selfie. This is exactly the look I imagine we’ll use for the book cover.
(c) Kassalina Boto, 2015
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