“I hear some guys on the executive board aren’t happy with the loads of merchandise we sit with overnight.”
Kathryn half smiles, taking note that I’m sticking with the original subject. “It’s a mind-blowing liability if those obligations begin to default,” she admits. “But the truth is that if we default, the whole United States banking system will be on its head so that won’t happen.”
“Yeah,” I say wearily, thinking of how much Feagin stock I’m forced to hold. Getting wiped out by my own firm would be the ultimate touché. “But as long as they go north, we’re okay,” I mutter, uncertain as to whom I’m trying to reassure.
“As fast as we invent these mortgage products we sell them,” she says almost sadly. “It’s only recently that we’ve seen any blip in them at all. And besides, this is our job. Every other bank is doing it so I guess we should be too.”
“To stay competitive,” I mutter.
“To stay competitive,” she states, and this time we look right at each other.
A trader named Monty interrupts the action on the floor. Monty is a short, overweight maniac who is screaming into the phone.
“Recognize the trade, bitch.”
His face is an interesting shade of purple and the girth in his middle heaves when he screams.
“And he is bothered why?” I ask Kathryn, trying to be calm and more like her. I feel like I’m in junior high again, where I tried to be a different person than myself just to make someone like me.
She brushes her elegantly coiffed hair out of her face with one of her perfectly manicured hands.
“Third day. D-day of not having a trade recognized by an account.”
“Hmm.”
This is when on settlement and payment day an account just won’t agree with a trade, disputing the price or the fact that it ever happened. This can be an expensive problem if the trader and account can’t figure it out, but Monty has a terrible method of seeking unity.
“Recognize this trade, you lesbian whore, before I come over there and staple your tits together!”
Monty is now wheezing. He hurls the phone at the turret and jumps from his seat. The other men are doubled over in laughter. Kathryn glances over at Monty, then me, and then back at her screen. Her eyes are a deep, sad brown and I wonder if pharmaceuticals are involved.
I know I’m on a speed date but I have to get all my mortgage-backed securities questions addressed. I ignore the guys’ noise.
“So how does all this made-up money translate to the guy on the street?” I ask. “If they’re making something from nothing, making money from embellished value, how does this affect regular people?”
“To the guy on the sidewalk,” Kathryn says, “who sees Wall Street being greedy? That person wants in on the action and is borrowing money at almost negative interest rates. He’s not entirely innocent. People who never thought they could own a vacation home are now taking two. The lady buying dinner food at Wal-Mart is throwing an iPad in her cart, and maybe even a dining room set.”
These are the longest sentences I’ve ever heard her speak. “Everyone is just heady with money,” she continues, “money that they’re borrowing.”
“But does that make them bad or greedy people? Someone is giving them the advice that they can afford this stuff. Someone they trust to know more about this than themselves is telling them to go for it,” I note.
Kathryn shrugs and taps away at her keyboards, completing small electronic trades with the ambidextrous skill of a concert pianist.
? ? ?
When I return to my seat, Ballsbridge is barking into his phone while some stock of his swan-dives. Naked Girl has found a rerun of Barney on television. She sways in her narrow clothes, arms wrapped around herself like a tilting column, sassing Marcus, “I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family.”
He catches me looking over his shoulder at his crashing investment idea and is pissed.
“Where the hell have you been?” he rants as he entwines his giant fingers around each other. “You have some presentation to do and some trader keeps coming over here looking for you.” He picks up the phone at his turret, reconsiders, then hurls the phone so hard the receiver cracks in half. Yes, he’s definitely losing money. And then it hits me: Ballsbridge has been dabbling in this dicey mortgage market for his own account.
? ? ?
That night I need to keep talking about this. As I speak to Bruce, he tosses loaded diapers into the Diaper Genie across the room, nailing that tiny opening every time. He gets some surge of joy from the act and waits until Owen gives him a pailful of ammo. He tells me it’s like a carnival game to him, one of his surprising daddy pleasures.
“What are your other daddy pleasures?” I ask. “I mean, you’re so lucky you get to go on playdates and get to see our kids so much.”
“Um, have you seen me go on playdates?” he asks as he thunks another load in the Genie.