Slats only off by 7 years ...maybe less

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Goodbye to all that...

"Hey, whadda I know. But I'll tell you somethin', I bet he went broke 20 years ago."

Madoff: No investments for clients in 13 years
By Stephen Foley in New York
Saturday, 21 February 2009

"Bernard Madoff, the Wall Street grandee whose confession of a $50bn (£35bn) pyramid scheme prompted a new crackdown on fraud in the US, had not made a single investment on behalf of his clients in at least 13 years, it was revealed yesterday."

Goodbye to all that...

I got a chance to look up my ol' pal from Chicago today. I moseyed down Maipú toward the center of the business district to the offices of Slats G. Johnson, a fellow South-sider, just to check-in and wish him well for the new year.

When I greeted his receptionist, she advised me that Slats was now ensconced on the floor above ...the top floor of the one of many non-descript office buildings that line the streets of "The City." I made my way back to the elevator and when the doors opened again, I was impressed at his well-decorated new digs. "Come on in, Shank! Sit down! How ya like the joint?" I told him it was pretty; it really was. "Relax. I got the whole floor to myself. Nobody else around. Just like Bernie Madoff! Ha!"

It really did look like nobody other than Slats ever entered the plush new space. And I was glad that he mentioned Madoff; I know people here in Buenos Aires that have lost fortunes this year since September and I wanted to hear that Slats was OK. He straightened up a few things and we made our way down and around the corner to the last smoking-area in the neighborhood: the Grand Tortoni for a little nosh and some cold brews.

"How'sss da cowsss?" Slats has never thought all that much about my capital intensive choice to ranch here in the Argentine ...but he never failed to show interest ...if not amazement ... in the operation. I told him I wasn't getting rich but I felt good about it. But I let him know right away that I had been worried about him and whatever it was he was up to nowadays. Everytime I read about the crash, I wondered if he might have had some exposure.

"Nah. I'm not exactly rich ...and I sure as hell ain't idle rich, you know! It's a little tougher now but, you know me, I don't exactly trust a lot of people with my dough. So I'm OK."

Since he mentioned it first, I brought up Bernard Madoff again. My old buddy moves in some interesting circles and, once I was relieved that he was fine, I wondered if he knew anything about Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and how the greatest ponzi scheme since Mr. Ponzi had happened.

"Nah, I ain't got anything on that ..but it don't surprise me." It seemed to surprise the rest of the world, I thought. Everyone was wondering how it got started, how it continued, how it was kept so secret, where the money went ...and how it got so enormous. So I pressed him on how he could take in stride a $50 billion rip-off.

"Hey, whadda I know. But I'll tell you somethin', I bet he went broke 20 years ago." That impressed me. Everything I'd read pointed to Madoff being part of the crash that everyone had been experiencing this year. I'd never heard anyone theorize that the scam had been going on for decades.

"Well... figure. 20 years ago or so, he could have made the decision to come clean with the awful truth. But after thinking about it, he HAD to notice that he was the only one who really knew. Making a big announcement was gonna cause a lot of pain and heartbreak ...and he was gonna go down the tubes to boot! Think about it, he's sittin' there at his desk realizing that most of these people don't really want anything to do with the money... except to get an envelope every quarter sayin' that everything's fine. Lots of decimals and percentages and a bottom line that says that they made 2 points more than everybody else they knew!

"That kinda shit can go on forever.

"He still had people that wanted in on the action. For awhile, he probably felt guilty. After a while, he only let people in that were never even gonna live long enough to spend it... let alone ask for it back! He made 'em beg to get in! And to a lot of people he just no.

"Maybe he thought someday he'd make it all back ...and could go legit again. He probably treaded water for a few years. But after a while, he was probably just in deeper. When it got bad again, he went to Europe then Asia. Maybe he thought that those guys would pay for the losses of his ol' buddies on the golf course and their families.

"It remindes me of an ol' buddy a mine. After Korea he started workin' as a truck driver, a lot of guys did. Well, it wasn't too long before even I started to get jealous! He was workin' for a big outfit, he had the union cloutin' for him, after about 10 years he had some real seniority and could pick the best work. He got connected; he was on the inside of an up and comin' thing."

This was a classic Slats observation getting started, I thought.

"Once he got up the board, he could pick and choose his work. He ended up runnin' from Chicago to Kansas City about three times a week. Strictly gravy. Good money. Yeah, he was sleepin' on the road most of the week ...but what did he care? The company was payin' for it! He had plenty of time off and plenty of money to spend.

"Well he got himself married to cute little girl in Effingham once they finished I-70. Everything was peaches and cream for a few years. But you gotta remember that he was spendin' a lot of time in KC; there was a waitress or secretary there that really took a shine to him ...and he ended up marrying her too!

"I got together with him about that time and he told me that it really wasn't all that much trouble. He had his layover in KC anyway ...and the ol' lady in Effingham never noticed the diff!

"I guess that wasn't enough, though. He was a good lookin' sonofabitch, I'll give ya that. Had a reputation for hard work and was always on the job. And the small-town girls lookin' for somebody other than Billy-Bob just kept comin' out of the woodwork. They'd beg him. He told me that he resisted all that he could.

"Years later, it wasn't just KC and Effingham ...it was Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago too! What da who da mudder! The guy's gotta be crazy! How you gonna juggle all that? He tol' me that they dint mind, they dint know, they were all happy! They knew that they'd married a guy that they'd see for a while every month or so. The bills kept bein' paid. The people at the church all loved him. He was a hell of lot more respectable than some of those yahoo shade-tree mechanics that they coulda ended up marrying."

I was shocked. I was speechless. How could Slats compare an, addmittedly, impressive case of bigamy with Madoff? Wondering if he'd gone around the bend on this analogy, I pressed him on how these two things came together.

"Come on! You can see it. These broads all across the mid-west didn't much care if my buddy was for real... they just loved that he was somethin' special and better than every other housewife in town had! Sure, there was no day-to-day-to-day with that kinda husband ...but you never had to worry. They had them a real catch. The bank statements all looked good, he showed up on a regular basis... maybe apologizin' that binness had prevented him from attending on some important occasion ...but when it mattered and how it mattered, he always came through.

"He tol' me. He loved them. He wanted to protect them, to make 'em happy. He said he wanted to shield them from the real world outside. Once you do a couple two tree, the others probably come easier. He said he was gonna make it all right in the end. He stopped marrying every doe-eyed sweet-thing that made a pass at him at some godawful truck-stop... but the guy just wanted to be loved, I guess. He never could really stop. All the new ones just made him feel better about himself and what he'd done, is all I can think.

"I gotta wonder ...what's the difference from the investors and the foundations and even the middlemen that didn't much care about all the secrecy, all the freakin' impossibility of the returns, all the simply trusting that ol' Bernie would come through with another great statement in the mail that told everybody that they'd beaten the spread ...even if only by a point or three."

I started to catch on. That kind of situation could go on forever, maybe. Apparently, no one would complain and (with a lot of work on the scammer's part!) everyone would feel very good about the arrangement.

Wondering if Slats' old Korean War buddy had made off any better than Madoff, I asked him how his friend was doing.

"Ah! You'll never believe this. After all those years, his first wife dropped dead. Kinda unexpected. He took care of the details, like always ...but everybody in town wanted to see him and all the family and everything. He was a little late for his next stop, if you know what I mean!

"He told me that she was the proudest woman in town. She went to her grave wit' the full knowledge that she had the best husband in that little burg. But... the newspapers printed an obituary ...and an old schoolchum noticed the name and emailed the wife in Chicago wonderin' if she should pay some condolences. The other wife started to wonder, then she started to get pissed ...then she put two and two together and filed for divorce.

"Once that started, the wire services picked it up as a funny story. Ha! They dint know nothin'! Maddón! One by one the other three got wind and the whole thing went down in flames for my ol' pal."

Lots of different emotions started to well-up inside me about, not only Slats' old friend, but anybody that had gotten caught up in such a deception. I asked what sort of consequences truck-driving bigamist had to face.

"Well, it ain't murder, ya know. Missouri put him away for almost a year. The other jurisdictions coulda picked up on it... but, I don't know, they didn't. Whaddya got after somethin' like that? Some unhappy spouses? Nothin' new there. Some disappointed inheritances? Yeah, what's new? All in all, he was out early for good behavior. That didn't surprise me! That guy had been makin' more people happy on a regular basis better than anybody I ever heard of!"

Another great tale from Slats. Sometimes I don't know whether or not to believe him. But faced everyday with even stranger tales in the newspaper, I went along with his story like I'd been doing all the reports since September.

Pretty light sentence, I thought ...but I did have to wonder how you put a price on such a strange crime. What ever happened to him, I wondered aloud.

"I don't really know. I gotta a card from him from Wheeling a few years back. Night dispatcher at some little outfit. He remarried and sounded happy. But ya know, he always struck me as a happy guy."

Slats picked up the tab and we both lamented that the Tortoni's back door on Rivadavia had been long shut down.

We wished each other a happy new year and took off in different directions. As an afterthought, I called back to him, "Love to the missus!"

"Ha! Igualmente!"

blogging about blogging

Blogging about blogging...ya see, that just how pathetic I've become! Yikes! What's next? Recipes? (Actually, having just prepared a pot of my signature chili...I'm freakin' tempted!)

Truth is: I've got nothing to say.

That's a strange state for the Yanq but it's true. The juice has just all drained out of it for at least the moment.

Maybe it's the winter doldrums. Maybe it's the impending "5 Year Wall" that all expats/immigrants hit. Maybe it's the state of the old country ("Sittin' in a park in Paris, France / readin' the news and sho' looks bad") that makes everything I talk about and hear seem just so ridiculously trivial. Maybe it's unrequited williamsburroughs-ism setting-in.

Who knows.

There's lots of things to say, of course, about life here in the Paris of the Palmtrees. Not a day goes by that I don't thank God that I live here. The Retiro neighborhood that I inherited is still the one I would pick today, the cows are still fat and happy and we are still blessed with sufficient pasture although there has been no rain forever, the food is still delicious and remains varied and challenging with a little shopping in Chinatown and other nooks, I can sit back and laugh at the USD due to some strangely good (for me) decisions made upon our arrival, there are still splendid friends although I've been ignoring them along with family, I'll be registering with a terrific agricultural school tomorrow and my hard-won castellano will propel me to expertdom in pastures and grasses.

There you go! There's a hundred blogposts in there somewhere.

Perhaps it's simply hibernation. Maybe nothing more than something cyclical that I just don't feel like overcoming right now. I've been thinking that I'd like to see where it takes me but I've probably just caught the wrong bus.

Fear not (that's for me...not you)! With this little post I'll probably roar out of the starting gate once again.

My thankfulness to you.

I probably just need to look up Slats Johnson and tie on a good cathartic.

"SLATS" JOHNSON SPEAKS!

THE YM INTERVIEW
...with Bob Johnson

Last week I ran into Bob Johnson in the callecitas of Retiro while he was wandering down Esmeralda perusing the window displays of the hardware stores, mercerías, and tack shops.

He seemed genuinely pleased to see me and we made arrangements to meet a few days later for an afternoon beer in a local strip joint...that being the only kind of place left in town where you can smoke at the bar.

I've always liked Bob. Like me, he's originally from Chicago, he has a great old Chicago nickname: "Slats", and now makes Buenos Aires his home with his Argentine wife, Chiche. But other than that we're not much alike.

Bob moved here right after the crash and soon had put together a string of successful locutorios. About 3 years ago, he sold them all and bought two big blueberry farms somewhere way out in the province.

We met just as scheduled on that crispy autumn afternoon and ducked inside the friendly confines of the bar. We had the place all to ourselves except for a couple of very bored looking girls in fishnet stockings and bowties who brightened up considerably until we passed them on our way to the big hardwood slab with the stools and big ceramic ashtrays.

It was dark inside compared to the bright fall skies and we felt warm and cozy ensconced in the smoke and dim light. Forty pesos brought forth two ice cold cans of Isenbeck and we drank to each other's very good health.

....."So how's the blog thing coming along?", he asked me. I was sort of startled that he remembered my mentioning my blog to him about a year ago.

I told him it was doing just fine and couldn't help but remark that I didn't think he'd ever really look at it. He just didn't seem to be the blog reading type...whatever type that is.

..... "Well, you know, the blueberry thing doesn't actually run itself but it doesn't take up my time like the old days. Not to even mention the 10-hour days on top of a 2-hour commute back in the old country!" We both laughed, clinked our aluminum cans together and knocked back the last swigs. I called for two more.

My curiosity having been piqued, I asked him what he thought about the redesigned yanquimike punto com punto ar.

..... "Disturbing."

That wasn't the sort of reaction I was expecting...and he could tell by the look on my face.

..... "No, no! Not your redesign! That's fine. A little wacky at first but I got the hang of it after a while.

"What really got to me was a couple of the blogs I found. Both of them written by American guys."

I'm aware, of course, that there are a few blogs run by yanquis that are pretty offensive when they're not being flat-out arrogant and rude to Argentines. I made a few guesses as to what blogs he was refering to.

..... "Nah, none of those guys. You kinda know what to expect from that bunch so I avoid them. What I'm talkin' about is two guys that I've actually met and they're really nice fellas! Friendly, interesting company, intelligent guys. And some of the nicest things I ever read about BA, I read on their blogs. They're nothing like some of them that you find at baexpats.com"

Our third round of beers had just arrived and I was starting to wonder if the suds was already affecting our higher processes.

What could be disturbing about two yanqs, good guys, saying great things about our new hometown?

..... "One of the posts was about residential real estate by a young guy and the other was a nostalgic look at a bunch of little things about Buenos Aires."

I took another slurp out of my can and realized I'd seen both of those blogs. I asked him if those were the posts he was talking about.

..... "Yeah! Those ones! One time I just had to shut my browser down. Me hacía sentir tanto vergüenza ajena", he said in his hilariously accented Castellano.

I was pretty sure that I remembered the posts but I certainly didn't recall anything out of the ordinary and I told him so.

..... "You gotta be kiddin' me. Are you sure you read them? Here. Lemme refresh your memory a little bit.

"The young guy starts off talkin' about how apartments here are different from the States then ends up writin' about how Argentineans discriminate against people because of class and race. The other guy is tryin' to tell people about how a lot of things here remind him of when he was a kid in the 1960's but comes off like he thinks that Buenos Aires is 50 years behind the times!"

Maybe Bob had a point but I reminded him that everybody that lives here knows for a fact that rich porteños don't hang out with poor porteños and if you have dark skin here people are going to occasionally mistake you for the busboy or the portero even if you have a PhD.

....."A course! Any modern industrial society has got class distinctions and whiter, European types always have the best seats at the top. Everybody knows that!"

Now he had me even more confused. So I decided to ask him about the post about old-fashioned stuff about Baires.

....."Hey, I know what the guy was gettin' at. Any American who loves this place has got a couple two tree favorite things that he misses from his childhood that everybody still does here.

"But you gotta be careful! I'm talkin' about being careful not to make it sound like this is Havana or somethin'.

"And another thing! You gotta keep your facts straight if you're gonna do that.

"Garbage disposals were illegal in New York until 10 years ago, the 60's were the gaddam heyday of the automatic transmission and YOU, Mikey, sure as shit, gotta remember back in 1995 when 600 people dropped dead from the heat in Chicago that summer!

"Why'd they drop dead? 'Cause nobody within half a mile from the lake ever had AC as standard equipment!

"They were pulling rich old blue-haired ladies out of their fancy apartments for months."

I like Bob but this was getting out of hand.

He had, however, already ordered another round. The bartender looked at us like he had never seen two guys drink 4 beers each.

I thought I'd try agreeing with him on a couple of points...just to calm him down if nothing else. I conceded that some of the facts were wrong.

..... "Si, Juan. What's the real estate kid's excuse? Like it or not, you and I both know we come from one of the most divided countries on earth and the most famous one when it comes to racism. What'd the kid think: nobody here knows that?

"Anyway, Mike, that isn't the point and you know it. What were these guys tryin' to say, for chrissakes? And why were they havin' such a hard time sayin' it?"

I had no answer. Bob knew these guys, not me. I pointed out that not everybody can write.

..... "Not these guys", he said. "the real estate kid is the son of of a famous Philadelphia author and the old guy is a tenured professor from some Ivy League university. If anybody can write it oughta be these two."

I didn't know what to say.

..... "Ya see, these are some of our best. The United States has its share of assholes like every other country you've ever been in.

"But these guys are buen tipos. Bot' of 'em prolly voted Democrat!

"It almost feels like people don't feel any responsibility. My dear ol' uncle, not Mom's side of the family, the other one, god rest his soul, used to talk about going overseas back in the old days. He always said that his family and friends would tell him to represent his country well. He always said it felt like being an ambassador or something. Right now, 21% of Americans have a passport. And that's a record!

"Maybe moving to a foreign country doesn't feel like such a big deal anymore with the internet and satelite communcation and whatnot. But Christ! Who are these guys writing for? Both of 'em gotta know that when you put something out on the internet, EVERYBODY can see it. Don't they think Argies ever speak English, don't they think that one of their friends might translate it for 'em even if they don't?

"When you talk about somebody's hometown you have to be sensible, I like that word. Sensible. It doesn't mean exactly the same thing in Spanish, maybe it's even better.

"It's like talkin' about somebody's mother or their sister. If somebody started talkin' about how your mother drinks a little too much or how many guys your sister has slept with, well, Mikey, you know, he'd better be pretty careful in his choice of words! If da guy's an idiot, you might cut him some slack. But if the guy doesn't have any psychological excuses and raises his voice a little, he's gotta expect a swing at his nose. Doesn't he, Mike? Doesn't he?

"Aaaah, ¿que se yo?. ¿Que te parece? ¿Querés una más para el camino?"

I consented to the beer, since Bob was buying, and because it looked like we would talk about something more pleasant. I asked him how his blueberry farms were doing.

....."Byooootiful. I've made a pile o' dough and I think it's time to get out while the gettin' is good."

A third business for Bob since 2000? I asked what his plans were.

..... "It's time to move south, Mikeyboy! Did you know that in Patagonia you can buy a hectare of land for the same price as a cup of coffee in Madrid?!? Watch me! I'm gonna make another killin'!

It was good to hear that Bob was doing well. Bob paid the bartender and we headed for the door.

The sun outside was blinding and the air was chilly. I fumbled for my wayfarers® and my scarf as we said goodbye.

..... "Hey, Mike," he called back to me as we walked away from each other. "Did you take my advice on those soybeans?"

I nodded and waived.

..... "Good move!"