The Revenge of the Roller Coaster
I used to proudly display a framed poster of a roller coaster in my office. It was a lesson I probably learned rom one of my old mentors, Joe Manganello, who was the Chief Credit Officer of Bankers Trust Company for many years. I used to spend many hours in his office during the years of the LDC debt crisis when I was responsible for $4 billion of bad sovereign debt to places like Latin America. The painting on his office wall had been hand-picked by him for a reason. It was a painting of a sailing ship foundering on some rocky shoal in a storm, looking to be on the verge of sinking. He always said that it was on his wall as a cautionary tale for all to see when they came in to propose some crazy deal or other, like lending more money to fund Donald Trump’s latest hair-brained scheme after his multiple bankruptcies. Well, that roller coaster picture was on my wall for a similar reason. It was to remind me and all who entered that life is always a roller coaster ride with lots of ups and down to curl your hair and take the wind out of your lungs. Whether it was a cautionary tale or a reminder of the joys of the ride of life depended on what day you were talking to me.
This morning I feel like I am once again on that roller coaster for many reasons all at once. To begin with, today is my last full day here on the hilltop for about two weeks (slightly less). I teach my ethics class tonight and then Kim and I board our flight tomorrow morning for New York and then on to Italy. Let me start by discussing the near term roller coaster ride today and tomorrow. Tonight’s class hosts my friend Roger to discuss the ethics of regulation and the issue of personal liberty versus the common good. Those are both BIG issues in business ethics in my opinion, so it will be a very engaging conversation. We will discuss Atlas Shrugged and the Margate Bridge case study. I spoke briefly with Roger this morning and can tell he is loaded for bear and will give the students their money’s worth in controversial views….which is the whole point. I will act as moderator and process person to keep us on track, but I hope to let Roger do most of the debate management with the class. That should be a whirlwind of a ride.
I also received an email from the Johnson School at Cornell this morning, asking, ever so gingerly, if they could count on once again borrowing the use of my Ithaca house (and I use the term “my” very loosely) for their reunion gathering in early June. I used the occasion to pick the scab off that particular sore that has stopped seeping, but is still festering under the scab. I approved the use, but explained that the University has already not lived up to its promises about the property after only three months of it being in their hands and that I would be going there in mid-June to pack up my belongings for good. I likened my departure in July with a trailer full of three generations of Cornell memories to Tom Joad driving west away from the dust bowl in Grapes of Wrath. It was a bit dramatic saying that I would not be looking back at Ithaca after that departure, but I am not above some drama with that particular wound. Naturally, that brought one email from a sister and three phone calls from my three kids, all of whom I had forwarded the exchange to. Whatever the size of my wound, my daughter’s wound is far more sensitive, so I had to spend time talking her through it all again. It is not the first or last discussion we will have about how we must all ride the roller coaster of life and try not to get thrown from the moving car. My son Thomas reminded me that I had let him use the house the same weekend Cornell would be holding its reunion party (Oops, but I said he could muscle through that). My other, more dispassionate son, Roger called to say his version of, “so what?” The roller coaster went through the family issues chicane and was still on the tracks.
I then spent an hour on the phone with my expert witness client going over my draft expert report where I supported the wrongly dismissed advisor and slammed the big bad broker/dealer who fired her without due process. It reminded me about how big companies focus on “the needs of the Army” when the going gets tough and the little guy (like my client) are part of the flotsam and jetsam that wash up on the beach afterwards. By the way, the National Ocean Service defines this as “Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship’s load.” So, to be accurate, my client is more jetsam than flotsam. As for me and Cornell, I guess I, as a major donor, am also mostly jetsam by my definition, but to the Johnson School who still wants to be my friend, I am more flotsam.
I chose not to call either of the two life insurance companies to discuss the ongoing saga of changing the trustee ownership of those cash-rich policies because I only allow myself to feel flotsam and jetsamed once per day. Those bureaucratic monsters invented the notion of jettisoning people and lives like debris and I didn’t want more downer news before heading off for our trip.
Speaking of trips and downers, here’s the good news: Kim and I are going to Italy, our first trip overseas in more than two years, for nine days. Here’s the bad news: weather.com tells us that in both Rome and Amalfi it will likely be raining each and every day of our stay. But that’s OK. I love Italy and especially the Eternal City of Rome, so I will be happy walking in the rain on the cobblestones and enjoying s suppli at a tavolacalda or just finding a nice trattoria in Tivoli just off the piazza from the Villa d’Este where I know they have wonderful Spaghetti alla Limone that I cannot get out of my mind. We will have fun regardless of the roller coaster weather.
I had been reading about the impact of the Russian/Ukraine invasion and the likelihood of the conflict bleeding into the Western European lives in places like Rome. Who wants to be so oblivious that we travel right into the teeth of a war zone? But the good news is that Putin and Zellenskyy seem to be on track to hammer out a 15-point cease-fire armistice. After three weeks of atrocities and displaced women and children, it would be nice to travel with the thought that things were calming down and that the more normal we can be with things like travel plans, the faster the western economies will recover. But then the bad news is that I read the Washington Post article on the resurgence of the Omicron BA.2 variant throughout Western Europe. Just when you thought it was OK to go back in the water, right?
Up and down goes the roller coaster, turning right with a jerk and left with a thud, my head and neck whipping around with every jarring twist and turn. And as we all know, no roller coaster ride is complete until you get through the last thrill. Jay Powell of the Federal Reserve gave us that this morning. For the first time in over four years, the Fed is raising interest rates to try to stifle the overheated economy. That is the bad news, but then again the good news is that it is raising the rate from 0 to 25bps. When I first went into banking in 1976 I thought that mortgage interest rates would NEVER get back down to 8%. The roller coaster keeps on taking its revenge out on us or perhaps giving us the thrill of a lifetime….you decide.