The Tailor of Escondido
I stumbled on the twenty-year-old movie with Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis, The Tailor of Panama. The movie is a strange blend of international spy thriller and comedy, with Rush playing a well-connected Saville Row tailor doing business in Panama City, and Brosnan playing a disgraced MI-6 secret agent who goes around fabricating a Canal Zone fantasy to revitalize his flagging career. I have had three encounters with Panama over my life. The first was as a child while we lived in Costa Rica. Logically, during those years of the late 1950’s, we took a family trip to visit the Canal Zone, which was still very much in full Americanized swing.. The second time came when I ran the private banking business of BankersTrust in the early 1990’s, not long after the U.S. stepped in and arrested Manuel Noriega for all his drug trafficking and money laundering activities. We had a branch in Panama City which we had closed during the late 80’s scandals (private banking being the tip of the money laundering spear), but we still owned a building which we would like to have sold somehow, and I went to go figure out if there was a way to make that happen. I doubt I would have made a special trip for that, but I was in Costa Rica for an Inter-American Development Bank gathering, so what the heck. The third and last time I went to Panama was in 2010 when I was once again trying to sort out an errant property, except this time it was a half-built condo development on the Avenida Balboa that I was trying to resolve for the Israeli corporate owners. One of the ideas being put forth was to brand the development with the Trump name, which was being openly marketed as available to place on any building built with any source of funding (legitimate or not) in any spot in the world (free or otherwise) where several million dollars were a available for the privilege.
As I watched this movie, I realized that all the smarminess that is depicted in their light-hearted spy movie set in an exotic “banana republic” are things that I encountered one way or another. I toured the U.S. Canal Zone when the marvel of U.S. engineering was still in control of this infrastructural wonder that took ten years to complete and changed global travel forever. I met with the U.S. embassy officials, including the Ambassador, to discuss the prospects for business in the post-Noriega world and where Panama was likely to go without money laundering as its core activity. Needless to say, this was a delicate discussion given my job as head of a global private bank. We were, as they say, pure as Caesar’s wife, but private bankers and suitcases of money were somewhat synonymous, so there was little sympathy for my desire to sell that neat and tidy branch bank, complete with a drive-through (how convenient can money laundering get?).
The bay-front condo was a more interesting visit to a Panama City that had become home to more 60+ story buildings than Miami had. The business wheeling and dealing going on during a global real estate retrenchment was a sight to see. And the Trump Organization was in the thick of it all. It was hard to determine what was smarmier, Panama City during a period of over-building, or Trump pimping out his family name for a chance to pocket some easy licensing money. When I visited Panama City that time, it seemed like a poster-child for excess, with more than one other building bearing the Trump name already. As I assessed the situation, I thought Panama City was starting to feel like the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where “Trump City” once had no less than six Trump-named towers lined up next to one another on Riverside Drive. With all their gold-gilded glory, the tarnish of over-indulgence had already started to set in and we decided that adding the Trump name would actually hurt the building’s prospects rather than help.
In the movie, Geoffrey Rush’s character is a consummate professional at his craft and while he represents a man who has had a criminal past, for which he paid his debt to society, and is somewhat susceptible to the dalliances of the fast lane of a carnival town like Panama City, he is also most notably a solid family man who cooks breakfast for his children daily. One of the interesting elements of this movie is that in the end, Brosnan gets away with a suitcase of ill-gotten cash he scammed out of his own UK government (something he self-righteously feels he is owed for his service to the Crown). The UK ambassador to Panama proves to be a petty crook who enables Brosnan and dips his beak into that cash pool. The fraudulent banker of Panama gets his comeuppance in being unclothed as a crook. Geoffrey Rush gets to carry on his pleasant family life minus his unfairly imposed debt burden from the bad banker. But the real stand-up guy, the anti-corruption idealist played by Brendon Gleason, ends up with a bullet in his head. And unfortunately, that seems to be the way the world turns.
Where do I see the analogies of this movie to our life today? Well, I hate to say it, but I feel like the whole of the United States (and maybe the whole world) have become Panama City. We are on the cusp of being a banana republic, but have managed to avoid the worst of it by ousting the main perpetrator of the fraud. Noriega was that perpetrator and like so many fraudsters of our day, was incarcerated to spend out most of his remaining days in Florida. Starting to sound familiar? But Noriega is not the protagonist of this story, he is the Deus ex Machina that sets the stage for the ensuing battle between corruption and righteousness. All of the corrupt demons remain on stage both partying hard and finagling at the fringes, trying to figure out how to maintain their advantage. Meanwhile, the idealists rail on while the hero (Rush, the tailor) tries his best to just stay out of harm’s way and carry on with his righteous life, not without a point of view, but also not with his hand actively in the till or any ambition for more than what he already has.
This weekend, it is hard not to be aware of all the machinations of the rich and famous as they jockey for position in the wake of today’s biggest perpetrator of fraud, Donald Trump. Like Noriega, Trump’s last act is not unfolding quickly. Noriega lasted through 17 years of trials, incarceration, extradition (to France for added charges) and final imprisonment prior to a more or less natural death. He faded from view gradually, but not without fanfare and living a perfectly reasonable life while many of his victims fared less well. I predict that many unworthy actors are likely to run off like Brosnan, with more than they deserve from all this fraud. Local politicians will wet their beaks, like the Ambassador did and as they always do. The media will be in chaos for probably a few more years over this, making as much hay as they can of all the legal drama. The rich and famous will probably continue to party at Mar-a-Lago, pinching the asses of the latest Stormy Daniel or Karen McDougal look-alike. Life and philandering will carry on as they always do. And the idealists like Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis and the other prosecutors who are shouting truth to power, will end up (hopefully only metaphorically) like Brendon Gleason, with a bullet in their heads.
Meanwhile, those of us who observe and want no part of the action, but feel the need to editorialize, will do our best to carry on with life. I don’t get to sleep with Jamie Lee Curtis, but I can do one better by saying I get to sleep with Kim Grogg. I don’t cut broadcloth, but I tailor my stories and expert reports every day with as much diligence as I can. I am the Tailor of Escondido.