Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

TERROR ON WALL STREET

The terrorist attacks were on everyone’s lips among the brokers and salesmen at J.C. Mortenson.  How was anyone going to be safe?  What was the president going to do?  The events had turned the usual dull roar at the office at J.C. Mortenson into a hysteria-driven explosion of conversation mixed with guttural expressions of frustration, despair, and grief.  On the screen above their cubicles, the horror was playing and replaying itself out on videos taken from the cell phones of survivors of the Walmart massacres.  On the bottom of the screen the ticker ran the bad financial news, adding a component of financial carnage to the damage.

     “Whoa!  George, look at those numbers!”

     Transportation and grocery retail giants’ stocks were dropping in real time.

     “Transportation and retail stocks are tanking!”

     “I told you someone knew something.”

     “Holy crap, George: it has to be insider trading on the terrorist attacks.”

     Dumbfounded, Bob stared at the screen, feeling serious pangs of regret that he had jumped on the bandwagon and was now profiting from the terrorist attacks.  A news announcer came on screen with an exclusive report:

    
This is Barry Schneer, reporting from New York. We’ve been showing you video feeds from the terrorist attacks at Walmart stores across the country, which appear to have been coordinated.  ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombings, and the president has called it an attack on all humanity.  She has vowed that the United States will make a swift and appropriate response.  Walmart stock has been plummeting, and other stocks in the transportation and retail sectors are reporting sharp drops, which have sparked a selling frenzy on the market.

     “Red arrows all over the place!”

     “Bob, look!  Major banking stocks are dropping.  JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America…”

    
Stocks of the “too big to fail” banks are also dropping.  JPMorgan Chase is down ten points.  Citigroup is down by five and Bank of America is down by four in the selloff.

     The normally-busy phones at the office rang double time in succession from the hundreds of callers who must have been in queue.  And sell orders were racing through J.C. Mortenson's  online website.

     As the course of the short trading day played out, the tickertape was almost solidly red.  Retail, transportation, and bank stocks had lost over 50% of their value, representing trillions of dollars of shareholder wealth.  Bob fidgeted in his seat, watching the clock as he became more and more anxious about the banking news.

     “I’m with B of A.  I’d better cash out while I can!"

    
Panic has hit the markets, with investors liquidating positions in the major banks, grocery retailers, and transportation.
 

     “Dude, don’t worry. Bank of America is one of the biggest banks in the world.”

     “That’s a reason to worry, George.”

***

When Bob got to the bank, the line was out the door and around the block.  A bank manager came out to the sidewalk to settle the crowd of impatient, angry, worried customers.

     “Does anyone have a straight deposit, no cash transaction?”

     The growing crowd was restless and impatient. A man in the line raised his voice.

     “We want our cash out, not in!”

   This prompted murmurs of protest from all the waiting customers. The manager reacted with a nervous smile, kept walking down the sidewalk, and repeated her question to the rest of the people down the block.  

     “We’ve got limited cash here.  We have to order it.  There’s a limit on cash withdrawals of $300 inside.  The ATM machines are right on the side of the building if you don’t want to wait in line.”

     One irate man in line pulled her by the elbow of her jacket, and got in her face. 

     “Since when is there a limit?  It’s my money, and I want it now!”

     “I’m sorry, sir, but each branch holds just enough cash to satisfy our average daily needs.  Don’t worry.  The bank has plenty of money.  We just need to order it.”

     The crowd erupted with fervor.

     “There’s a longer line at the ATM than inside the bank!”

     “We want our money!”

     As the group became more restless, another manager emerged from the bank with a security guard.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, the bank is closing.  If you need to make a transaction, please use the ATM machines on the side of the building.  Please move away from the door so we can close it.”

     Instead of moving away from the door, the mass of people just crowded closer to it, pushing and shoving at each other and yelling in protest. 

     “Closed?  How can it be closed?”

     “It’s only 3 o’clock!  The bank closes at 5!”

     “I want to close my account!”

     Bob was in the back of the line, which was a good thing because the mob was pressing at the double doors at the front with such pressure, it seemed they were about to break.  There was no closing them as the line of people finally forced their way into the bank lobby like a rush of water through a floodgate.

     Bob left the line and went around the corner to the ATM machine, but the line there seemed as long as the one to get into the bank, so he crossed the street to the supermarket.

     The store was packed with people who were pulling things off the shelves as fast as they could and loading up their grocery carts with mountains of food and canned goods as if everything was free instead of being marked up 100%.  Bob waited in line at the small ATM machine in the lobby of the store.  After about 15 minutes, he was at the front of the machine, entering his card and punching in his PIN number.  The screen flashed a response to his withdrawal request of $300:

    
Withdrawal limit exceeded.

    
“What the hell?”

     He flipped out his cell phone and went on the Internet to check his account.

    
404: error, page not found.

     “Son of a…”

     He pulled up the site for his online brokerage account and logged in.

    
Password error.

     Bob Brammon had a few bucks saved at his bank and a modest securities account with his employer, but now all of it had disappeared into cyber space.

CHAPTER THREE

MELTDOWN

The news was bleak.  The president had vowed to take military action and had promised that measures would be taken to keep shopping malls safe.  But a second story was developing that struck another chord of terror in the minds of Americans and many others all over the world.

     The stock exchanges took another dive right after the opening bell.  By Monday afternoon, trading on the New York, American, and NASDAQ exchanges had been suspended after a second record day of more historical losses.  The Dow Jones industrial average had fallen over 28% in just one and a half days of trading, its largest drop in history.  The FDIC announced that it had seized Bank of America, but assured depositors that their deposits were covered by FDIC insurance of up to $250,000 per depositor.  In the wake of the Bank of America failure, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund warned that the international financial system was on the brink of collapse, and that major international banks were at risk of failing because of losses on speculative asset-backed derivative contracts.

     The banks had about $1 trillion in deposits and over $50 trillion in derivatives securities.  The total derivatives market itself had been teetering around $800 trillion – over ten times the size of the world’s economy. 

     There was a more stark form of reality taking place in the streets.  None of these interest points or trading failures made any sense to ordinary citizens.  All they knew was that, all of a sudden, their money was gone and, to make matters worse, food and gas was becoming scarce, prices were going up, and they had nothing to pay them with.

     Food riots broke out as major chains like Walmart were besieged by their own customers, who trampled through the doors with the fervor of a thousand Black Fridays.  When their ATM or charge cards were declined, they simply ran out of the store, en masse, with groceries and merchandise.  Since the weekend, most supermarkets in major cities across the country had been picked clean by hoarders and looters, and their supplies had not been restocked, causing them to close.  By Tuesday, Walmart had filed for chapter 11 protection.

     There was a string of suicides at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the top executives of every major bank, apparently not aware of the captain and ship principle, were packed inside their private jets with their golden parachutes, on their way to Europe or other offshore destinations.

     The warning signs had been there since the crash of 2008, but after the initial shock, nothing had been done to correct the problem.  Banks had been trading over $7 trillion in risky derivatives daily, as well as fixing interest rates and making bets on the rigged games.  There was an ever-growing gap between the elite and all the rest of the people which had continued to develop even after the 2008 crash. 

     The Government had been spitting out statistics: that the economy was in recovery, that unemployment was down, and that the stock market was in the middle of another historic bull run which was actually just another huge bubble. Triggered by the terrorist attacks, that bubble had burst, and financial experts all over the western world were trying to figure out how to put the economy back together again.

     Carlos Rodriguez, a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago whose father was a well-to-do businessman in Mexico, was preparing for his trip to Washington. There he would be a member of a financial expert team headed by his economics professor Dr. Harry Mason, a Nobel laureate in economics.  As he packed his suitcase, he noticed that the traffic in the city seemed to be louder than usual.  Blaring sirens, the sounds of helicopters circling overhead, and people screaming overpowered the normal ebb and flow din of downtown traffic that he had always been used to.

     When he looked out his window he saw that the streets were jammed with people, as if the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York had been transplanted to Chicago and re-routed down La Salle Street.  There was a large crowd from “Occupy Chicago” outside the Federal Reserve building on 230 S. La Salle, holding signs that they were the “99 percent” and protesting the bank closures, blaming the government for the crash of the economy and demanding access to their cash and government aid. Other crowds were gathered outside the U.S. Bank building on La Salle and the Bank of America branch on Adams, demanding that they open their doors.  The streets were filled with people, choking off traffic all the way to the federal building on Jackson and Dearborn and probably well beyond Carlos’ field of vision.

     Carlos watched in disbelief as SWAT vans and armored personnel carriers pulled up and hordes of police streamed out of them like attacking ants, shooting tear gas into the crowd and pushing at them to disperse the protesters.  The crowd fought back, throwing rocks and bottles which crashed around the police and bounced off their clear polycarbonate shields.

     In just a few days the city had turned into a war zone.  It seemed that freedom of expression had run amuck, or had run as far as the government would allow it to go.

CHAPTER FOUR

EXODUS

It was like the beginning of the end of the world.  “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”  That’s what the survival hawks had said, but everyone had always thought they were crazy.  Now, she realized they were right as she watched the mobs of people looting the streets of Chicago, smashing windows and breaking down doors as the police stood by in their riot gear doing nothing about it. The sky was already a hazy brown, probably from all the fires.  She could hear the fire engine sirens and had seen plumes of smoke from all over the city on her taxi ride from the University of Chicago.

    
Keep enough cash in case of emergency.

    
Even her economics professor Harry Mason, who was a relatively conservative “buy and hold” investor, had advised her to keep cash just in case and to also have some hard assets in a portfolio.

     Shirley Baxter (called “Snookie” by most of the people who knew her) looked out the window of the cab at the chaos outside that used to be the streets of Chicago.  Some people were carrying huge bottles of water and some were rolling shopping carts filled with food.  Others were stealing the spoils from each other.  A rock suddenly hit the side of the cab with a loud
clank
, just missing the window, and Snookie ducked down.

     “You don’t want to go out there,” said the cab driver, a rough and tough type with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his T-shirt.

     “Will we make it?”

     “Oh, you’ll make it to the airport, alright.  I don’t know about your plane.  Where are you headed?”

     “Washington.  I’m supposed to be in a group who’s testifying before the Senate Finance Committee.”

     “Well, you tell them for me that they’ve screwed everything up.  Excuse my French, but there’s no other way to say it.”

     The driver dodged a burning car.

     Snookie, a graduate student at UChicago where she was a candidate for a PhD in economics, was still far from 30 and, even on a day like this, still looked fresh, clean, and confident, and was dressed in style.  She pushed her long auburn hair behind her ear and put her cell phone to it.  No signal.  There were rolling blackouts out all over the city.  Probably in the transmission towers as well.  Or the whole system was run by the Internet, like everything else.  She wasn’t getting a 4G signal, either.

    As the taxi pulled up to the United Airlines terminal at O’Hare, the entire airport police force seemed to be out and on alert.  It was impossible to see the curb due to the mass of people packed into the sidewalk with stacks of luggage piled to the sky.  The cops were waving at all the cars, moving them along.  Luckily, she was in a taxi, which still had a special zone for dropping her off.

     “I’d help you in, darlin’, but they’re not going to let me stay here,” said the driver as he pulled into the taxi zone. 

     “That’s okay, I’ll make it.”

    She paid the driver the $55.20 on the meter plus a $10 tip, but he handed it back to her.

    “Maybe this stuff will be good in Washington.  Here, it’s just paper.”

     Snookie took back the cash, reluctantly.  Despite her early years, she had amassed enough of it to be independent.  The noise was deafening.  The honking horns, people yelling, police sirens, and blazing bullhorns seemed to be amplified ten times their normal sound.  Crowds were piling against the entrances to the terminal.  The police had put up concrete barricades, but the people were pushing up against them.  She pushed and squeezed her way through the throngs of humanity to the opening. None of this was a part of her daily routine, and it made her extremely nervous and on edge.

     “Ticketed passengers only,” said the cop, who was blocking the only functioning door.  He and his partner next to him looked like astronauts or superheroes from a comic book in their riot gear: black helmets with visors, heavy boots, black flak jackets, and more padding on their shoulders and chests than NFL football players. Another two “robo cops” stood next to them. Snookie showed the police her flight reservation printout and was allowed to pass.  It’s a good thing she had printed it, because there was no way to show them an email on her phone.  Snookie was always prepared, but not for something like this. 

     Inside the terminal, the chaos seemed more subdued.  Noting that the self-service terminals were out, she took a place in the huge line that was growing in mass at the customer service counter.  Ten years ago, there was triple the staff to handle all the customers.  Now there were triple the customers, and staff who only handled baggage drop-offs.  Only the supervisors knew how to write a ticket or print out a boarding pass, and they were in short supply.  One of them, a woman of about 45 with hair that seemed to be graying by the minute, stood up on a stool behind the counter and raised a bullhorn.

     “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?”  The bullhorn amplified her voice and made it sound electronic.

     “Due to power outages to air traffic control, all flights have been cancelled until further notice.  Any tickets you now hold on a United flight will be honored as a credit against a future flight.”

     “Yeah, if there are any future flights,” quipped the guy in line next to her.  She reacted to his comment with a quizzical stare – essentially no reaction at all.

   The mass of people erupted with questions.

     “How are we going to get to Los Angeles?”

    “Are there flights going out of other airports?”

    “Can I get a refund on my ticket?”

     “What about trains and buses?” 

     “Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t answer all your questions as a group.  If you would like to keep your place in line, we will be happy to answer all of your questions at the counter.  Otherwise, you can check the updates on our website at United.com.”

    Snookie turned away, plowing through the mass of nervous and frustrated people.  She felt stuffy and claustrophobic.  She needed to get to Washington, and there was obviously nothing the airline could do to help her.

     “Snookie!”

     She heard someone calling her from what seemed like far away. 
There can’t be anyone else with that name
.  Then she saw him coming toward her, weaving in and out of people, waving his hand.  It was Ike Pendleton!

     “Ike, thank God it’s you!”

    Ike smiled and gave her a hug.  He had given her a friendly hug before, but she had always felt cold and distant to him.  This time she felt vulnerable, not the usually-strong Snookie he had known – the girl who always had all the answers. Ike was a little older than her, and had the same Economics professor at UChicago where he was doing his thesis in neuroeconomics.  They were both part of a team of ‘whiz kids” led by Professor Mason, who was working with them on a class project to save the economy.

     “I’m glad I found you here, Snook. I was just about to get my car and head off to D.C.  The chances of getting a plane anytime soon don’t look too good.  Want to join me?”

     “Yes, for sure.  Where’s your car?”

     “In the parking lot.  It was hell getting it here, but once we get out of the city, it should be easier going.”

    “I’m with you.  Let’s get out of here.”

     It proved to be just as difficult to get out of the building as it was to get in due to the fact that most people were trying to enter, not leave, the terminal.  Ike grabbed Snookie’s overnight bag and threw it on top of his own roller bag, then blazed a trail to the crowded opening, dragging her along.  She seemed so scared and helpless – nothing like the girl he had known from his economics class. Ike pushed and shoved his way through the crowd like a linebacker, trailing the suitcases and Snookie behind him.  He turned his head to her.

     “I guess we’re a little late on saving the world, aren’t we?  It’s kind of like a living lab, showing neuroeconomics at work.”

     “It’s exactly what Professor Mason was trying to prevent.”

***

When they finally got to the parking garage, they had to take the stairs because the elevators were not working.  When they reached the third floor, Ike pointed and said, “My car’s right over…what the hell?”

     Ike let go of the bags, turned to Snookie, and said, “Wait for me here,” and ran ahead.  Two men were breaking into his brand new Lexus.  One was working a slim jim into the window while the other stood impatiently by him.

     “Get away from my car!” Ike screamed, and charged toward them.