She is slight and crisply gray suit clad, her hair pinned into a bun and her lip bitten. The office is large, with only one window letting in dusk’s strained light. Three walls are covered with maps and graphs, each pinned neatly in place. In one corner, a muted television changes channels each minute and the final wall is nothing but crisp LCD screens. Some display stock tickers, others charts, still others a blur of words or news tickers. The woman sits cross legged in her chair at the center of this, completely motionless. She is looking in the direction of a series of charts whose titles all relate to housing and credit risk derivatives, but her eyes are unfocused..
When the man says her name, “Libby”, she doesn’t so much as twitch until long seconds have gone by. Slowly, with a shift of her weight, she swivels the chair to face the silver haired man.
“John.”
He smiles faintly, “Libby.”
“Credit derivatives.”
He nods. “Offloading default risk from banks onto investors. The chairman says they make the market much… stronger.”
“Who’s buying these derivatives?”
“Hedge funds are big. Those boys need big profits. No one parks their money in a hedge fund to get mutual fund returns.”
“Lot of them are getting mutual fund returns.” She nods towards one of the charts.
“I’m guessing their risk profile isn’t the same as a mutual fund’s.” It’s not a question but Libby nods to another chart.
“Nope. Lots of refi exposure too. ‘Cause the risk of someone defaulting on a second mortgate is no big deal.” She gestures with her chin to a series of charts pinned to one wall and he turns to look at them.
“Time to sale of housing. Seems to be going up in a lot of markets.”
“When a market hits a sharp discontinuity who gets hurt worst, first?”
“People who expect it to continue trend.”
The silver haired man turns back to Libby. His voice is weary, “are we going to hit a discontinuity?”
“Ever blow bubbles as a kid?” One corner of her mouth tilts up. “Any of them ever not burst?”
John shakes his head, but says, “well, not that I know of. But maybe one’s still blowing on the wind somewhere.”
Libby raises a hand slowly, then purses her lips and blows. John turns to look in the direction off her breath, “still going”.
She shakes her head, then cracks her hands together. The two of them match gazes for a few seconds and the older man finally breaks the gaze to look at the monitor. With a stride he stands next to the slight woman, then crouches, his head level with hers. “Show me the numbers.” She swivels back to the monitor and as the last pale light of the sun dims he follows her flashing white hands in a darkness lit only by the light of her screens.
Note:
This is one of the John Q. Treasury series of short stories, the majority of which are no longer online. There have been some requests to repost them, so here’s one of the last. I’ll repost more as time goes by and perhaps write some new ones. There’s certainly plenty of reason for John, Libby and friends to return. Unfortunately.