The Moneychangers

  The Times interview with Alex consisted of questions and answers. It began with automation, then moved to broader terrain.

  QUESTION: What’s mostly wrong with banking nowadays?

  VANDEBVOORT: We bankers have had things our own way too long. We’re so preoccupied with our own welfare, we give too little thought to the interests of our customers.

  QUESTION: Can you quote an example?

  VANDERVOORT: Yes. Customers of banks—particularly individuals-ought to receive much more money in interest than they do.

  QUESTION: In what way?

  VANDERVOORT: In several ways—in their savings accounts; also with certificates of deposit; and we should be paying interest on demand deposits—that is, checking accounts.

  QUESTION: Let’s take savings first. Surely there’s a federal law that places a ceiling on savings interest rates at commercial banks.

  VANDERVOORT: Yes, and the purpose of it is to protect savings and loan banks. Incidentally, there’s another law which prevents savings and loan banks from letting their customers use checks. That’s to protect commercial banks. What ought to happen is that laws should stop protecting banks and protect people instead.

  QUESTION: By “protecting people” you mean letting those with savings enjoy the maximum interest rate and other services which any bank will give?

  VANDERVOORT: Yes, I do.

  QUESTION: You mentioned certificates of deposit.

  VANDERVOORT: The U. S. Federal Reserve has prohibited large banks, like the one I work for, advertising long-term certificates of deposit at high interest rates. These kinds of CDs are especially good for anyone looking ahead to retirement and wanting to defer income tax until later, low income, years. The Fed hands out phony excuses for this ban. But the real reason is to protect small banks against big ones, the big banks being more efficient and able to give better deals. As usual, it’s the public which is last to be considered and individuals who lose out.

  QUESTION: Let’s be clear about this. You’re suggesting that our central bank—the Federal Reserve—cares more about small banks than the general populace?

  Vandervoort: Damn right.

  QUESTION: Let’s move on to demand deposits—checking accounts. Some bankers are on record as saying they would like to pay interest on checking accounts, but federal law prohibits it.

  VANDERVOORT: Next time a banker tells you that, ask him when our powerful banking lobby in Washington last did anything about getting the law changed. If there’s ever been an effort in that direction, I’ve not heard of it.

  QUESTION: You’re suggesting, then, that most bankers really don’t want that law changed?

  VANDERVOORT: I’m not suggesting it. I know it. The law preventing payment of interest on checking accounts is very convenient if you happen to own a bank. It was introduced in 1933, right after the Depression, with the object of strengthening banks because so many had failed in the previous few years.

  QUESTION: And that was more than forty years ago.

  VANDERVOORT: Exactly. The need for such a law has long passed. Let me tell you something. Right at this moment, if all the checking account balances in this country were added together, they’d total more than $200 billion. You can bet your life the banks are earning interest on this money, but the depositors—the bank’s customers—aren’t getting a cent.

  QUESTION: Since you yourself are a banker, and your own bank profits from the law we are talking about, why do you advocate change?

  VANDERVOORT: For one thing, I believe in fairness. For another, banking doesn’t need all those crutches in the way of protective laws. In my opinion we can do better—by that I mean render improved public service and be more profitable—without them.

  QUESTION: Haven’t there been recommendations in Washington about some of those changes you’ve spoken of?

  VANDERVOORT: Yes. The Hunt Commission report of 1971, and proposed legislation resulting from it, which would benefit consumers. But the whole deal is stalled in Congress, with special interests—including our own banking lobby—holding up progress.

  QUESTION: Do you anticipate antagonism from other bankers because of your frankness here?

  VANDERVOORT: I really hadn’t thought about it.

  QUESTION: Apart from banking, do you have any over-all view on the current economic scene?

  VANDERVOORT: Yes, but an over-all view should not be limited to economics.

  QUESTION: Please state your view—and don’t limit it.

  VANDERVOORT: Our greatest problem, and our big shortcoming as a nation, is that almost everything nowadays is geared against the individual and in favor of the big institutions—big corporations, big business, big unions, big banking, big government. So not only does an individual have trouble getting ahead and staying there, he often has difficulty merely in surviving. And whenever bad things happen—inflation, devaluation, depression, shortages, higher taxes, even wars-it isn’t the big institutions which get hurt, at least not much; it’s the individual, all the time.

  QUESTION: DO you see historical parallels to this?

  VANDERVOORT: I do indeed. It may seem strange to say this, but the closest one, I think, is France immediately before the Revolution. At that time, despite unrest and a bad economy, everyone assumed there’d be business as usual. Instead, the mob—composed of individuals who rebelled—overthrew the tyrants who oppressed them. I’m not suggesting our conditions now are precisely the same, but in many ways we’re remarkably close to tyranny, once more, against the individual. And telling people who can’t feed their families because of inflation that, “You never had it so good,” is uncomfortably like, “Let them eat cake.” So I say, if we want to preserve our so-called way of life and individual freedom which we claim to value, we’d better start thinking and acting about the interests of individuals again.

  QUESTION: And in your own case, you’d begin by making banks serve individuals more.

  VANDERVOORT: Yes.

  “Darling, it’s magnificent! I’m proud of you, and I love you more than ever,” Margot assured Alex when she read an advance copy a day before the interview was published. “It’s the most honest thing I’ve ever read. But other bankers will hate you. They’ll want your balls for breakfast.”

  “Some will,” Alex said. “Others won’t.”

  But now that he had seen the questions and replies in print, and despite the wave of success on which he had been riding, he was slightly worried himself.

  3

  “What saved you from being crucified, Alex,” Lewis D’Orsey declaimed, “was that it happened to be The New York,Times. If you’d said what you did for any other paper in the country, your bank’s directors would have disowned you and cast you out like a pariah. But not with the Times. It clothed you in respectability, though never ask me why.”

  “Lewis, dear,” Edwina D’Orsey said, “could you interrupt your speech to pour more wine?”

  “I’m not making a speech.” Her husband rose from the dinner table and reached for a second decanter of Clos de Vougeot ’62. Tonight Lewis looked as puny and as underfed as ever. He continued, “I’m talking calmly and lucidly about The New York Times which, in my opinion, is an effete pinko rag, its unwarrated prestige a monument to American imbecility.”

  “It has a bigger circulation than your newsletter,” Margot Bracken said. “Is that a reason you don’t like it?”

  She and Alex Vandervoort were guests of Lewis and Edwina in the D’Orseys’ elegant Cayman Manor penthouse. At the table, in soft candlelight, napery, crystal, and polished silver gleamed. Along one side of the spacious dining room a wide, deep window framed the shimmering lights of the city far below. Through the lights a sinuous blackness marked the river’s course.

  It was a week since the controversial interview with Alex had appeared in print.

  Lewis picked at a medallion of beef and answered Margot disdainfully. “My twice-a-month newsletter represents high quality and superior intellect. Most daily newspa
pers, including the Times, are vulgar quantity.”

  “Stop sparring, you two!” Edwina turned to Alex. “At least a dozen people who came into the downtown branch this week told me they’d read what you said and admired your outspokenness. What was the reaction in the Tower?”

  “Mixed.”

  “I’ll bet I know someone who didn’t approve.”

  “You’re right.” Alex chuckled. “Roscoe did not lead the cheering section.”

  Heyward’s attitude had recently become even icier than before. Alex suspected that Heyward was resentful, not only of the attention Alex was receiving, but also because of successes with the savings drive and money shops, both of which Roscoe Heyward had opposed.

  Another downbeat prediction of Heyward and his supporters on the board had concerned the eighteen million dollars in deposits from savings and loan institutions. Though the S&Ls’ managements had huffed and puffed, they had not withdrawn their deposits from First Mercantile American. Nor, it now seemed, did they intend to.

  “Apart from Roscoe and any others,” Edwina said, “I hear you’ve a big following these days among the staff.”

  “Maybe I’m a swiftly passing fad. Like streaking.”

  “Or an addiction,” Margot said. “I’ve found you habit-forming.”

  He smiled. It had been heartening over the past week to receive congratulations from people whom Alex respected, like Tom Straughan, Orville Young, Dick French, and Edwina, and from others, including junior executives he had not previously known by name. Several directors had telephoned with words of praise. “You’re doing the bank’s image a power of good,” Leonard L. Kingswood had called to say. And Alex’s progress through the FMA Tower had, at times, been near-triumphant, with clerks and secretaries greeting him and smiling warmly.

  “Talking of your staff, Alex,” Lewis D’Orsey said, “reminds me you’ve something missing over in that Headquarters Tower of yours—Edwina. It’s time she moved higher. While she doesn’t, you people are losing out.”

  “Really, Lewis, how could you?” Even in the candlelight it could be seen that Edwina had flushed deep red. She protested, “This is a social occasion. Even if it weren’t, that kind of remark is quite improper. Alex, I apologize.”

  Lewis, unperturbed, regarded his wife over his half-moon glasses. “You may apologize, my dear. I won’t. I’m aware of your ability and value; who’s closer to it? Furthermore, it’s my custom to draw attention to anything outstanding which I see.”

  “Well, three cheers for you, Lewis!” Margot said. “Alex, how about it? When does my esteemed cousin move over to the Tower?”

  Edwina was becoming angry. “Stop it, please! You’re embarrassing me acutely.”

  “No one need be embarrassed.” Alex sipped his wine appreciatively. “Um! ’62 was a fine year for Burgundy. Every bit as good as ’61, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” his host acknowledged. “Fortunately I put down plenty of both.”

  “We’re all four of us friends,” Alex said, “so we can speak frankly, knowing it’s in confidence. I don’t mind telling you I’ve already been thinking about a promotion for Edwina, and I’ve a particular job in mind. How soon I can swing that, and some other changes, depends on what happens in the next few months, as Edwina is well aware.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I am.” Edwina knew, too, that her personal allegiance to Alex was well known within the bank. Since Ben Rosselli’s death, and even before, she realized that Alex’s promotion to the presidency would almost certainly advance her own career. But if Roscoe Heyward succeeded instead, it was unlikely she would go any higher at First Mercantile American.

  “Something else I’d like to see,” Alex said, “is Edwina on the board of directors.”

  Margot brightened. “Now you’re talking! That would be an onward-up for women’s lib.”

  “No!” Edwina reacted sharply. “Don’t equate me with women’s lib—ever! Anything I’ve achieved has been on my own, competing honestly with men. Women’s lib—its catchwords, asking for favoritism and preference because you’re a woman—has set sex equality back, not forward.”

  “That’s nonsense!” Margot seemed shocked. “You can say that now because you’ve been unusual and lucky.”

  “There was no luck,” Edwina said. “I’ve worked.”

  “No luck?”

  “Well, not much.”

  Margot argued. “There has to have been luck involved because you’re a woman. For as long as anybody can remember, banking’s been an exclusive men’s club—yet without the slightest reason.”

  “Hasn’t experience been a reason?” Alex asked.

  “No. Experience is a smokescreen, blown up by men, to keep women out. There’s nothing masculine about banking. All it requires is brains—which women have, sometimes more abundantly than men. And everything else is either on paper, in the head, or in talk, so the only physical labor is hoisting money in and out of armored cars, which women guards could undoubtedly do, too.”

  “I won’t dispute any of that,” Edwina said. “Except you’re out of date. The male exclusivity has already been broken—by people like me—and is being penetrated more and more. Who needs women’s libbers? I don’t.”

  “You haven’t penetrated all that far,” Margot shot back. “Otherwise you’d be in the Headquarters Tower already, and not just talking about it, as we are tonight.”

  Lewis D’Orsey chortled. “Touché, my dear.”

  “Others in banking need women’s lib,” Margot concluded, “and will for a long time.”

  Alex leaned back—as always, enjoying an argument when Margot was involved. “Whatever else might be said about our dinners together,” he observed, “they’re never dull.”

  Lewis nodded agreement. “Let me say—as the one who started all this—I’m glad about your intentions for Edwina.”

  “All right,” his wife said firmly, “and I thank you too, Alex. But that’s enough. Let’s leave it there.”

  They did.

  Margot told them about a legal class action she had brought against a department store which had been systematically cheating charge-account customers. The printed totals on monthly bills, Margot explained, were always a few dollars larger than they should have been. If anyone complained, the difference was explained away as an error, but hardly anyone did. “When people see a machine printed total they assume it has to be right. What they forget, or don’t know, is that machines can be programmed to include an error. In this case, one was.” Margot added that the store had profited by tens of thousands of dollars, as she intended to prove in court.

  “We don’t program errors at the bank,” Edwina said, “but they happen, machines or not. It’s why I urge people to check their statements.”

  In her department store investigation, Margot told the others, she had been helped by a private detective named Vernon Jax. He had been diligent and resourceful. She was strong in her praise of him.

  “I know of him,” Lewis D’Orsey said. “He’s done investigative work for the SEC—something I put them on to once. A good man.”

  As they left the dining room, Lewis said to Alex, “Let’s get liberated. How about joining me for a cigar and cognac? We’ll go to my study. Edwina doesn’t like cigar smoke.”

  Excusing themselves, the men went one floor down—the D’Orseys’ penthouse occupied two levels—to Lewis’s sanctum sanctorum. Inside, Alex looked around curiously.

  The room was spacious, with bookcases on two sides and, on another, racks for magazines and newspapers. The shelves and racks were overflowing. There were three desks, one with an electric typewriter, and all with papers, books, and files piled high. “When one desk becomes impossible to work at,” Lewis explained, “I simply move to the next.”

  An open door revealed what, in daytime, was a secretary’s office and file room. Stepping inside, Lewis returned with two brandy goblets and a bottle of Courvoisier from which he poured.

  “I’ve often wondered,
” Alex mused, “about the background of a successful financial newsletter.”

  “I can only speak personally for mine, which is regarded by competent judges as the best there is.” Lewis gave Alex a cognac, then motioned to an open box of cigars. “Help yourself—they’re Macanudos, none better. Also tax deductible.”

  “How do you manage that?”

  Lewis chuckled. “Take a look at the band around each cigar. At trifling cost I have the original bands removed and a special one put on which reads The D’Orsey Newsletter. That’s advertising—a business expense, so every time I smoke a cigar I’ve the satisfaction of knowing it’s on Uncle Sam.”

  Without comment, Alex took a cigar which he sniffed appreciatively. He had long since ceased to make moral judgments about tax loopholes. Congress made them the law of the land, and who could blame an individual for using them?

  “Answering your question,” Lewis said, “I make no secret of the purpose of The D’Orsey Newsletter.” He lit Alex’s cigar, then his own, and inhaled luxuriously. “It’s to help the rich get richer.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  Each newsletter, as Alex was aware, contained moneymaking advice—securities to buy or sell, currencies to switch into or out of, commodities to deal in, foreign stock markets to favor or avoid, tax loopholes for the wealthy and freewheeling, how to deal through Swiss accounts, political background likely to affect money, impending disasters which those with inside knowledge could turn to profit. The list was always long, the tone of the newsletter authoritative and absolute. There was seldom any hedging.

  “Unfortunately,” Lewis added, “there are lots of phonies and charlatans in the financial newsletter business, which do the serious, honest letters harm. Some so-called newsletters are skims of newspapers, and therefore valueless; others tout stocks and take payoffs from brokers and promoters, though in the end that kind of chicanery shows. There are maybe half a dozen worthwhile newsletters, with mine at the apex.”

  In anyone else, Alex thought, the continual ego-thumping would be offensive. Somehow, with Lewis, it wasn’t, perhaps because he had the track record to sustain it. And as to Lewis’s extreme right-wing politics, Alex found he could screen them out, leaving a clear financial distillate—like tea passed through a strainer.