Don Pennington was mulling over how to treat the warning from Spencer Nast when his secretary buzzed him. He couldn’t possibly ignore the president’s chief economic adviser but the man was a sleazy, uncultured prick and hadn’t changed since Yale. And he had the balls to waltz in here and hold the secretary of Treasury job like a carrot in front of a donkey.
He hit the key. “Yes?”
“Ms. Ladd is on one for you, sir.”
“Thanks,” Pennington said and picked up his phone, hesitating for just a moment before pressing 1.
In his estimation Ladd was a smart, efficient woman who’d done a good job keeping the NYSE relevant when electronic trading had all but put the exchange in a back corner. They’d known each other since business school at the University of Chicago, and had bumped into each other numerous times at tony social events in the Hamptons and here in town.
Some of the old-school Wall Street types didn’t like her take-charge leadership style because she was a woman. But Pennington didn’t give a damn about any of that; he just didn’t care for her because he felt she didn’t respect him as the chief of the New York Fed.
“Hey, Betty, lovely to hear from you,” he said with a warmth that both of them knew was not genuine.
“I just had an interesting visit with Seymour Schneider,” she said.
“I didn’t think either of you ever left the floor during trading; does he have a bee in his bonnet?”
“You could say that,” she said. “He thinks that we’re on the brink of a meltdown even worse than ’08.”
Pennington sat up straight. She had his attention. “What’d he have to say?”
“He’s like a crystal ball, and he’s never wrong.”
“Seymour is a good man, no doubt about it.”
“Even though he works for BP,” Ladd said. “But I called to find out if you’ve heard any rumblings from anywhere.”
“A word or two here and there,” he said, though he had no intention of going into any of the details that Nast had warned him about.
“It’s me you’re talking to, Don, so cut the bullshit.”
Pennington held off for a beat or two. “Nast came to see me just a little while ago.”
“Oh?”
“He brought up the China problem, especially the PBOC’s probable response if some of its banks start to go down, which he thinks is a very real possibility.”
“Shit, Seymour was right,” Ladd said. “But just a word of caution: If Spencer promised you something, don’t believe him. He’s in Reid Treadwell’s pocket, even though he’s the president’s man. And you know what they call him, don’t you?”
“Nasty.”
“Yeah. And Reid is a quantum leap above that, and I do know what I’m talking about.”
Everyone knew about the romance, and how he’d dumped her. But just about everyone else in the business gravitated toward Treadwell. He was a superstar. A few called him the JFK of the market because of his looks, his charm, and his savvy.
But Pennington had also heard the story from a couple of different sources that BP’s boorish COO, Clyde Dammerman, was drunk at a party in Palm Beach and said something to the effect that when you peel away all the Cary Grant savoir faire crap, Reid made Attila the Hun look like Mr. Rogers.
“I’m not going to make any sudden moves,” he said.
“I understand, but I’m smelling something bad here. It’s why I called. And my suggestion would be to have a chat with Miller.” Joseph S. Miller was chairman of the Federal Reserve.
“About what, exactly?”
“If things actually do go south the way Seymour and Nasty suggest they might, then you need to be at the table making decisions, the same as your predecessor did in ’08. Call Miller right now.”