On Tuesday morning at 10 A.M. in a small anteroom of the Manhattan Diagnostic Clinic a small press conference was held. About a half-dozen radio and television stations had sent crews when they had received anonymous tips that a major story was about to break on President Bush’s health. Present also were reporters from several of the major daily newspapers and wire services. About thirty people were packed into the small room, which, as far as the clinic knew, was being reserved by their Dr Donaldson to give a small talk to interns on ‘The Pancreas: Then and Now’. The receptionist was a bit surprised at the sudden appearance of a crowd of excited reporters and camera crews but pointed them to the appropriate room. Far be it from her to know the precise value of the pancreas.
At 10 A.M. a dignified middle-aged man with a bushy grey beard and wearing a suit and a white coat entered the room, accompanied by a uniformed man whose stitched insignia identified him as an MDC security guard. The man went to the front of the room and stood behind the microphone that was already in place there. Cameras began flashing. Other mikes were shoved into the doctor’s face. He blinked out at the lights for a moment, looking a little overwhelmed by the spectacle.
‘My name is Dr Martin Luther Donaldson,’ he announced in a firm, dignified voice. ‘And I am chief pathologist here at the Manhattan Diagnostic Clinic. I am speaking out today because the White House effort to hide the truth about the President’s health is counter-productive to our country’s learning the truth about Aids and the normal lives people infected with the Aids virus may lead.’
The reporters leaned in closer, not quite believing what they were hearing.
‘From the President’s blood and tissue samples sent to us from Bethesda Naval Hospital I can say with total certainty that there is no truth to the rumour that President Bush presently has symptoms of the Aids disease.’
Dr Donaldson, or in any case the speaker, paused to let that little gem sink in to the thick skulls of his listeners.
‘The President’s doctors are convinced – and I share their belief – that his present cold is no more than the usual seasonal infliction and is no more severe than it would normally be. The blood tests completed here at MDC show no deficiency in his antibody count, the count still being within the range of the normal. We, or his doctors in Washington, will, of course, monitor it closely and keep you informed. We can expect that the President may live on free from the disease for many years …’
There was the beginning of an uproar among the assembled members of the press as the implications of all this began to sink in, two reporters breaking ranks and dashing for the door.
‘The President’s mind has not and will not be affected,’ the doctor went on with stem dignity ‘– at least not perhaps until the terminal stages, when he may become depressed.’
Although the cameramen continued to look at the doctor with that indifference that comes from living life totally detached from everything except getting the action centred, in focus and shooting only within prescribed union hours, the reporters were now staring at him with mostly open mouths.
‘To summarize, while infected with the HIV virus, the President is not yet ill. He can continue to function in his office for the foreseeable future. And the White House effort to suppress this information is a disservice to the American people.
‘Any questions?’
There were a few. Since twenty reporters were shouting at once, the good doctor could decide for himself which question, if any, he heard.
‘Neither the President nor his physicians have been able to determine how he obtained the virus,’ the doctor said next, although no one had been able to catch a single articulate question from the chaos of shouting. ‘Blood transfusions are the obvious first suspect.’
Scramble, scramble, shout, shout – more reporters already racing out the door, others straining to get their questions heard.
‘No, Mrs Bush has not been infected,’ the doctor announced sternly. ‘The President does believe in practising safe sex.’
Scramble, scramble, shout, shout.
‘Yes, the doctors at Bethesda will confirm all this now that I have broken the story,’ said Dr Donaldson. ‘No, I don’t know whether the White House will continue to stonewall it or not.’
Scramble, scramble, shout, shout, but the good doctor, microphones in his face, flashbulbs popping, retained his composure.
‘No,’ he announced with his stem seriousness. ‘We have no knowledge of the President’s sexual habits, and none about whether he engages in anal intercourse.’
Back at BB&P Larry watched the ticker that morning as if the Lord himself were about to speak for the first time in two thousand years. He had given his morning marching orders, accompanied by a pile of statistical manure to justify them, but his positions all presupposed a short sharp break in the stock market, a ‘flight-to-quality’ boost to T-Bills and maybe T-Bond futures, and a possible bump up in gold. The Treasury report that X knew about was scheduled to break at twelve, so if something on the President’s health didn’t come out before then, BB&P would get clobbered. As the stock market continued to rise mildly that morning – presumably on the continued buying of X’s insiders, Larry’s team at BB&P continued to sell into it.
Then, at 10.40 (ten minutes after the news conference at Manhattan Diagnostic Clinic had concluded) Larry noticed a sudden small swoon taking place in S&P stock market futures: someone was selling the futures rather heavily; but still nothing on the news wire to explain it.
Stocks themselves began to sell off over the next twenty minutes although nothing on any wire could account for it and the sell-off was steady rather than abrupt. It looked as if someone besides BB&P had gotten the news about the President’s little problem before the item hit the ticker. Certainly the selling of BB&P alone wasn’t enough to cause it – they were too small, Larry knew. Then at 10.57 Reuters spoke across the wire into thousands of brokerage houses across the country:
‘Manhattan doctor reports President Bush infected by but not yet ill with HIV virus. Condemns White House stonewalling. Fitzwater to reply.’
It was all downhill from there, both for the ease of Larry’s day and for the stock market. An airpocket opened up under the stock market futures and they were down 1 per cent while people tried to figure what the hell the Reuters item actually meant. Then the eleven o’clock news on several local radio stations gave brief reports of the news conference: a Manhattan doctor who heads the diagnostic lab of a well-known Manhattan clinic claims that President Bush has the Aids virus and that the White House has been trying to hide it.
As it turned out, Larry covered his shorts far too early, not having sufficient faith in the gullibility and irrationality of the investment community. Long after BB&P had bought back all their positions at nice profits the market continued to fall. It got so bad that for one horrible moment Larry became convinced that the President did have Aids and that Larry had just happened to uncover the stonewalling by accident.
Then he got control of himself and ordered his troops to buy, buy like crazy, and profit when the panic was over.
Spokesman Fitzwater’s initial denial – ‘The President does not have Aids and we don’t know who this Dr Donaldson is,’ rang false because reporters had already determined that Dr Donaldson was really the chief diagnostician at the Manhattan clinic and a well-respected member of his field.
The spokesman’s next effort was ‘We’ll get back to you on this’, and it wasn’t too successful: especially since he was pale and shaking when he made it, his words sent the market down another twenty points.
It wasn’t until about fifteen minutes after noon, when reporters began to hear that the Dr Donaldson who appeared on noontime local TV channel news was not the Dr Donaldson known and loved (and hated) by his colleagues at the Manhattan Clinic, that some cracks in the story began to appear. Still it took until 1.10 for the clinic to deny that the man who had given the news conference was their Dr Donaldson, who, it appeared, had at the time of the press conference been playing golf on a simulated course in lower Manhattan and knew nothing about any tests of the President’s blood. When at 1.25 Reuters shot across its wire, ‘President’s Aids possible hoax’, the stock market began to rally, and by the end of the day was only slightly lower than where it had begun. Larry’s troops made even more money on the rally than they had on the fall.
And, of course, a minor news item at noon about the US economy being stronger than initially indicated had been totally ignored by the market.
The BB&P Futures Fund gained 14 per cent in asset value that day, its best single day on record – almost matching its worst day on record of a month before. The fund made almost as much as Jeff’s Aunt Mildred. Arlene Ecstein’s account, which had begun at $200,000, was now at $284,000. It apparently pays to tell your broker to gamble with your money.
The only other noteworthy event occurred late in the afternoon just after the markets had closed: Jeff had another one of his little breakdowns. He suddenly began wandering through the exhausted and triumphant traders and brokers of BB&P, a huge mad grin on his face and shouting over and over, ‘Larry gave the President Aids! Larry gave the President Aids!’
After Larry’s brilliant financial triumphs of that day his friends and colleagues were ready to credit him with almost demonic powers, but not in their wildest dreams did they think he could ever do that.