The CEO of the Sofa (O'Rourke, P. J.) Read online

  I had lunch in the United Nations cafeteria instead. They have bagels there—with butter. No cream cheese. No lox. Just butter. At the UN they put butter on their bagels. No wonder these people can’t achieve peace in the Middle East.

  Don’t get me wrong, Nick. It’s not that the UN doesn’t do good things. There’s the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which provides food, shelter, and—sometimes—protection to thousands of displaced persons. Never mind that those persons were displaced by wars and civil disturbances that the UN failed to do anything about. And the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) did help stamp out smallpox, but meanwhile WHO was also spending $55 million a year in Europe, where people catch colds, and only $36 million for “integrated control of tropical diseases” in the Third World where people die. Then there’s the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) that gives primary health care, nutrition, and education to young people and also tried to give American kids UNICEF donation cans to replace trick-or-treat sacks on Halloween, which made lots of children furious at their liberal parents and I, for one, think that was a good thing.

  All in all, the UN has about 38,500 people working for more than seventy-five agencies, programs, and organizations devoted to making the earth wonderful, including the International Court of Justice (in case anyone gets caught jaywalking in Antarctica or something) and the Universal Postal Union (Tuvalu asks, Please buy our stamps), and also including the World Bank, which goes around giving money to countries for half-baked development schemes, and the IMF, which goes around taking the money back.

  The UN also gets Fidel Castro out of Cuba now and then, for which the Cubans are no doubt thankful, although Fidel did not seem to be. He gave a blistering speech in the General Assembly, calling the UN a “worn-out institution” and railing against “the inequality in the distribution of wealth and knowledge.” (You could go learn something, Fido. Sorry. I forgot. You banned the books.)

  Castro laid into everybody—“There is nothing in the existing economic and political order that serves the interest of Humankind”—and everybody loved it. He was the only speaker who got enough applause to make Kofi Annan use his gavel—Kofi being unemployed during the other 188 speeches. Then Castro went out on the town and had a fine time being serenaded by 2,000 American supporters at Riverside Church and shaking hands and making small talk with Bill Clinton at a UN lunch. One shudders to think what these two were saying to each other:

  “Can’t believe you got custody of the Elián kid, you wacky bearded maniac, you.”

  “Compañero, I hope that was not a Cuban cigar you used on the fat puta.”

  And the speeches went on. In double dose, too, since there was a bonus head-of-state-level open-to-the-media meeting of the Security Council. Clinton kicked off again, forty minutes late (third notice to President Holkeri), and trotted right into a crowd-pleasing play: “This idea of relieving debt, if the savings are applied to the well-being of people, is an idea whose time has come.”

  Third World debt relief was certainly on a lot of Third World minds at the Millennium Summit. Whether its time has come, however, depends on if you are owed or if you are owing. I hope my bank doesn’t decide it’s part of the Third World. (It already answers phone queries as if it were.) I don’t want to hear that the balance in my checking account has been “relieved.”

  And while we’re on the subject of debt relief, let us not forget the $1.8 billion debt in back dues the UN says that the United States owes. Oh-oh, we’re going to get ourselves posted in the UN clubhouse and lose our tee time on Saturdays.

  Congress has agreed to pay about half of that $1.8 billion, contingent upon the UN making organizational reforms to clear up problems such as the fact that, due to red tape, it takes about 461 days to hire a single staff person at the UN and that, due to accounting “errors,” there was a $6.3 million overpayment in staff allowances for the UN Iraq–Kuwait Observation Mission. The UN says the reforms have been made. They’re in a manila folder. And someone at United Nations Dues Assessment and Membership Development Unit Reform Division/Department of Accounts Receivable is looking for them now. Congress has permission to give my share of the $1.8 billion to Aromatherapists Without Borders.

  But most of the plenipotentiaries at the Millennium Summit were willing to forgive America for owing lots of money to the UN—as long as America gives lots of money to them. As Castro put it, after lambasting the world’s rich, orderly, and nice countries, “It is their moral obligation to compensate our nations for the damages caused throughout the centuries.”

  King Mswati III of Swaziland called upon the Millennium Summit “to correct the imbalance of wealth and social standards,” except, of course, such social standards as having an all-powerful hereditary monarch.

  President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia, whose twelve-car motorcade had been helping tie up New York, told the members of the international financial elite who were currently stuck in traffic to “release poor and developing countries from the fetters of debt. This breakthrough would equal that of the victory over the Cold War.” (Or maybe even equal to finding an on-duty cab at rush hour in Manhattan.)

  And Jeremiah Manele, chairman of the Solomon Islands delegation, baldly stated, “Solomon Islands…needs your assistance.”

  But, said Batyr Berdyev, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan, “no assistance, be it from international organizations, individual countries, or financial centers, should be conditioned by an infringement of sovereign rights.” So, your assistance with no strings attached, please.

  And also, please, forget about the United Nations Development Program Poverty Report 2000, which puts much of the blame for global poverty on bad government—something Turkmenistan, with an authoritarian regime and an unreformed state-run economy, should know plenty about.

  Why would 150 heads of state and chief executives come all the way to UN headquarters just to say, “Give me dollars”? It’s a mystery, though not much of one. Consider how ineffective it would be for a UN delegate to squat on a New York sidewalk with a letter typed on official stationery reading, “My boss will work for money.”

  Fleeing endless importuning speechification, I went to the “Daily Briefing by Spokeswoman for the Co-Chairs of the Millennium Summit and Spokesman for the Secretary General. Media Advisory: Moved to Room 226.” The first part of the briefing was devoted to an explanation, by the Spokesman for the Secretary General, of how the briefing had been scheduled to be in Conference Room 2 but had been moved to Room 226 because of scheduling conflicts, but then, due to a switch in venue for a press conference with the prime minister of Israel, the briefing was supposed to be moved back to Conference Room 2 but hadn’t been. The full-time UN correspondents were taking notes on this.

  A ministerial-level round table on globalization issues had been held that morning, said the Spokeswoman for the Co-Chairs of the Millennium Summit. But the proceedings, she said, were off the record.

  A petition for cancellation of world debt with an enormous number of signatures attached was being presented to the UN today by the music star Bono, said the Spokesman for the Secretary General, mispronouncing “Bono.”

  My mind wandered. And by now, Nick, I’ll bet yours has too. The UN Charter begins, very sweetly, with the words, “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” But there’s a flaw in this conception: that succeeding generations won’t want war. The history of all preceding generations tells us otherwise. So does observation of humanity after it’s had three drinks. Humans like peace? Weren’t any of the people at the founding of the United Nations married? Actually, Dag Hammarskjöld, the first significant UN Secretary General, wasn’t. This led to a certain amount of sniggering about his private life. But he seems to have been simply an overgrown, idealistic twelve-year-old. Hammarskjöld filled his journals with such adolescent maunderings as “the mask you put on with such care so as to appear to your best adv
antage was the wall between you and the sympathy you sought. A sympathy you won on the day when you stood there naked.”

  The UN has proven itself about as good at bringing peace to the world as the average naked twelve-year-old. The wars go on in spite of—indeed, sometimes because of—the 27,000 UN troops on peacekeeping duty around the globe. Kofi Annan wants to expand the scope and mandate of this UN army. The Annan-endorsed “Report of the Panel of United Nations Peace Operations” talks about “the fundamental ability to project credible force” and “robust rules of engagement.” According to the report, “Member states should…form several coherent brigade-size forces, with necessary enabling forces, ready for deployment.” Annan envisions a United Nations rapid-reaction corps with soldiers drawn from all and sundry countries, prepared to fight for peace at any time. Your dog, your cat, the mice in the walls, and the squirrels in the yard get together in case the tropical fish act up.

  Speaking of squirrels, the next morning Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter were having breakfast in the greasy-spoon coffee shop two doors from my hotel.

  Now I am a man with few firm principles regarding conduct in international political affairs. But I do know, from past experience, that any international affair that attracts the attention of Jimmy Carter—Panama Canal giveaway, Iranian hostage-rescue disaster, Moscow Olympic boycott, Sandinista takeover in Nicaragua—is something with which I want nothing to do. Rosalyn seemed to agree. She looked completely pissed off about being at the Millennium Summit or maybe about being at that lousy coffee shop, probably both.

  A woman who’d been sitting near me returned to her tablemates with a Carter-autographed paper napkin. “He was kind of distant,” she said to her friends about our most ex-of ex-presidents.

  Not distant enough for me, Nick. I went back to my room, packed my bags, and—traffic being what it was—dragged my luggage on foot to Grand Central Station, where I took the first train up to your house and mixed myself a drink that filled your mother’s Waterford crystal rose vase.

  2

  OCTOBER 2000

  Anything in the mail, dear?

  “A note from your godson. He says, Thanks for an awful lot of information about the UN. I’ve decided to go out for football instead.”

  Good kid—considering he grew up in a neighborhood where they fill their squirt guns with Perrier. Not much of a letter writer, though. Well, never write anything in a letter that you wouldn’t shout from the housetops.

  “Which is why,” said my wife, “all we ever hear from our friends and relatives is Help, I’m trapped on a roof.”

  Anything else in the mail?

  “A children’s video catalog—The Chipmunks Sing the Ring Cycle, and a feature-length Disney cartoon based on Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and something called Winona and the Werehumans, ‘The touching story of a little girl and her pack of warm, caring wolves. But when the moon is full they turn into terrifying hairless creatures that litter.’ And a check from Blather magazine.”

  Good.

  “Two hundred and fifteen dollars for your story, ‘Chewing-Mouth Dogs Bring Hope to People With Eating Disorders.’ You know,” said my wife, “maybe I should open one of those theme restaurants like Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood—The Freelance Writer’s Buffet. Decorate it in pine-board-and-cement-block bookshelves, davenports found on the street, orange-crate end tables, and bare lightbulbs. Paper the walls with rejection slips, of course. The menu…let’s see…‘tomato soup’ made with ketchup packets stolen from diners, weenies cooked on the end of a fork over open stove burners, and cold pizza crusts. Specialité de la maison: cheap domestic beer. Cocktail napkins could be printed with things actually written by freelance writers, or with the titles of unsold magazine articles like your ‘High Tech’s Next Big Wave—Life-guard Laptops.’ Then, to lure the tourists, I’d get a really famous freelance writer such as, um….

  Yes? I said.

  “Sebastian Junger. Except I’m afraid he has a bar of his own already.”

  Hmmm. Is that our Charles Schwab statement?

  “Don’t look in there,” said my wife.

  NASDAQ acting up again? It seems that “Quick, turn on CNBC, oh, God, how’s NASDAQ doing?” is replacing “Whassup?” as the universal American salutation. And people were only saying “Whassup?” because “Yo” had been sold as a ticker symbol to a Silicon Valley start-up making software to generate pointless e-mail messages, send them to everyone you know, scan the lame answers, and compose inane replies—www.litzon.com/nobodyhome.

  “As I recall,” said my wife, “you got in on the initial offering. And I really wouldn’t open that Charles Schwab statement. You know what the doctor said about stress and your acid reflux.”

  Right you are. I resolutely swore off looking at our investments on Friday, April 14, 2000, which ended one of the worst weeks in the history of U.S. stock exchanges up to that time. Mark my words, when they write the story of the twenty-first century’s financial collapse, the books will all begin with April 10 through April 14, 2000. It will be called Black Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday. Maybe I’ll call it that myself. Make a note in our 2001 calendar, honey: P.J., write book: How the Financial Collapse of 2001 Happened.

  What a week that was. NASDAQ went down 25.3 percent, and 7.3 percent was trimmed from the Dow. More than $2 trillion worth of New Economy stock market cash turned out to be, ha-ha, “virtual.” As Webster’s says, the money was “existing in effect or essence though not in actual fact.”

  “Italics added by your wife,” said my wife, “who called Charles Schwab and told them never to let you buy anything again as long as you live.”

  Personally, I said, I think the New Economy looked even more “virtual” before NASDAQ took its first fall. On March 27, 2000, Cisco Systems became the most valuable corporation in the world. The stock shares of Cisco were worth $555.6 billion that day—$502.9 billion more than it would have cost to buy General Motors. And what does Cisco Systems make? Certainly not profits; the company’s P/E—its price/earning ratio—was a whopping 216.

  “I know what a P/E is, dear.”

  It’s best thought of thus: If you had a lemonade stand in your front yard and your profits were $5 on a warm Saturday, would you expect to be able to sell your lemonade stand to a younger sister for 5 x 365 × 216 or $394,200? Not unless she planned to lap-dance for the neighborhood dads.

  “A very unlikely idea, considering my younger sister has an MBA from Stanford.”

  By way of comparison, I said, during the allegedly insane boom of 1929, Dow Industrials had an average P/E of 19. But I was asking what Cisco Systems makes. Um, systems?…Systems of the, uh, Cisco kind?…Maybe Max knows. Hey, Max, what the hell does Cisco Systems make?

  “Routers,” shouted Max from the next room, where he was using the computer to unload something or off-put it or whatever the term is.

  Routers. Cisco makes the little thingamadoodle that sends my godson Nick into the Radiohead chat room all night. This, as opposed to General Motors, which makes an entire damn car. In fact, GM makes 8,677,000 cars a year, including the fuel-injected four-speed red Corvette convertible that used to be catnip to the sweeties before the sweeties became more interested in how much Cisco Systems stock one owned.

  “Stock you sold at the bottom,” said my wife. “And I’d rather have a BMW Z8.”

  Anyway, it served the sweeties right when, between March 27 and April 14, 2000, Cisco shares went down 27 points—a $173.5 billion decline. And that was nickels dropped under the couch cushions compared to what happened at Microsoft. Microsoft shares went from a peak price of almost 120 in December 1999 to 74 in the mid-April 2000 blowout. And they’re down to 50 now and headed Greenspan-knows-where.

  Bill Gates owns about 15 percent of the company. He’s lost more than $53 billion, so far. I go Columbine when US Airways misplaces my suit bag. What on earth is the appropriate response to losing $53 billion? Does Gates get mad at his own computer operating systems for providi
ng the tools for the programmed trading that cost him 53 supersize? Does he pull a Ted Kaczynski and go off the grid? It’s going to be hard to run that cyber-house in Redmond on car batteries.

  “Mrs. O,” shouted Max from the next room, “I warned you not to get him started on the New Economy.”

  “I thought I’d hidden the Charles Schwab statement,” said my wife.

  “Now,” said Max, “he’s going to give the whole speech he wrote for the Buried Krugerrands Investment Society.”

  In reality, what Bill Gates does, I continued, is rush to Washington to kiss the enormous behind of President Clinton at something called the White House Conference on the New Economy, held, with apposite timing, last April. Bill Clinton spent the conference taking credit for the way American business had been going like a cat that sat in the cherries jubilee. Never mind that the stock market began its rise during the first Reagan administration and had been climbing ever since with the exception of a setback in 1987 (caused, I think, when one of those enormous chintz window treatments that were popular back then fell on some important yuppies and they smothered). And never mind that while Clinton was boasting about the New Economy, the New Economy was in a dash to the fire exit triggered by an antitrust lawsuit brought by Clinton’s Justice Department against the guy sitting next to Clinton.

  As I understand it, this lawsuit was based on the fact that if you use Microsoft’s built-in web browser, you have to click your mouse once, but if you want to use another company’s web browser you have to—call Morley Safer—click twice. And there in the Monica Lewinsky seat was poor (or, at any rate, $53 billion poorer) Bill Gates, probably thinking to himself, If I take another $53 billion and donate it to Hillary’s Senate campaign, maybe I’ll…” Get indicted. That’s usually what happens to people who do the Clintons a favor.