Mélanie Mercier née Markowitz (5)

Jean Michel Jakobowicz, ONU

Mélanie Mercier née Markowitz, deputy chief economist of the Forecasting Department of the Organization has been the victim of strange messages threatening her children Isabelle 8 and Benjamin 10. She decides to protect them by sending them to her parents. Her father just arrived in Geneva to look for the kids. In the meantime, her colleague David Garrido, who tries to help her has disappeared. (You may find the first four episodes of Mélanie on UN Special Home page at): http://www.unspecial.org

— You seem out of sorts, said my father as he placed his bag on the sofa. — Just a little bit tense. This morning I had an argument with my chief. I then told my dad all that had happened. — Can he really take the study away from you ? asked my father.
— Yes of course ! The only thing is that he knows well that I know personally the Secretary General and as he doesn’t want to loose his job, he wouldn’t do such as thing. He knows also that my journalist friends would be quite surprise to see Radronovi presenting the study and that also would be counterproductive for him.
— Who is this Radronovic, asked my father ? — Alexander Radronovic is a so-called economist who works for me, but whose sole activity is to spy on my doing for my supervisor.! — I don’t understand why your study is so important ! — It is not so “important”. It is an economic survey like many others that kind. One of its originality is this confidence index by country that we publish. This index is the only one published by the Organization and it has some importance as it sets the tone not only for governments but also for banks and investors.
— Which means that there are quite a few people who read what my beloved daughter is writing.
— In a way, yes.

As I had taken off, I spend most of my afternoon with my dad. Around 3 : 30 p.m. we went to look for the kids at school. They were very happy to see their grand-dad. They spend most of the rest of the day making plans for their vacations. At one point as I was preparing diner, I saw them discussing whispering while looking at me. When I came near them, they kept silent. Took advantage of my fathers’ present to let him put my sweet little monsters in bed. While he was doing this very challenging task I called David again. Nobody answered !

“…Your kids are worried…”

— You are sure that you have nothing to tell me, asked my father once we were alone. — No, dad ! Except for this story of study… — Your kids are worried. They told it to me. They think that you are in trouble. They see you nervous and…
— They are wrong, I said quite brutally.
— They believe that you send them to Paris just to get them at a distance. Benjamin even asked whether it was not too risky to leave you alone here in Geneva and whether he shouldn’t stay to protect you. I tried to laugh at my big boys’ reaction. But it didn’t work ! — Listen daddy, I want to tell you something but please don’t tell any body about it, surely not mom or the kids. I don’t want to scare them. And then I told him all what had happened since one week. He remained silent for a while and asked : — Any news of this famous David ? — No, I just tried to call him again, but nobody answers. — Because it is the only worrisome aspect of this whole project ! — But, I aid, you don’t find it “Worrisome” all these scary messages ? These threats against my babies ! — Not really, answered my father. May I draw your attention to the fact that none of these messages were real threats. Each time somebody warned you about a possible catastrophe. I would call him more a friend than a visitor.
— So why doesn’t he or she show up ? — May be just because he is too shy or madly in love with you. Or may be he has such a big nose that…
— You never take things seriously, I answered quite crossed. — I am taking you seriously, he answered, but I try to put things into perspective. First of all I think that your idea to send us the kids is a good one. Second try to find your David. — Dad, it is not “my” David. He is just a colleague who is trying to help me. Furthermore he may be spending the week-end with a beautiful blond somewhere at the sea side.

My father’s theory quieted my down a little bit. And the next day when I took them to the station, I felt almost relaxed to see them leave. At the office I decided to have a meeting of my team to discuss the prospective part of the Survey. My five chiefs of section were seated around the conference table of my office. Each of them is responsible for the economic situation in of one part of the world. While Radronovi is in charge of the global financial situation.“

…My father’s theory quieted my down a little bit…”

— Your forecasts are totally grotesque. They are underevaluated, said Radronovic. Following my own estimates and the ones of the World Bank, we should reach next year an average increase of world GDP of 3.5 %. While if you add up all your forecast you barely reach 1.8 %, a quasi-recession. It is totally insane. I was discussing it this morning with Mr. Hubert de la Seyne and our views fully concurred. Radronovic insisted on the word “concurred” as if the concurrence of views of these two characters was enough to challenge the results of our models. However his sentence didn’t have the expected effect on his colleague, who smiled not always very discreetly.

Once the meeting was over, I decided to follow my father’s advice : finding David. Even if I had said the opposite to my father, I was really concern about his fate. A three-floor house on 87th street between Madison Avenue and the 5th Avenue. It belongs to Mr. John Gardiner, officially he is freelance auditor of a number of pension funds. In fact he is the owner of the world greatest network of pension funds. His personal fortune can be evaluated to 40 to 60 billion dollars, but his power goes far beyond. His network controls 2 trillion dollars and serves pension to around 500 million individuals throughout the world. On the second floor of the house, five people are seating around a table of teakwood. These five people, four men and one woman are like John Gardiner almost totally unknown to the public at large. Their names never appear on any management committee, even less in the list of big fortunes. Nevertheless all of them “weigh” at least one trillion dollars. Nothing in the appearances permits to find out their importance however all together they control 67.6 % of all pensions funds of the planet. Each year they meet in this very discreet house of Manhattan Upper East Side to take stock of the evolution of their respective businesses and take decisions which will affect not only most pensioners in the world but also, in certain cases the world economy as a whole.

— It cannot go on like this forever, said John Gardiner. During the last three years, in the US alone, we have lost one trillion dollars, one thousand billion dollars : more than one year of Chinas’ GDP ! Some of our pension funds have been saved by the skin of their teeth by the oversigh authorities. This is only due to the fact that we have been stupid enough to follow the advice of these stupid young Wall Street kids and their stock exchange frenzy. If it goes on like that I fear a loss of confidence in our pension fund system which not only would ruin us but would put millions of elderly down and out. Furthermore it would favor the return to a more… social approach of pension system with an interference of the government and the confiscation of our property.
— We have the same problem in Japan and even in India. People start to loose confidence, said Juan Ji, the owner of several pension funds in Asia.
— The situation in Europe is not much better, said Michelle Lamber. In Great Britain, our funds have lost several hundred million pounds. Which doesn’t help some other governments which are trying to convince their fellow citizen that pensions managed by state is in the long run unlivable and that the future is private pension funds.
— If we don’t do anything we are going to lose everything, repeated John Gardiner.
— What are you proposing? asked Jan Answer from South Africa . It took some time for the answer to come.
— We have to reboot the world economy and then sell everything… what I am proposing to you is very ambitious. It is a poker game with a huge wager, but in which we cannot lose.