was carefully examining her bronze fingernails. Was she the one behind
all this sudden nervousness about America's financial health? What
could these two know that we didn't, I wondered. It was all a bit
mysterious.
One thing was no mystery, though. Whatever was going on with Matsuo
Noda and Akira Mori gave me a very unsettled feeling.
"I'm flattered." I looked him over. "But afraid I'll have to pass. This
fall I plan to take off for a while and . . . catch up on some personal
matters that--"
"Mr. Walton," he cut in. "I would urge you not to lightly dismiss my
proposal." He was staring back at me intensely. "I can only say for now
that issues are involved . . . well, they encompass matters of grave
international consequence." Another pause, followed by a noticeable
hardening of tone. "Your other obligations cannot possibly be as
important. It would be in your best interest to hear me out."
Want the truth? At that moment all my negative vibes about Matsuo Noda
crystallized. He wasn't threatening me exactly. Or maybe he was. The
large viewing room was all but empty now. Maybe he'd deliberately
waited before getting down to his real agenda.
"My other 'obligations' happen to be very important to me just now."
"Then please consider rearranging them."
"Besides, my fees can be substantial." They weren't all that
substantial, but I was looking to slow him down.
"Your fees do not present a problem." He continued, "This afternoon a
retainer of one hundred thousand dollars was deposited in your personal
account at Chase."
"What in hell . . .!"
"Money is of no consequence in this matter, Mr. Walton. Time is."
"You seem awfully sure I'll agree."
"We expect your involvement to begin immediately. I cannot stress too
strongly the urgency of what you will undertake." He smiled thinly. "I
also feel confident a man who enjoys a challenge as much as you do will
find our undertaking . . . intellectually rewarding."
Seems I was hired and I hadn't even said yes.
This guy had another think coming. Besides, he could get anybody to do
what he wanted. He didn't need me. As I stood
there, I started trying to guess the dimensions of Matsuo Noda's
financial hedge. Taken all together, Japan probably had roughly a
hundred billion and change tied up in U.S. government paper. No way
could he be thinking of covering more than a fraction of that. I knew
plenty of law clerks who could do it, for godsake. A few phone calls to
a couple of floor traders in Chicago . . .
"Look, the most I can do for you is recommend some very competent
brokers I know to help you out. There shouldn't be too much to it.
You'll just have to go easy. You can't hit the market makers in Chicago
with too much action all at once. Prices get out of kilter. Then, too,
there are exchange limits. . . ."
"That is why we will be trading worldwide." Noda withdrew a folded
sheet of paper from his breast pocket. "Perhaps you'd like to glance
over our program. These are cumulative totals, which include our
activity to date, but we will begin moving much more rapidly as soon as
I've completed all the financial arrangements with our institutional
managers at home. Perhaps you will see why we need a monetary
professional."
I was still chewing on the "financial arrangements" part as I took the
paper, opened it, and scanned the schedule of contracts. While I stood
there, the room around us sort of blurred out. I had to sit down again.
All his talk about samurai and nerves of steel was for real.
Matsuo Noda had a program underway to sell futures on a pile of U.S.
Treasury bills, notes, and bonds he didn't own, "naked," in an amount I
had trouble grasping. I knew one thing, though: if interest rates
headed down, raising the value of those presold obligations, he'd be
forced to cover awesome losses. He'd be in a financial pickle that
would make Brazil look flush. On the other hand, if some disaster
occurred and U.S. interest rates suddenly shot sky high . . .
Numbers? The CBOT's long-interest contracts, notes and bonds, are in
denominations of a hundred thousand each; the Merc's short paper, bills
and CDs, are in units of a million per. Finally I did some quick
arithmetic and toted up the zeros. Something had to be wrong here.
Nobody had balls that big. I decided to run through the figures again,
just to be sure.
It was along about then that I realized all Noda's pious talk about
sheltering Japanese widows and orphans had been purest bullshit.
Resting there in my hand was the biggest wager slip in world history.
Assuming enough players could be found worldwide to take his action, he
was planning to advance-sell U.S. Treasury IOUs in the amount of five
hundred billion dollars. A full quarter of our national debt.
His bet: something or somebody was about to push America over the
brink.