Department of Shameless Place Dropping: I was at Fenway Park Wednesday basking in the sun-dappled sport of afternoon baseball when Washington went amok over a Junior Birdman-piloted Cessna invading the president’s security cordon. Seen from afar, this entire Code Red extravaganza is a reminder that we live in Hair-Trigger America in which there are 1,001 ways to conjure up memories of September 11.
In this evacuate-first-and-ask-questions-later environment, the implications for our security are alarming. Now I’m not talking about terrorism, but the stock market. As the Wall Street Journal reported, stocks did “a gut-wrenching flop when the White House and Capitol were evacuated.” (Truth in Blogging: The actual quote comes courtesy of NBC’s First Read, since I couldn’t find anything nearly as good in my old-fashioned eyeball scan of the paper-and-ink version of the Journal). Watching this market plunge, surely a few unscrupulous short-sellers, hedge-fund operators and fugitive financiers had the same Eureka Moment I did. And unlike a Dudley Do-Right sort like myself, they might have the cynical bravado to act on it.
In sad truth, there is big money to be made by temporarily roiling the stock market with a false-alarm panic in Washington. The scam is simple and I can easily see it played out in cinematic terms. Even though I’m the Huffington Post blogger least likely to write a screenplay (but please, Hollywood types, feel free to tempt me), I envision an opening scene in which our nefarious villain, a cross between Daddy Warbucks and Goldfinger, recruits a naif to play the fall guy. Maybe this Daddy Goldfinger convinces the schnook that his pet cause (voting rights for dolphins, say, or North Dakota secession) would be best served by dropping leaflets on the Washington Monument from a hot-air balloon. Or launching a miniature sub in the Tidal Basin near the White House. Or even inspiring an airborne F-16 welcoming party on his maiden learning-to-fly trip to the nation’s capital.
Meanwhile, from his hideout in the Amazon, our arch-fiend is waiting for that pre-arranged moment when the votes-for-dolphins crusader trips the Homeland Security terrorist attack trip wire. As soon as the first reports of an unidentified balloon/submarine/plane heading for the White House are broadcast as breaking-news bulletins on Fox News and women all over Washington abandon their $400 stiletto heels in frightened flight, Daddy Goldfinger shorts the entire market as the Dow plummets. Yeah, there will be a part for Scarlett Johansson as a fearless young SEC investigator, but I’ll leave such minor details as plot, sexual tension and dramatic denouement to trained professionals.
Okay, there’s a reason why I don’t write screenplays.
But the underlying notion is not that farfetched. According to the ever-useful Journal, Wednesday was also the day when the international currency markets were “roiled” (the financial writer’s favorite verb) because of a maladroit English translation of a mood-of-Hong-Kong story written for China News Service by a reporter who is more adept at covering tourism than the fate of the Chinese yuan.
Such are the joys (and the whoops-we-goofed risks) of living in a Hair-Trigger global economy.