Business as Usual, During Altercations

Начало книги

John Sumpter carefully scraped the last fleck of lather from his face, turned on the tap and rinsed his razor. When it sparkled he risked a glance into the mirror and studied the face he saw there, wondering if someday in the far future it might appear on a stamp or a coin.

He had been president for four whole days now. Not one instant of the time had been peaceful and nothing had happened in that interval to make him think that would ever change. Never an optimist where politics was concerned he had not expected the job to be a bed of roses, but in his wildest dreams he had never imagined things would get this bad.

The day before yesterday the stock market had crashed, plunging a thousand points in a single day. Most of that was recovered in the next session, thanks mostly to intervention by foreign investors looking for bargains, but the part that scared Sumpter was that the dip produced greater losses than the entire equity market had been worth in 1929.

Читать дальше →