Full Black - Brad Thor [32]
Standing did in fact judge women on their looks and how they dressed, but the make-or-break for him was in the brains department. He didn’t have time for unintelligent people. He was too busy and life was too short. Though New York City was filled with gorgeous women, there were few who could keep up with him intellectually. After his penis, there was no greater erogenous zone than his brain. If a woman couldn’t stimulate both, he wasn’t interested.
The attractive Financial Times journalist sitting across from him, though, seemed more than capable of doing both, so he decided to take the provocative way in which she had crossed her legs as just that.
“Let’s talk currencies,” Winston said as she chewed the top of her pencil and flipped through the pages of the steno pad balanced expertly atop her stockinged knee.
They were seated on low-slung couches in the plush sitting area of his office in Midtown Manhattan. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dramatic view of the Empire State Building, and the sheets of polished marble that covered the floors, as well as the walls, gave one the feeling that they had stepped inside some sort of modern Pantheon. It was an aura of grandeur, and it had been created entirely on purpose.
Standing studied the woman. Who used pencils anymore? he wondered. He liked it. It was a nice touch that made her stand out, made her different. He liked different.
He also liked how she chewed on the eraser. He was beginning to wonder more and more if she was entertaining the thought of going to bed with him.
While men’s sexual energy seemed to ebb as they got older, at seventy-eight, Standing’s had increased. He had no idea what those overpriced doctors and high-end nutritionists were crushing up into his so-called vitamin shakes, but he didn’t care. Hell, he had half a mind to reverse-engineer the recipe and put it on the market himself. It’d be like fusing Red Bull and Viagra, both multibillion-dollar products.
Julia Winston raised her eyebrows, waiting for a response.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” said Standing. His mind had drifted. Only making money could have taken his mind off the prospect of bedding such an incredibly attractive woman. “What was it you were asking?”
The woman repeated herself. “Picking up on your remarks about social justice and social responsibility, we talked about your efforts to get affordable medications to AIDS patients in Africa. We also discussed your belief that America should be just as diligent in providing medical care for everyone in this nation, regardless of immigration status. You have described housing, health care, employment, and fair wages as basic human rights.”
“Exactly,” said Standing, more focused now.
“Which brings me to currencies; particularly the U.S. dollar. Recently you said you wanted to see a ‘managed decline’ of the dollar. Can you expound upon that remark?”
“Certainly. The dollar, due to the nation’s huge and rapidly expanding deficit, is not a very strong currency, and it has only grown weaker. Normally, in times of crisis, we see flights to safety. Investors seeking safe havens have historically turned to the U.S. dollar—”
“Among other things,” the young journalist interrupted.
Standing smiled and nodded. “Of course. But it’s important to point out that investors no longer consider the dollar a safe haven. They are fleeing to hard assets, commodities. This demonstrates both a lack of confidence in the dollar, as well as a lack of confidence in currencies overall.
“The system doesn’t work. It is broken and needs to be fundamentally transformed. The worldwide distribution of wealth is completely out of balance—a select few get richer while everyone else gets poorer. The only way to correct this is with a new currency system.”
“So if the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency,” Winston asked, “what is something like oil bought and sold in?”
“In the beginning, we would use a basket of currencies; special drawing rights, or SDRs, as they’re known. Those would give you the makings of a new currency system. And I would add,