Lance liability
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington Apparently the two dozen South American dictators imported for the signing of the Panama Canal Treaty, have been schooled in the locals' sensibilities. None of them showed up in the cream and orange unifprms with gold braid so much favoured by heads of state in those sunny climes. The strong men looked less than savage in their suits. Although the one concealing the nakedness of strongman Omar Torrijos was obviously new and too tight by North American standards. This didn't impress the country at large, which thinks of the strongmen as coffee bean extortionists if it thinks of them at all. The ceremonies were on television, which tended to irritate those who lost their favourite programmes without convincing the rest who are not entertained by watching foreign strongmen exchange pens and platitudes with our not so strong man. In any event it went off well except when the set of thumb screws fell out of the pants' pocket belonging to the fellow from a vile little equatorial tyranny distinguished only by its cream and orange octagon4 postage stamp.
At this juncture the Administration is far short of the votes needed to ratify the canal agreements, but the Senate as well as the rest of Washington is too absorbed in the Burt Lance affair to pay the Panama Treaties any attention. Lance is one of the President's oldest and best friends as well as being the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the most important of the purely administrative posts in the executive branch. The head of OMB often has important power over personnel and money, and in Lance's case the dependent ear of the President on anything touching business and economy.
His background is similar to Carter's. He derives from some wide place in the road with a name like Gnawbone, Georgia, whence he has made his way in the world via the banking business. Proceeding from tiny country banks upwards, Lance, with time out to serve in Carter's Administration in Georgia, found himself at the head of a good-sized bank in Atlanta.
There is an adage in American business that pigs make money but hogs don't. In some ways the fight over Lance boils down to whether he is a pig or a hog. In the course of the years Lance made a number of very large loans to some other banks that his banks were throwing business to: in addition, at various times he and his wife overdrew their bank accounts by very large sums — hundreds of thousands of dollars — thus being the beneficiaries of what were in effect interest-free loans. On top of that there are accusations that he went joyriding in the corporate jet, used the same collateral for two different loans and did something or other which has not been made clear, with an embezzler with a hillbilly name currently pulling time in the pokey.
The gist of the Lance defence is that it's all not only legal but the way bank presidents supplement the inadequate pittances paid them in salaries. The bankers seem to agree that Lance hasn't done anything criminal but they are bandying words like improper, unusual, unethical and imprudent around. Lance has been more of a carnivorous minnow than a barracuda if his behaviour is compared to that of the big New York banks and their connection with that city's financial crash landing. A recent government report describes how, far from being hoodwinked by dishonest public officials, the leading bankers conspired with the same officals. The report states that after the banks knew the city could not repay its massive borrowing, they continued to underwrite new issues of notes. At the same time they sold off the New York City Bonds and notes they had in their own inventory of securities and then, after larger investors' nostrils began flaring at the stink, suggested the denomination of the bonds be dropped from 25 thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars in the hope that smaller investors could be suckered. Apparently they were right and a number of widowed grandmother ladies of the type Wall Street says it worries over, got their bustles caught in the wringers of big time finance.
Even if Burt did everything he's been accused of, it pales next to the practices of the ethical bankers at Chase, Morgan and Citibank. No mercy for Burt. His basso profund° Southern Hambone charm hasn't availed him. When the lights go off in Brooklyn and the blacks break the windows and snatch the colour TVs the sociological defence is proferred. But no extenuating environmental circumstances are given in mitigation for basso Burt, a poor white kid who apparently grew up believing that stuff about it being the inherent right of every member of his race to get rich. It's easier to work your way out of the ghetto, however, than to get rich. It's impossible to achieve it by steady application and saving your money. A few people do climb up the steps of the pyramid into a corporate board chairmanship and so make their million that way, but most newlyminted millionaires have to become wheeler-dealers, that is figure out what's illegal and what's merely unethical and arbitrage the difference. Lance was well on his way when he got gunned down. He owed millions of dollars, appeared to be completely insolvent, the hypothecated owner of an enormously ugly' version of what a real estate speculator thought was a replica of an ante-bellum Southern mansion. Then the news people who have been known to play a little harmless defalcation on their expense accounts got on his case and have ridden it ever since. Many say that Lance is a victim of the August blahs which left a hot and muggy Washington press corps with no news and time on its hands to do the Devil's work. Others say the Devil is Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal who, it is being suggested, has been leaking the information which is destroying basso Burt's career in government and maybe in business as well. The two are known to disagree on economics, but there is no real reason to believe Blumenthal carries his disputes to such despicable lengths.
Be that as it may, with the uncovering of the fact that as a small boy Lance sometimes cheated his mother on the change when she sent him on an errand to the store, the knee-jerked moralists on the editorial pages began calling for his resignation. Carter, in a display of loyalty you would hardly expect from a practising and praying Christian has refused to let go of his pal. This has begun to cost him politically. The peanut is getting no positive points for sticking by his friend. Even among those who don't hate bankers and dismiss Lance's sharp dealings as everyday free market capitalism, there is a general satisfaction at Jimmy's discomfort. It's what happens to you when you go about telling the world you're more honest than everybody else. The butter is melting in Jimmy's big cool mouth and running out the sides.
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