Moral Hazard

Cath is a 40ish woman who was once a freelance writer who has been forced into becoming a speechwriter for big business in early 1990s New York. Her husband, who is 20 years older than her, has been stricken with Alzheimer's, and she is in dire need of money to cover the expenses of his care. Some of her connections get her a job with Niedecker Bereche, an investment bank. When she gets to her new job she thinks "I was in the belly of the beast:observe, listen, learn." You see, her problem is that she is a feminist liberal idealist, so she is out of her element in the cutthroat world of high finance. She soon finds that a lot of what goes on at her work are scams and schemes much like those that brought down Enron. She does manage to find an ally to stem the tide of corruption from infecting her. Mike, a coworker, is also aware of the dangers of capitalism run amok and plans to take down the company from the inside out. The problem is that after working there for a while, Cath has perhaps changed her mind about the evils she once perceived.Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings is an excellent work. It was critical of big business behavior without sacrificing story or preaching. It also retains a human element in the scenes with Cath and her stricken husband as he gradually deteriorates into a man she no longer knows. The satire in it is also humorous. It explodes the myth that Wall Street bankers know what they are doing and reveals them as paranoid, helpless, and corrupt investors who blow with the wind of rumors. I think we have already seen in real life what happens when markets are left to regulate themselves. This book is a great short read.

MORAL HAZARDRead this book. Even by the second chapter, you'll understand you are entering a world that is mad as a hatter, only that the diagnosed alzheimer patient (the author's husband) is way more lucid than the bulls (the author's bosses) who ram Wall Street down our economic throats. Moral Hazard blinks yellow warning lights even when the words slice into neat little pats of cold butter on warm toast at breakfast. This makes the story edible in deceptively gentle prose. What seems like a peculiar combination of subjects is - dementia on Wall Street countered by a beloved husband's alzheimers' trials and indignities. Somehow the two stories fit hand in glove and come out swinging the reader into black-eyed shame for our dual neglect of an aging population, and withering pension funds ground into dust by tassle-shoed Big Toes. There's more, but then, that would be telling. Read Moral Hazard for yourself. I did. Twice.

This fine novella, a mere 50,000 words or so of taut invective against the greed of aspiring Wall Street shakers, is written in the style of an autobiographical essay, a winning strategy as Jennings juxtaposes the anguish of caring for her husband, suffering from Alzheimer's-driven dementia, with the novel's even more virulent dementia, the craziness and moral grotesqueness of all the avaricious, ego-piggish colleagues the narrator, Cath, must contend with day in and day out as she works as a corporate speech writer. The narrator's voice is sharp, pungent, and never sentimental as she describes her alienation at work and her despair at witnessing her older husband, twenty-five years her senior, disintegrate at the hands of Alzheimer's Disease.

Concise and clear-eyed, forthright and fearless all aptly describe the lucid prose of Australian writer Kate Jennings whose first novel, Snake, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She possesses a gift for taut imagery: "The house of illness is papered with euphemisms." Or, "...his promises exited his mind backward, like tottering geishas." With "Moral Hazard" Ms. Jennings offers, if you will, a morality/mortality tale in which the madness of the world of high finance (appropriate considering Enron) and the delusional states of Alzheimer's disease stand cheek by jowl, emphasizing the similarities. Cath, a freelance writer in her forties, is happily married to Bailey, a creative soul in his mid sixties. "He was always doing, always curious," she says. "He surrounded me with warmth." When he is diagnosed as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's it becomes quickly apparent that she cannot provide the care he will need on their current income. Therefore she finds work at Niedecker on Wall Street although she is "an unlikely candidate for the job of executive speechwriter, to be putting words in the mouths of plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables." Cath's guide through the miasma of high finance and cutthroat office maneuvering is Mike, a caustic, voluble risk manager. The two became friends on the day of Nixon's funeral, which was declared a holiday on Wall Street. Mike's tutelage proves invaluable, as he advises her to stop bucking the firm lest she be broken. "Round off your sharp edges," he counsels, "Turn yourself into an anthropologist." At home she faces the inevitability of Bailey's decline. Initially anti-psychotic medicine is prescribed. Then, after consulting a line up of professionals Cath determines that Bailey must be relegated to a nursing home. He, of course, cries, weeps, "recoiling in horror,,,,,beyond comfort" when he is left in "...a place where behavior was infantile, instincts animal. A place of last things." In due time, while he never makes peace with his surroundings, Bailey does make a friend in the home. She is Dolly, another Alzheimer's patient with a penchant for brilliant colors and black patent leather shoes. When confined to a wheelchair, Bailey finds a second friend in Gwen, a Jamaican private aid hired by Cath. An intuitive caregiver, Gwen lavishes him with affection and treats him with respect. "Moral Hazard" is a unique story, both moving and incisive as it explores the worlds of trade and sickness with insight, compassion, and humor. A former senior speechwriter at an investment bank, Ms. Jennings well knows of what she writes, and she does it with incomparable precision...