Frank Boland's blog

It was a late summer day in 1955.  Stamps and newspapers were three cents.  A bottle of coke cost a nickel.   That summer I was a 12-year-old caddy earning $1.25 for a round of golf plus, generally, a small tip.  But on this particular day I would realize what it would take to make significant money as an adult. 

It was 33 years ago this month when I got off the subway and stared at a newsstand copy of Business Week.  The cover read “The Death of Equities.”  It was 1979, five years removed from the 1973-1974 bear market.  I was totally flummoxed by the story.  The story was incomprehensible to me.

My father stood staring out the living room window of our apartment building.  It was a building that was derisively referred to as “The Project” by its inhabitants.  Other people knew it as Public Housing.  It was government housing for low income people.  Many, like my father, were returning World War II veterans.  And these Vets, millions of them, were all starting out the same; Poor.  But in 1948, the best social economic environment was yet ahead of them.  Optimism was ubiquitous.

Imagine resigning from a $500,000 a year job with an open ended future, on principle.  Greg Smith, a young Goldman Sachs derivatives salesman, did just that and wrote an OP-ED column published in the New York Times.  The next day the story was on the front page.  But there is an even bigger story.

It was late October and dark in the early morning as I entered Boston’s newest and highest skyscraper, the Bank of Boston.  I walked through the lobby to the far end of the elevator bank and pressed the button to the 37^th floor, the penthouse.  There were two massively opposing 12 foot high oak doors at the office entrance.  Above the doors, in gold leaf, it read Clark Dodge & Co, at the time a very prestigious firm.  But one that was about to go out of busines, because it was 1973.

As a wanna-be screen writer I know that drama is all about conflict.  Without conflict there is no drama.  It fascinates and entertains us.  Innately, we desire to learn from other people’s mistakes.