They haunt him still. The ghosts, I mean – of Christmases Past, Present, and Yet to Come, who appeared in succession one Christmas Eve, long ago, to pry open the cold heart of Ebenezer Scrooge and teach him a thing or two about generosity and the holiday spirit.
It’s hard to shake the memory of an experience like that, harder still to forget the lessons it wrought. Mr. Scrooge was transformed overnight. The legendary misanthrope who could squeeze a nickel until the Queen gasped for air suddenly became a person of kindness and charity. Many decades later, he still is.
But there is something that is bothering the old man now – several things, actually – and bothering him enough that he is willing to break his long-standing policy of not talking to the press to have lunch at a location that, by his insistence, must remain undisclosed. Why is it, he asks, that mentions of him are still always negative? Why has the word “Scrooge” become a byword for “eccentric cheapskate” and not for “philanthropist”?
And most of all: Why do we insist on bringing up his name when discussing the scoundrels of the economic crisis?
No sooner does he ask that question when he begins to answer it himself, just as a steaming bowl of clam chowder (“This stuff is the secret of my longevity,” he says) is set in front of him. “I understand, I do, that it is quite convenient,” says Mr. Scrooge. “I’m in the lending business, and all bankers are villains, now more than ever.”
Indeed, news agencies seem to produce hundreds of items each year in which “Scrooge” is used to describe some tight-fisted person or unscrupulous corporate titan. Here’s the Canberra Times of Australia: “If you want to see a modern-day Scrooge, just look at how the CEOs behaved towards the laid-off workers during the global economic crisis.” Or the Daily Mirror, in a story about a British politician’s plan to trim public sector pensions: “He's a modern-day Scrooge.” Each year, The Times of London invites readers to nominate the corporation with whom they are most disgusted; the “winner” receives the “Scrooge of the Year award.” A few years ago, a Times writer began the article this way: “Scrooge-like behaviour in financial services does not happen only at Christmas.”
Bah humbug to all that, says Mr. Scrooge. He resents these references in part because he is nothing like the current generation of bankers – the ones who are haunted by their own ghost, the Ghost of the Great Financial Meltdown.
Sure, in its heyday, Scrooge and Marley LLC was known for a certain ruthlessness with its customers, not to mention its even more famous parsimoniousness with the staff. (“Cratchit would never have even dared to ask for stock options,” he sniffs.) But there was still merit in the way they went about their financial business – the old-fashioned way.
Not for him, the crazy methods of Wall Street’s mathematicians, with their spreadsheets, their too-clever financial products and their schemes to entice customers to borrow ever-greater sums. He has never employed anyone like that and never will.
“That is the trouble with bankers these days,” Mr. Scrooge confides. “They think they are far too smart, and as a result they fail to understand the most important attribute of a successful banker, which is not intelligence but self-control. Banking is a simple business – it’s only when you try to make it complicated that you run into trouble.”
