Treasurer's Report, 2007

For many years, as you probably know, I had my eyes on a coveted job at a major international corporation. Finally, last year, after a long campaign, I managed to get enough votes to win election as Treasurer of the IPA! Oh, boy! I couldn't wait to take charge of the powerful levers of finance. Now, I'd be able to raise great gobs of money and invest it shrewdly in financial markets. At last I'd be able to realize my life-long dream of becoming a major money mogul.

I dusted off all the old books from the MBA program in Finance I took many years ago. I remembered that, back then, the hot financing instrument was the convertible bond. But what were they doing now? The IPA had been accumulating resources ever since the early 1970s. By now, they had probably moved into the derivatives markets, I guessed. I knew so little about credit default swaps and options on interest rate futures. I was even a little rusty on plain vanilla commercial paper. There'd be so many decisions to make. But maybe, maybe I could play my cards close to my chest when all the investment counselors and Wall Street brokers started calling on me, trying to get some of the IPA's business. I'd try to learn as much as I could from them before committing any major chunks of the IPA's resources in their financial instruments. Meanwhile, I had to start thinking about the personal perks I'd be getting as Treasurer. I wondered if I should get a BMW for my company car, or perhaps a more modest, eco-friendly Prius. As I began preparing for my first Board meeting, I realized no one had informed me yet about any details of the executive compensation packages. How soon, for instance, would I be able to start cashing in my stock options?

As people gathered for the meeting, I managed to maneuver myself into a seat right next to the President of the Corporation, Robert Holmes. At the first break in the discussion, I wanted to sidle up to him and get the inside story about special benefits for officers. But I was shocked when I heard him blurt out something about executive pay just after the beginning of the meeting and right in front of all the other directors. He said that, because of the IPA's poor financial condition, he'd be willing to forego the usual discount on the convention fee that he got for going around and replacing toilet paper.

Toilet paper? Holy smokes! What kind of perk was that for a corporate CEO? Then I learned what my pay would be: exactly zero. The only perk I'd get was a special new email address: treasurer@primals.org. It might seem pretty trivial, but it did produce a gusher of new emails, all addressed to me as IPA Treasurer, and nearly all asking if I wanted to replenish my supplies of Viagra. Not once did I get an email, or any other communication, from a Wall Street firm.

I also learned that the only way I'd raise money for the IPA was by taking credit card information over the phone. Dozens and dozens of phone calls, and not for the million dollar tickets on convertible bond issues I had dreamed of. No, these were all little two-digit membership fees. And you had to work at these transactions! Enter by hand into a little machine the card numbers, expiration dates and special codes. The device didn't even take some kinds of cards. The record now is 4 phone calls and 9 emails to complete a single credit card transaction.

And as for investing the IPA's accumulated resources from all its years of operations, I discovered that my most challenging decision was to select the bank in which to open a simple savings account.

Finally, I realized the best use I could make of my old books from the MBA program. I brought them with me into the mat track room and had a good cry.

This was Bill's cabaret presentation at the 2007 IPA Convention.