Aware that Nazy would be coming to Geneva in (a mere) 10 days, I decided to embark on the first steps of a cleaning regime.

“Spring Cleaning?” A reader asks.

“Here in Geneva, we are in the middle of the winter of 2012-2014. There is no spring.”

In truth, I didn’t “decide to embark”, I knew that I “had to” clean up the apartment.

“How,” I thought, “Can an apartment so small be so messy?”

I found out ‘How?’ very quickly: there are no drawers and few shelves. The closet is too little for my clothes, so I keep a suitcase full of underwear and socks at the foot of the..

“Oops!” I thought, interrupting my (runaway) train of thought. “If the closet is too small for me, what will I do when Nazy arrives? Her Santa Barbara closet is bigger than my entire Geneva apartment. In fact, her Santa Barbara closet is bigger than the Santa Barbara house.”

While I considered alternatives for closet space (off-site storage, an 18-wheeler parked in front of the Pussy Cat Nightclub, using the apartment as a closet and moving to a nearby hotel..) I located the vacuum cleaner. (I had discovered a large number of small cracker crumbs after I cleared the big items of debris away.)

“This vacuum is very uncomfortable,” I thought. “The handle is too short and I have to continually bend down to ...”

Then I saw a recessed button. I pushed it. The spring-loaded handle suddenly became much longer. I stood tall and pushed the (now) comfortable vacuum stalk toward the accumulated crumbs. Responding to my touch, the meter-long handle immediately telescoped into an inch long. eh, inch-short nub. I (re)pushed the magic button: an inch turned into a meter and then collapsed into nothingness faster than a boulder diving into a black hole.

“This vacuum sucks!” I said to myself. “It’s unlikely that the vacuum cleaner found that remark offensive,” I thought - before noting that, in fact, the vacuum did not suck.

Later Darius called. A student had asked for his advice and he asked more me to advise him about his advice. Naturally I was advisedly cautious about advising on the subject of advice. However, the background was intriguing:

“A student asked about a summer internship, Dad. She had two offers: a bank (friends told her that she’ll most likely be serving coffee) or a ranch (which “will be much more exciting&rdquo. She’d prefer the ranch, but worries that it will not be viewed positively in a job search.”
 
“Do you know what she’ll be doing at the ranch?”
 
“No, but..”
 
“She’ll be cleaning out the stables. Shovelling Sh..”
 
“Got it Dad! So she should choose the bank?”
 
“Of course not. The work at the ranch will prepare her for a senior management position. She takes the same material and simply replaces the word ‘shovel’ with the word ‘spout’.”
 
“Dad..”
 
Meanwhile, at the office, I’ve been working on a few of UBP’s regulatory compliance projects. I can report that when these projects are complete, nobody like me will be able to hide from the IRS. People with a net worth far higher than mine who use devious investment and finance strategies will find tax optimization is trickier. Individuals and companies in the even more lofty realms will have to spend more on accountants and legal assistance.

In fact, speaking of legal assistance, I asked our in-house counsel to interpret an ambiguous regulatory issue. The response;

THE RULE – The law always applies unless there is an exception

You might be asking: “What does that mean?” Let me explain: The exceptions will apply to companies like Apple, Starbucks, Google and GE. They will (still) be able to claim, lawfully, that their profits are not subject to taxation anywhere. (Because the profit, like dark energy, simply appears in a quantum vacuum.) Luckily in these uncertain economic times, the regulations create work for tax accountants.

Aside: The tax code, full of loopholes and with an antiquated view of the fundamental structure of the globalized world, needs to change. It favors large companies while penalizing new entrants: the big companies “pay” a tax rate that is a fraction of the ‘published’ rate, smaller companies pay the rack penalty. The tax structure protects the powerful.

In any case, at the bank, I’ve been working on AIFMD (designed to prevent another Madoff), EMIR (designed to prevent another AIG and Lehmans), FATCA (designed to make it impossible for me to retire) and others including Dodd-Frank, Basel III, Rubik, KiiD.

This is the first time that I’ve worked at a bank. (My HP work was with a bank.) Complying with all of these regulations is complex, time-consuming and costly. In the end, if everything goes perfectly, the regulations will prevent what happened before from happening again - until this regulation, like Glass–Steagall, which was enacted after the Great Depression (1929), and which was repealed to enable the Great Recession (2008) is itself repealed. More to the point: nefarious people will think of new ways to do nefarious things.

FATCA, the US measure that forces banks to provide information about Americans living and working abroad, is different. It is designed to capture individuals who hide assets abroad. Unfortunately it makes life difficult for everyone who lives abroad. While I was ruminating about FATCA and thinking about cold rain in Geneva, I got an SMS from Nazy:

“Earthquake in Santa Barbara. I am okay.”

“So,” I thought. “Bad weather is bad. Bad geology is worse.”

Now, one of my Geneva objectives is to learn to fly the helicopter.

Reader interrupt: “You can’t get it off the ground?” “Only if I throw it,” I thought. “Of course I can get it off the ground. The problem is more specific: I want to make it go where I want it to go.” I reply. “And I don’t want it to crash into the computer, the TV, the wall, or the ceiling. Thankfully the window was closed.” I thought.